Off-flavors

[MisterZ]

I found a reference on the beer side of the site to off flavors and their likely causes, e.g., "wet cardboard taste is almost certainly due to oxidation."
Is anyone aware of a similar reference for meads or wines? My first JAOM + oranges was unpleasant when I racked the other day, but as Fatbloke pointed out, it could be normal. The taste was non-sweet, and I could only describe it as something close to sour and close to vinegary. Goat urine was actually the first comment I made, but I was guessing - No actual knowledge there. That I can recall.

 

[fatbloke]

I found a reference on the beer side of the site to off flavors and their likely causes, e.g., "wet cardboard taste is almost certainly due to oxidation."
Is anyone aware of a similar reference for meads or wines? My first JAOM + oranges was unpleasant when I racked the other day, but as Fatbloke pointed out, it could be normal. The taste was non-sweet, and I could only describe it as something close to sour and close to vinegary. Goat urine was actually the first comment I made, but I was guessing - No actual knowledge there. That I can recall.

Out of curiosity, you didn't use a wine yeast did you ?

Only because there's a couple of similar recipes out there and the most common error is to use the JAO recipe verbatim, except for the yeast and a wine yeast is used.......a major no-no with JAO.

 

[MisterZ]

Out of curiosity, you didn't use a wine yeast did you ?

Only because there's a couple of similar recipes out there and the most common error is to use the JAO recipe verbatim, except for the yeast and a wine yeast is used.......a major no-no with JAO.

Lalvin D-47. LHBS guy suggested it, and it seemed to be an upgrade of sorts at the time. Not so?

 

[Bluespark]

Not so. Don't mess with JAOM. It tastes awful dry in my opinion

 

[MisterZ]

Not so. Don't mess with JAOM. It tastes awful dry in my opinion

Maybe I'll just need to sweeten on the back end. Plan is to do nothing until I do some more reading. Anybody got a source of info about the off-flavors?

 

[fatbloke]

Lalvin D-47. LHBS guy suggested it, and it seemed to be an upgrade of sorts at the time. Not so?

Bingo! It tastes "off" because you've probably fermented it dry.

I did that in the early days too, and it's f*****g horrible as a dry recipe. The missing sweetness normally masks the bitterness and any off flavour from the orange pith.

To use the JAO recipe idea and ferment dry, you need to segment the orange so that you only include the actual orange flesh and to use a "zester" on the skin so that you only get the orange coloured part of the skin and none of the white orange pith.

Oh and with meads, don't listen to the local HBS, most of them don't know **** from shianola. They'll have you believing that the only yeast you can use is bloody champagne yeast like EC-1118 and the like, which is a total crock......

If you make a JAO, really stick to the recipe as closely as you can. My first one ? I followed to the letter, or I thought I was.......but I was lucky. No Fleischmanns here, it's a US brand so I just used the local stuff which worked fine. Also I made it up to a gallon, but naturally I made it to 1 imp gallon, not 1 US gallon. So as I say, I was lucky as I ended up with about 20% more mead, but it wouldn't have been quite as sweet. Actually it still was sweet, so god alone knows how sweet it is if made to 1 US gallon, but it was still pretty damn good.

Oh and the point of the bread yeast is that it poops out earlier than a wine yeast, so it leaves residual sugars to counter the orange pith.

Make another batch but make it as close to benchmark as you can. I believe you won't be disappointed.

 

[Bearmaul]

I just recently started my first mead, a recipe I found that's remarkably similar to a JAOM. When I pitched my yeast (I don't remember exactly what it was but it was recommended for a semi-sweet mead) I didn't let it cool enough so they died pretty quick. The next day I said "**** it" and pitched some Fleischmanns. From what I'm reading here it sounds like that was a pretty good choice.

 

[MisterZ]

Bingo! It tastes "off" because you've probably fermented it dry.

I did that in the early days too, and it's f*****g horrible as a dry recipe. The missing sweetness normally masks the bitterness and any off flavour from the orange pith.

To use the JAO recipe idea and ferment dry, you need to segment the orange so that you only include the actual orange flesh and to use a "zester" on the skin so that you only get the orange coloured part of the skin and none of the white orange pith.

Oh and with meads, don't listen to the local HBS, most of them don't know **** from shianola. They'll have you believing that the only yeast you can use is bloody champagne yeast like EC-1118 and the like, which is a total crock......

If you make a JAO, really stick to the recipe as closely as you can. My first one ? I followed to the letter, or I thought I was.......but I was lucky. No Fleischmanns here, it's a US brand so I just used the local stuff which worked fine. Also I made it up to a gallon, but naturally I made it to 1 imp gallon, not 1 US gallon. So as I say, I was lucky as I ended up with about 20% more mead, but it wouldn't have been quite as sweet. Actually it still was sweet, so god alone knows how sweet it is if made to 1 US gallon, but it was still pretty damn good.

Oh and the point of the bread yeast is that it poops out earlier than a wine yeast, so it leaves residual sugars to counter the orange pith.

Make another batch but make it as close to benchmark as you can. I believe you won't be disappointed.

So can this be rejuvenated? I racked it off the sliced oranges at day 17, and on day 30 racked onto the fruit / peppers. That was 3 days ago, and I have had to change the airlock twice since then - Seems to be waking up. Should I crash this / stop the yeast / resweeten? Is it just $hi# and I need to start over? It's only a gallon, so I could live with that if it ain't fixable. More concerning is this- I may have already repeated that same mistake - I am 17 days into a plain 5 U.S. gal batch with 15# Honey, 2 Lalvin D-47. Fed on days one and four. It was down to 1.021 yesterday, and still getting a bubble every ten seconds or so. Might the D-47 take this one too far into the "dry" zone as well? "Doctor, is there a cure?"

 

[Bluespark]

Keep feeding the yeast with honey until it reaches its tolerance level, then sweeten to taste, or let it go dry, stablize and back sweeten.

I really like the yeast you are using, but the one attempt I made at altering a JAOM was not good, so I've learned to stick with the original and not mess with an already good, simple recipe.

 

[fatbloke]

Nothing wrong with dry meads per se, just that the JAO being simplified and a bit unconventional, means that any changes need to be very carefully considered.

JAO doesn't make a good dry brew, but in theory if it does ferment dry, racking, stabilising and back sweetening should recover it. JAO usually has a finished gravity in the 1.030 area and equally its best to make a bench mark batch first.

As far as the traditional one is concerned, you can step feed like bluespark mentions and D47 should poop out at about the 14% mark depending on your starting gravity (and pH and amounts of nutrients). Or just let it go and finish, then rack, stabilise etc. I prefer my traditionals at about 1.010 to 1.015 so I generally just back sweeten once they've finished and have been racked and stabilise - honey back sweetening can cause a protein haze so I just do that while its still cloudy and not cleared as I only have to clear it once then and my finished batch is nicely in the "Goldilocks" zone.....