Nutrients in mead

[justoned707]

I use ec-1118 and no nutrients with 1 gallon water and 3 lbs honey. Will it be a sweet mead because I didn't use nutrients?? That's what I'm hoping for.

 

[MarshmallowBlue]

Maybe. most likely? It's hard to tell if your mead will stall or not.

A good way to get a sweet mead with more control is to give it nutrients, ferment it dry, then stabilize and back sweeten. Remember that nutrients contribute more than a healthy ferment. The yeast will produce less off flavors and aromas when treated well. That means less aging and better mead.

So to answer your question, yes, it will probably finish sweet. But, you should go about a sweet mead another way.

 

[botigol]

No, EC-1118 will take that to dry without an issue; I have had it go as high as a calculated 18.4% abv. Without using nutrients, the fermentation will not be as healthy and will have the potential for producing unwanted flavors and/or aromas.

In order to have a sweet mead, you would either have to add a lot more honey to exceed the alcohol tolerance of the yeast or stabilize and backsweeten.

 

[justoned707]

Thank you, and what's the beat way to stabilize 1118. I heard its almost impossible lol.

 

[justoned707]

No, EC-1118 will take that to dry without an issue; I have had it go as high as a calculated 18.4% abv. Without using nutrients, the fermentation will not be as healthy and will have the potential for producing unwanted flavors and/or aromas.

In order to have a sweet mead, you would either have to add a lot more honey to exceed the alcohol tolerance of the yeast or stabilize and backsweeten.

What's the best way to stabilize ec1118

 

[bernardsmith]

The secret to stabilization is to ensure that your mead (or wine) has virtually no active , healthy yeast. As the yeast flocculates and drops to the bottom you rack your mead - say every couple of months. Racking removes more and more of the yeast until you have very few yeast cells in your mead. At that point - and when there is no more sugar for the yeast to ferment (there is no drop in the gravity over three readings ) you add K-sorbate and K-meta. And after that you can add sugar (or honey) and the yeast still in solution will be unable to reproduce and so your fermentable sugar will remain as a sweetener.
Another possible way (I have never tried this because I do not have the equipment) is to filter your mead through very , very fine filters - fine enough to prevent any yeast cells from passing through and that way your mead will be yeast free and you can add add honey or sugar to sweeten the wine.

 

[MarshmallowBlue]

What bernard said. But I'd go with the K-sorbate K-meta route.

 

[botigol]

Yep, Bernard covered it. The only thing that I would add, based on how you phrased your question, is that this procedure is not only for EC-1118, it is for any yeast.

 

[fatbloke]

Meh! if you're aiming to stabilise an active ferment, you can chill it to the 34 -38F/1-3C level for a week or so to get the yeast to stall, then while it's still chilled, rack it onto sulphites and sorbate at the appropriate dose for the volume of liquid.

Fine filtration is hard to achieve, if there's much still in solution. The filter just clogs up repeatedly - unless you've got a pressurised system and stainless filters or a commercial type multi-pads filter screen (potentially up to 20 different gauge pads, so without commercial volumes, vvv expensive to run).

Generally easier to ferment dry, rack, stabilise and sweeten (I generally sweeten before finishing the clearing stage, to my preferred FG, because honey can cause a haze in clear mead, so if I sweeten before it's cleared I can usually get any haze caused by the sweetening honey dropped out naturally with time etc).

 

[justoned707]

Amazing!!