Ups and downs...

[theron.hall]

I attempted to make my first brew two nights ago.
I made a cyser with about a gallon of cider, 3lbs of wildflower honey and cinnamon sticks and whole cloves.
Everything was textbook it went great! But then.... I saw it the cider ingredients were not listed on the nutrition facts section. I saw 100% apple juice and thought that was it but on the front in tiny print.... Potassium Sorbate.
I was fuming! How could i have let this happen. Ingredients wasted!
So I tried again tonight. I made two brews one a cyser like before except with no additives and a melomel.

Cyser:

3lbs of honey (2 clover honey, 1 from a local bee keeper)

2.75 quarts if Great Value apple juice

50 while cloves

6 cinnamon sticks

Lalvin EC1118

1tsp yeast nutrient

OG 1.170

Melomel:

3 quarts of water

3lbs of clover Honey

3 lbs of frozen bluberries/raspberries/blackberries in a brewing bag.

Lalvin 71B

1tsp yeast nutrient

OG 1.140

Any thoughts on what I should expect?

Thanks,
T

 

[theron.hall]

I have been in informed by another online resource that 2 cloves would have been enough.
Tomorrow I'll strain out the cloves. All but maybe 1 or 2.

 

[cgenebrewer]

50 cloves?! Holy moly. Also, that will be a pretty high gravity mead, so expect it to finish pretty sweet. Three pounds of berries are going to provide much more fermentable sugar than the 1140 tells you.

 

[Maylar]

High gravity meads need careful attention, or you risk a stall. Be willing to add nutrients on a staggered schedule. Stir the must regularly to degass the CO2 and keep yeast in suspension.

A couple resources you should visit:
http://www.meadmaderight.com/
http://gotmead.com/blog/making-mead/mead-newbee-guide/the-newbee-guide-to-making-mead/

 

[theron.hall]

50 cloves?! Holy moly. Also, that will be a pretty high gravity mead, so expect it to finish pretty sweet. Three pounds of berries are going to provide much more fermentable sugar than the 1140 tells you.

I thought the berries would increase the abv, but how can I measure that sugar content?

 

[theron.hall]

High gravity meads need careful attention, or you risk a stall. Be willing to add nutrients on a staggered schedule. Stir the must regularly to degass the CO2 and keep yeast in suspension.

A couple resources you should visit:
http://www.meadmaderight.com/
http://gotmead.com/blog/making-mead/mead-newbee-guide/the-newbee-guide-to-making-mead/

Thank you. I intend to stir 1tsp of nutrient a day and degas twice per day for the first 5 or 6 days.
After that I'm on vacation. Should I work about explosions while I'm away?

 

[theron.hall]

I strained out the cloves added nutrients and degassed it this afternoon.

So funny thing.... no bubbles in the melomel air lock but when I tended it (nutrients and degassing) it was full of frothy foam. So the fermenter bucket I got is not sealing. I'm guessing? Or is it because there is so much more headspace it there?
I need the bucket because the fruit is in a bag and won't fit in a carboy. Any advice??

Thanks gang!

 

[bernardsmith]

Primaries do not need to be sealed, theron.hall. I almost always ferment in a bucket loosely covered with a clean dishtowel fastened with a large rubber band. It just makes makes it easy for me to remove the cover and degas a couple of times a day.No effort.
Always good practice to measure the starting gravity just before you pitch the yeast. But you can still make a good guesstimate of the gravity: 3 lbs of honey is about 1.105 and apple juice is around 1.050 (give or take 5 points) so we are talking about a starting gravity of 1.155 - which is a potential ABV of more than 20%. No yeast can handle that amount of alcohol so this is likely to finish (all other things being equal) , with about 20 - 30 points of sugar (8-12 oz of sugar in the gallon. That is sweet.). That , though is a great deal of sugar for yeast cells to transport through cell walls. By that I mean the concentration of sugar is high. Poor metaphor but that is like trying to run a race while you are submerged under water.
What to do? Well, you might want to add another gallon of apple juice so that the SG is more like 1.100 - and if you didn't toss the earlier batch you might consider using it to backsweeten your cyser just before bottling - a half pint of it will add about 4 oz of sugar and give you about 10 points of gravity about your finished cyser: that is semi sweet.

 

[theron.hall]

Everything was progressing nicely before I went on Vacation.
The house was maintained at 60F for the week away.
When I returned my cyser was not nearly as active in the air lock. My melomel had a dead air lock. [emoji53]
I thought hmmm maybe 60F was a little too cold for them and brought them downstairs where it's 70F now that I'm home and running my pellet stove.
I also wrapped the fermenters with towels to block out the light since I don't have a good closet to store them in.
They both responded and began bubbling again. The Cyser became more active in moments it seemed.
Then the next day the melomel air lock has flat lined again.
So I've wondered and pondered the possibilities and I'm thinking it's too acidic. I have acidic water in my well, which I used and all that fruit has got to add a fair amount of acid as well.
So I'm thinking of ordering some calcium carbonate and some yeast nutrient or Energizer to try and get it kicking up again.

And thoughts or suggestions are as always greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[bernardsmith]

I wonder if the problem might be that the yeast has eaten up all the available sugar and the active fermentation has in fact ended. In other words, the airlock may not have flat lined as much as you the caterpillar you began with has now turned into a butterfly. Did you measure the gravity? That current gravity may not simply be a clue to what's going on. It may be the answer.

 

[theron.hall]

I haven't. But I sure will.
As sweet as it was i thought at least a couple of weeks would be necessary.

Thank you.

 

[theron.hall]

I wonder if the problem might be that the yeast has eaten up all the available sugar and the active fermentation has in fact ended. In other words, the airlock may not have flat lined as much as you the caterpillar you began with has now turned into a butterfly. Did you measure the gravity? That current gravity may not simply be a clue to what's going on. It may be the answer.

You were totally correct! The melomel is down to a gravity of 1.006.
I couldnt believe how low it was! It tastes really strong of alcohol.

The cyser still has some sugar content and tastes like a sweet apple brandy. If this gets any dryer I'm considering a back sweetening.

So to back sweeten....? Should I add some more honey diluted with water and a camden tablet to make its sweeter and see to it that it that the yeast doesn't get real active again?

What would you recommend for bottling?

 

[bernardsmith]

To back sweeten you really need to bench test - how sweet a wine should be depends on how much alcohol is in the wine, how acidic it is and how sweet you like your wine. No one can say in advance how sweet any batch should be except to say that it should be as sweet as you like it***.. BUT
To back sweeten you need to be sure that you have removed most of the active yeast (that you do by racking two or three times over a few months) and you need to add BOTH K-meta (your Campden tablets) AND K-sorbate. The K-meta will hobble active yeast if they are few in number and the K-sorbate will prevent those yeasts from budding (reproducing). To add only one of these two compounds means that your wine is liable to ferment any added sugar over time.

***To bench test take a few samples of known volume and add different quantities of sweetener to each sample and taste. When you find the glass you prefer by simple arithmetic you can determine the total amount of sweetener you need to add to the whole batch (by dividing the total volume by the size of the amount you poured in the glass and multiplying the amount of sugar you added by that result. (= the number of glasses in the whole batch X the amount of sugar you added that hit the target sweetness you preferred). When doing this calculation treat the answer as being on the slightly high side - wine tends to become naturally a little more sweeter as it ages.

 

[theron.hall]

To back sweeten you really need to bench test - how sweet a wine should be depends on how much alcohol is in the wine, how acidic it is and how sweet you like your wine. No one can say in advance how sweet any batch should be except to say that it should be as sweet as you like it***.. BUT
To back sweeten you need to be sure that you have removed most of the active yeast (that you do by racking two or three times over a few months) and you need to add BOTH K-meta (your Campden tablets) AND K-sorbate. The K-meta will hobble active yeast if they are few in number and the K-sorbate will prevent those yeasts from budding (reproducing). To add only one of these two compounds means that your wine is liable to ferment any added sugar over time.

***To bench test take a few samples of known volume and add different quantities of sweetener to each sample and taste. When you find the glass you prefer by simple arithmetic you can determine the total amount of sweetener you need to add to the whole batch (by dividing the total volume by the size of the amount you poured in the glass and multiplying the amount of sugar you added by that result. (= the number of glasses in the whole batch X the amount of sugar you added that hit the target sweetness you preferred). When doing this calculation treat the answer as being on the slightly high side - wine tends to become naturally a little more sweeter as it ages.

Thank you Bernard Smith you have been very helpful!

 

[theron.hall]

Well the first two batches are now officially bottled!
The cyser came out really nice. The triple berry melomel is a little too dry and potent for my taste I think but maybe it'll mellow out a little in time.

 

[bernardsmith]

Congratulations on successfully bottling your first wines. but as to your point about the triple berry fermenting too dry, the solution is to back sweeten. A dry wine simply has no residual sugar, and back sweetening adds back sugars that while not technically "residual" will remain in the wine to both add more viscosity and sweeten the wine AS IF those sugars were not fermented in the first place. But note, if you simply add table sugar (or honey) you are not going to be adding anything more to the fruity flavors. If you have a way to add concentrated (in this case) sugars from the same berries as you fermented then you will.

 

[theron.hall]

So the cyser has disappeared rather quickly but the melomel is very much like cough syrup.
Will aging work that out?

 

[bernardsmith]

"both syrup"... My English is not good enough to understand what a both syrup is. But if you are saying that a wine is too sweet (like syrup) then aging does not necessarily make it any less sweeter unless the yeast is still active and fermenting. If the problem is something else then I need a translation. Sorry.

 

[theron.hall]

"both syrup"... My English is not good enough to understand what a both syrup is. But if you are saying that a wine is too sweet (like syrup) then aging does not necessarily make it any less sweeter unless the yeast is still active and fermenting. If the problem is something else then I need a translation. Sorry.

Sorry my edit didn't come through. I meant cough syrup. It tastes like medicine.

 

[bernardsmith]

Cough syrup flavors tend to be caused by high alcohol, low acidic wines (often with sweet cherry) so that can be "neutralized" by increasing the acidity and reducing the ABV but IMO the more likely concomitant cause is the use of water that contains chlorine and the chlorine in the water bonds with the phenols produced by the yeast and that produces chloro-phenols and your OTC cough meds contain chloro-phenols... and that , I think, cannot be treated effectively by you or me... But perhaps others on the forum have an effective way to remove those chloro-phenols...

 

[theron.hall]

No chlorine here. Straight from my well.[emoji16]

 

[bernardsmith]

And no sanitation of your well with with chlorine, right?
Others may have better ideas but relatively high alcohol, low acid wines (including meads) tend to taste medicine-like.

 

[theron.hall]

And no sanitation of your well with with chlorine, right?
Others may have better ideas but relatively high alcohol, low acid wines (including meads) tend to taste medicine-like.

That's correct. My water here is very good. It's actually a little on the acidic side and with the berries I'm thinking the mead is probably on higher end of acidic but I haven't bought a ph tester for my brewing yet.

 

[Shine0n]

I've been doing acid additions to some of my meads inorder to add some ballance to them.
Do you poses any acids, malic, tartaric, citric etc. etc. ?

Try a small sample with one or the other and see if it balances out some.
Then scale up to what you need per bottle.