So I finally started my first mead (technically a melomel) and I think everything is going quite well. My recipe was:
15 lbs honey (strong flavored, dark, wildflower, from my own bees)
4 quarts pomegranate juice (Langer's brand, from concentrate, via Costco)
~1oz of Twinnings Earl Grey Tea (7 spoonfulls)
5 tsp yeast nutrient
2 packages Lalvin D-47 yeast
I brought 1.5 gallons of water up to around 140 degrees F, and disolved the honey. After letting it sit at that temperature for a couple minutes, I poured it into a 6 gallon carboy (through a filter to take out all of the bee parts in the raw honey), added 4 quarts of chilled pomegranate juice and enough spring water to bring the volume up to 5 gallons. I aerated the must by picking up and shaking the carboy (it's a better bottle, so it is lightweight). I let it cool as much as it would in my apartment, but I could not get the temperature down below 90. I pitched the yeast anyways, and fermentation started up within a few hours, and it was fast too. I took a hydrometer reading, and correcting for temperature, it gives me 1.105 as the OG, a little off from the mead calculator which told me to expect 1.115, but it should be fine.
I tasted the sample in the test jar and it actually tasted great. The honey flavor was very strong (I had been afraid of losing a lot of it due to the heat), and I could taste the pomegranate nicely, although I will add more juice to the secondary. It tasted a little less like pomegranate and more like cranberry (not that bad of a thing). I was really worried about the tartness of the pomegranate, but it doesn't come up much, we'll see how it tastes when it is a lot less sweet. I added the tea in an effort to baalance out the taste: sweet, tart, bitter, but I don't think I added nearly enough or let it hang around in the must for as long as I could.
Anyways, what I am really worried about is the fermentation temperature. It was really hot here over the weekend, and my apartment is on the top (4th) floor. We had already made a root beer and an extra special bitter on the same day, so the kitchen was like a sauna. I think that the coolest part of my apartment was 93F in a dark closet. The mead sat at this temperature for the first 15hours or so of fermentation (as I said above, it started very quickly), before I realized I could move it down to our storage closet in the basement, where it would hover around 70F (it is there now).
Will the high pitching temperature effect the flavor of the final product? I am really worried that the high temperatures may have done it bad. Also, I assume that the yeast nutrient gets eaten up by the yeast and looses that terrible smell?
15 lbs honey (strong flavored, dark, wildflower, from my own bees)
4 quarts pomegranate juice (Langer's brand, from concentrate, via Costco)
~1oz of Twinnings Earl Grey Tea (7 spoonfulls)
5 tsp yeast nutrient
2 packages Lalvin D-47 yeast
I brought 1.5 gallons of water up to around 140 degrees F, and disolved the honey. After letting it sit at that temperature for a couple minutes, I poured it into a 6 gallon carboy (through a filter to take out all of the bee parts in the raw honey), added 4 quarts of chilled pomegranate juice and enough spring water to bring the volume up to 5 gallons. I aerated the must by picking up and shaking the carboy (it's a better bottle, so it is lightweight). I let it cool as much as it would in my apartment, but I could not get the temperature down below 90. I pitched the yeast anyways, and fermentation started up within a few hours, and it was fast too. I took a hydrometer reading, and correcting for temperature, it gives me 1.105 as the OG, a little off from the mead calculator which told me to expect 1.115, but it should be fine.
I tasted the sample in the test jar and it actually tasted great. The honey flavor was very strong (I had been afraid of losing a lot of it due to the heat), and I could taste the pomegranate nicely, although I will add more juice to the secondary. It tasted a little less like pomegranate and more like cranberry (not that bad of a thing). I was really worried about the tartness of the pomegranate, but it doesn't come up much, we'll see how it tastes when it is a lot less sweet. I added the tea in an effort to baalance out the taste: sweet, tart, bitter, but I don't think I added nearly enough or let it hang around in the must for as long as I could.
Anyways, what I am really worried about is the fermentation temperature. It was really hot here over the weekend, and my apartment is on the top (4th) floor. We had already made a root beer and an extra special bitter on the same day, so the kitchen was like a sauna. I think that the coolest part of my apartment was 93F in a dark closet. The mead sat at this temperature for the first 15hours or so of fermentation (as I said above, it started very quickly), before I realized I could move it down to our storage closet in the basement, where it would hover around 70F (it is there now).
Will the high pitching temperature effect the flavor of the final product? I am really worried that the high temperatures may have done it bad. Also, I assume that the yeast nutrient gets eaten up by the yeast and looses that terrible smell?