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@fatbloke
i don't have my alcohol mete with me so i cant tell you the gravity reading.
readings a listed above:
- honey is from a farm (all natural)
Ok so not a varietal that's known for strong/weird flavours or smells (like eastern buckwheat or something like that)
- store sugar has the simplest glucose molecules, and is easiest transformed in to alcohol, thus stopping the fermentation process and giving the alcohol a more honey sweet taste ( more of the honey glucose mol remains intact, thus flavor-full and sweet)
Erm no. Table sugar a.k.a. sucrose is a mix of glucose and fructose (fractionally different make up depending on whether it's beet sugar or cane sugar - apparently.
As for stopping fermentation ? again, no. The yeast doesn't care where it gets it's sugars from, the only thing that will stop a ferment is either cold crash and chems, or when the yeast hits it's alcohol tolerance and dies off, otherwise there's always potential for a restarting of fermentation if it's got stuck for some reason.
- sterility, i washed the demijohn well, and the un-innoculated mixture was poured boiling hot inside, i let it cool and then added the yest.
While this method would reduce the chances of infection, it's not guaranteed. Some sort of sanitiser is usually recommended or considered best practice - hell, I don't pay for the "good stuff" like star san or iodophor, I just make mine up with 5 crushed campden (sulphite) tablets and 1 teaspoon of citric acid in a pint of water, which I keep in a hand spray. I wash and rinse with dish soap and water, but then give anything that will contact the honey must with the sanitiser and let it have 2 or 3 minutes of contact time, then just shake off any excess.
Further, heating or boiling a honey must is completely unnecessary. It's not a beer must so there's nothing to convert. Plus heating honey musts can drive off most/a lot of the aromatics and some of the more subtle flavouring elements of the honey - sure some store bought honey may have been heated enough for filtration and blending, but generally not enough to adversely affect the honey. Older recipes that you might find around the web that say about heating or boiling the must, are often connected to unsanitary water supplies, rather than issues with the honey, which, after all, is natures most anti-bacterial, anti-fungal substance (and the only food product that doesn't need a "use by" or "best before" date).
Even honey that's crystalised can be just mixed with water and left alone and it will re-liquidise over time or with some mixing.
As above, honey doesn't need "pasteurising"....
- yest i cant really tell you, i got it form someone(not store both) but i did make elderberry wine earlier this year and it turned out very good, also had an attempt at a fruit wine but that didn't turn out so good(had a problem with the air tight seal). So i can confirm that the yest is good.
Ah, well also that's no guarantee of "good" yeast. Without knowing the type, it's hard to say whether it's one that will give good results with all types of must. Sure it may have been fine for elderberry, not giving any off flavours, but the type of yeast is pretty important as even a lot of the regularly used wine yeasts have issues that need to be remembered e.g. D47 is known as a pretty good yeast for meads, but it's been found that if it's used to ferment a honey must at over 70F/21C it can produce fusels, that take a hell of a long time (if ever) to mellow out. Or 71B which is another one that makes good meads, especially if there's a fruit ingredient, but it needs to have the must racked off the lees/sediment relatively quickly compared to other wine yeasts, as it's known to cause off flavours (probably from autolysis) if the mead is left on the sediment too long.
i took out 2 l thinking it was ready ( no more bubbles), i wanted to let it settle in the fridge for another week. when i tasted it i noticed the taste. I added 2 l o bottled water hoping to change the Ph ( i measured it at a 7,4 when i first started) hoping to make it a more acidic to help the yest. I am not concerned about the adding water part(the demijohn serves as a bio-reactor, so i just diluted the concentration of alcohol allowing the yest convert more glucose), what i am concerned about is the the 10-15 min it was opened, and the fact now that there is oxygen inside, what are the risks of contamination?
Ok, well a lack of bubbles doesn't mean, necessarily, that it was finished. The cold crash idea was fine.
A pH of 7.4 ? you are referring to the water I presume as it's virtually impossible for a honey must to be that high. If you mixed a "normal-ish" must of say 3lb of honey made up to a gallon, you'd find it would have a pH of between the mid 3's and low 4's. And yes, the addition of the water would have done just that i.e. diluted the remaining brew down.
Generally, leaving the fermenter open like that does increase the potential for possible contamination but generally it's unlikely. Airbourne yeasts would generally show problems with smell, taste and some signs of contamination like stuff growing on top of the batch and often some hanging strings of mold down into the batch.
What I do notice, is that you don't mention any nutrients of any type, or even some raisins or something to provide even the most basic of nourishment for the yeast.
Honey is famous for not having much, if any, nutrition for the yeast, just the sugars to convert to alcohol. So often with brews like that (usually considered as "show" meads), they can make for long, slow, difficult fermentations. If you have the bug for "natural" or "organic" there's a few things that can be done, like using yeast hulls, or even just taking a bit of bread yeast and boiling it in water and once cooled, adding that.
Hence without some sort of gravity testing it's hard to suggest where to go next, other than to leave it under airlock and wait it out for a while. Once you can test it and have access to some numbers i.e. starting gravity and where the batch is now, you won't know if it's stuck or needs further testing. Likewise, if the pH of the batch has dropped below about 3.0 pH, it may just need something to increase the pH level to keep the yeast happy.
Sorry if that lots of no real use. I can't think of anything else to suggest. Other than to say, it sounds like it's quite a new/fresh/young batch and as young batches often taste bad, or at least not good, then you might just have to leave it as it is for now and give it some time (you could probably cold crash it to get the yeast to drop out a bit quicker and then test for some numbers later).
