Questions about "The Blob" and New Mead

[toothrot]

So, I cleaned, sanitized and prepared everything.

Mixed together just shy of 15lbs of honey with water to fill to 5 1/2 gallon mark on carboy with re-hydrated Lalvin 71B. Fed with recommended fermax.

The honey immediately coalesced at the bottom of my carboy rendering all attempts at SG readings semi-pointless.

This was only 5 days ago.

Airlock bubbles have been mild and consistent, if i'm not agitating it is around 1 bubble every 3-5 seconds. I have it sitting around 60-65º

So I was aerating things a few days ago and sucked a little bit of the bubbling water mess out to sample it and it had an almost vinegary/kombucha-like flavor. While this was certainly a cause for concern I decided it would be crazy to think any vinegar would've formed so quickly.

So, I am unfamiliar with this yeast, is this something I should be expecting? Can vinegar develop so quickly? Is that the fermax I'm tasting? Did I just strike the vinegar jackpot and am sitting on 5 gallons of delicious vinegar?
I have read that it's way too early to even have a inkling of an idea about what might happen.

Side Note: On day two I had it in a 70-75º environment and it was giving off a noticeable but non sulfur like odor with two or three pencil-eraser sized red clumps on the surface of the liquid. I agitated to combine and have yet to see these reform. Were these just signs of the low flocculation present in 71B or was this some rival yeast that I have since destroyed with my mighty inoculation of 71B? No odor present at 60-65º.

On day 5 here it's clearly fizzy, nothing growing on top, bubbling around the same 4-5 seconds.

Now, the BLOB. I'm guessing applying heat is a bad idea to break this up, and I've read that time will ferment the beast away, but I'm having difficulty determining when I'll end up racking if there is still a large blob of honey / I am unable to test SG. Any advice?

 

[Penguinetti]

Subscribing since, if this should happen to me when i start my own brew, I'd like to know in advance.

However, (and this could be my newbie-ness coming out) I thought I read on gotmead.com that if you do the no boil method you have to stir until the honey is well mixed with the water. I mean, 5 to 10 ten minutes with a stirrer stuck on a cordless drill type of stirring.

Could that have been an issue?

 

[toothrot]

I'm guessing a more prolonged attempt to promote dissolution would've been beneficial. As would have heating the water more prior to integrating it with the honey.

I've seen various reports of what may occur.
Lees forming above the honey which slowly sinks as the honey is eaten.
The sugars in the honey not being available to the yeast due to the blob and the yeast dying out too soon.

Honestly I have no idea what will happen, but that's part of the fun- live and learn.

 

[turtlescales]

I'm no expert, and just started my first 2 gallons of mead a few days ago but it sounds like you might have some stratification happening? I had read about this before I made my first batch, and actually had it happen to some extent with my Raspberry Melomel. The honey and some of the fruit settled down to the bottom, was kind of gross looking with the red color and whatnot. I think that may have slowed my ferment as well.
The solution I found online was to shake it up for 5 minutes or so and aerate. As I am only doing one gallon batches right now this was easy for me, and it worked quite well. The berries and honey haven't reformed blobs and it is fermenting away nicely.
For my orange blossom oney mead, I just shook and aerated the jug a good 5 minutes and had no issues with seperation. I did not heat the honey for either batch, except for putting the honey for the melomel in warm water which I decided was unnecessary for the second batch. I used a campden tablet with the melomel, and nothing with the orange blossom honey batch.