Problems with a batch

[Deodar]

This may seem vague and excuse my lack of in depth knowledge on this issue.

We bottled 2 gallons of mead that was 6 months old. We put the mead into mason jars and added fresh strawberries to half of them and fresh blackberries to the other half.

We left the fruit in there for a month and tonight went to taste it. What we noticed is that all the jars had some amount of sediment on the bottom which, to me, means it wasn't done. Two of the jars of strawberry taste amazing. The rest of the jars of both berries had bubbles, like carbonation, when we opened them and my wife says they taste like carbonated water.

I'd appreciate any help with this as it's the first time it's happened to me. If the liquid salvageable at all? What may have cause it so I know to avoid it in the future.

Thanks for any insight.

 

[BeefsBeer]

If you didnt kill the yeast it will eat the sugars in tne fruit, in a sealed jar your liquid would carbonate. Probably lucky they didn't explode

 

[Deodar]

A couple of the jars hissed air when I opened them like the sound you get when you open a soda bottle.

Does having carbonated liquid just mean I need to flush this batch?

 

[Arpolis]

No, there is no need to flush these. Go to the LHBS and pick up some Camden tablets and potassium sorbate if you do not have that already. Go ahead and recombine the mead into a carboy and add two crushed Camden tablets. Add fruit of choice to reduce any headspace. Give it about another month because fermentation has picked back up. Yeast should settle out within a month. Once crystal clear again siphon off the yeast into a new carboy and add another two crushed Camden and now 1 tsp of potassium sorbate. The sorbate halts the replication of yeast and keeps what happened to you from happening. After 24 hours add additional sugar or honey to give you your desired sweetness. If you use honey you may need to let it sit for a few weeks in a carboy before bottling because back sweetening with honey will often have the mead drop more sediment.

I have had lots of batches in the past re-ferment on me. They can taste funky if there is too much suspended yeast but get nice again once clear, just drier than I wanted unless I do what I described above. Best of luck to your batch.

 

[bernardsmith]

Before you add the sorbate and the K-meta (the Campden) I would check the gravity. I would also remove the jars from the fridge and see if the gravity drops further. Stabilizing the mead while there is active fermentation going on is a waste of time. You want to make sure that you have removed all the viable yeast (by racking) before you add stabilizers as the stabilizers will not stop an active fermentation and having the fruit refrigerated only means that you will have slowed fermentation to a crawl but you won't have done anything to the yeast themselves except put the weaker cells into suspended animation...

 

[Arpolis]

Camden should not be bad to add if recombining the jars into a new fermentation chamber. That just helps prevent bacterial infection along with possible oxidation. The sorbate is not what you want to add until you are sure fermentation is complete.

 

[Deodar]

I'll try that and see what happens. Thanks for the advice on this.