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2 batches, one clears the other doesn't

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Yes - as with any beverage, mead will change with time, and with enough time, even a properly stored and aged mead's flavor and aroma will degrade.

Low alcohol meads (under, say 11% ABV) are also more susceptible to infection by spoilage organisms, so they tend to be less stable than their higher ethanol cousins.
 
I've wondered about really long term aging of meads quite a bit. I've read here that melomels don't do so well after a while of aging because of the fruit component, but grape wines are often aged for years and years and years, and they're just a fruit wine too, so that doesn't quite make sense to me. I'll have to put bottles aside to test years down the road for myself.

I haven't found much info on long term aging of traditionals though. I've read lots about them improving and improving for the first 1-3 years, but haven't been able to find much after that. It makes me wonder how long a properly stored dry mead at say 14% ABV could potentially age before it stops getting better and starts getting worse. I'll try to learn that on my own... but obviously that's not going to come to fruition any time soon!
 
Traditionals tend to age well for longer intervals than many fruit wines since they are somewhat more immune to the damaging effects of oxidation, but that is a generalization and there are many factors which will influence the shelf life of any mead.

I've had some meads bottled decades previously (including one of my own) that tasted very nice when finally opened and served. Also I've tasted some meads bottled only a couple of years previously (again, including my own), that tasted bland, and lifeless.

As with vintage wines, each batch of mead can vary widely in its inherent staying power.
 
So I guess the lesson is to make lots of bottles and open at least 1 every 6 months or so, and if they start going downhill to make sure you drink the rest while they're still good!
 
Re: grape wines

Most grape wine will not age for decades without degrading; it is the spectacular wine that lives that long. Even so, you can look at the types of wine that last longer and see trends. Red wines tend to be released later and hold up longer than white wines. Wines with more oak, the same. The difference here that jumps out to me is tannin: red wines have more due to longer skin/seed contact and oak provides them. Red wines also usually have higher SO2 additions. Mead is inherently zero tannin, unless you add it. If you add fruit but no tannin (the case for many melomels, especially those made with pressed juice), they will age like your average white wine. Which is to say, they will go a few years and then fall off. Traditionals don't seem to suffer this fate as the honey is more resistant to oxygen than the fruit component. If you add lots of tannins to your melomel to combat oxidation, you'll get better aging potential but suffer from a longer time-to-drink. Adding SO2 at bottling should also prolong the shelf life.

White wines that do age a long time that come to mind are sparklers. Those are high acid wines, and they spend a long time on the yeast compared to other wine. The pressurization may also play a role, but I'm not sure.
 
ash said:
and yey another question: I've put the batch in a warmer place and now the pieces of apple that were floating sunk...
Is that normal ?
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Yes.

In regards to aging, akueck is correct, that the vast majority of all grape wines (more than 95%) are not meant for long aging and won't hold up for decades. And just to clarify, I think reds usually get less SO2 than whites.

One huge factor in wine aging is the storage conditions. In order for wines to last their longest, they need to be kept at cellar temps, without fluctuations and without vibration or light exposure. Except for Madeira, if you aren't able to store wines in this way, they aren't going to last for decades.

Other long lived wines include:

Rieslings - at least from the best sites/producers. The high acidity seems to promote their longevity. Some of the late harvests can survive a century.

Dessert wines - Sauternes, Tokay, and and Rieslings may all last for decades if not centuries. The high sugar content seems to act as a preservative.

Ports - Fortified and sweet. Aging for 25-40 years really brings them along, and oxidation enhances them.

Madeira - High acidity, then cooked and oxidized into indestructible nutty goodness. The oldest drinkable wines recorded. See Meadeira thread for details.

I haven't aged anything long enough to be certain with meads, but I have seen some of my melomels fade in as little as 2 years - these were not treated with SO2. I have since starting using sulfites routinely with melomels. I am attempting to see if glutathione additions help. From my reading, including Brother Adam's book, it seems like traditionals can age a long time, especially the sack strength ones.

Interestingly he kept meads in oak casks for at least 5 years. You would expect that to lead to oxidation, and in fact he describes his dry meads as being comparable to a sherry, which makes me think they must have been oxidized. That may add character to meads and make them tasty, but in most cases, I'm not looking for oxidized.

I too am curious to know how long can standard strength meads age without developing oxidized character. It is going to be fun trying to find out. :)
 
ash said:
Hi, I've got readings but do not quite know how to interpret for sure.

For startes, I've letf the clearing one alone, since there's nothing indicating that there might be anything wrong there.


The batch that doesn't clear:

was made 09/09/09
Don't have readings before fermentation.

density: 1020
sugar: 50
pot. alcohol: 3

What does that tell us?

I've tasted it and it does not taste that wel. It has a sweetisch smeel to it and tastes sweet in the beginning, but then there's an aftertaste of wich I can not determine if it's sour or cloves.
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readings remain the same. So it is done fermenting? Taste is definately better. I have racked into another carboy in order to get rid of dead yeast and other stuff and help it clear faster, it is still not clear at all, while the batch I pasturised before adding the yeast is clear enough to read a newspaper thrugh.

I have back-sweetened it a tiny bit with a single lump of sugar to kind of ease the spicy taste.

Can anyone tell me what alcohol content this would have, how long it can take to claer and what is the best way to "store" it?

Should I rack the clear batch for bulk aging or should I bottle it?

I have tried to use the calculater but I can't make sense of it :p
 
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ash said:
readings remain the same. So it is done fermenting?
Click to expand...
Yes, if the gravity is remaining stable it is done.

ash said:
Can anyone tell me what alcohol content this would have, how long it can take to clear and what is the best way to "store" it?
Click to expand...

If this was 6 Kg honey in 14 liters, your starting gravity was probably close to 1.131. With a final gravity of 1.020 the ABV would be somewhere close to 14.5%.

It can take up to a year for some meads to clear. Putting it someplace cold (a refrigerator) may speed the clearing.

ash said:
Should I rack the clear batch for bulk aging or should I bottle it?
Click to expand...

If it is clear and done, you might as well bottle it. One caveat is that you still have residual sugar here. I don't know the alcohol tolerance of your yeast, but if it is above 14% you should probably stabilize with sulfite and sorbate before bottling to insure that fermentation will not restart in the bottles.

Bulk aging is good in some cases as it lets you keep tweaking a mead - adding some oak, adding acidity, or tannins, and allowing you to do it in gradual steps and giving time for integration. However, if you're not planning to do any of those things, you can go ahead and bottle it.

I don't like to bottle something that doesn't taste good - it feels like a waste of time to me - so I bulk age things that don't taste right (see any of my brewlogs for the painful details :( ). If time (or tweaking) helps them become good, then I bottle them. If it doesn't, they'll eventually get dumped.

Bulk aging also takes up less space.

Still, it is strictly a matter of personal choice, and how much you need the carboy space.

I hope that helps.

Medsen
 
I have racked the other bach and took mesurements.

It sparcles lightly so I had to get the bubles off the meter in order to get an accurate reading :-).

It was: 1018 so I'm guessing it should be around 15-16 degrees of alcohol (compared to the other one, mentioned hereabove)

when I airlocked the new carboy, the water in the airlock (almost) emmidiately was pushed towards the outside so I think it isn't done fermenting and I hope the bubles will disappear so I don't need to use champain bottles?

The taste was kind of spicy, but as I learn here, it should soften during further aging?

A lot of questions again... :-)
 
The air exposure during fermentation generally won't cause a problem. Now that it has finished, it really needs to be protected from oxygen. While K-meta helps, it won't make up for a large headspace, so make sure it stays topped up. Letting it sit and degas at room temp will speed the release of the dissolved CO2, and over the next couple of months, a lot of clearing should occur.
 
One of the baches is not fermenting anymore but has a lot of headspace. I'm affraid adding water will dilude the taste.
The top of the mead is covered in some kind of film.
I bet it is a bad idea to fill the headspace with propane gas :p

any ideas that not incluide going out and buy something expensive (just lost my job) ?
 
The second batch is finally starting to clear (since I racked it).
I've also added a liter of apple juice to fill up the headspace and saw the fermenting start again.

I hope it won't ferment completely dry.

I find in the calculator that brings the SG from 1020 to 1025, but I have na Idea what that would to to my final result.
 
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well now it has been 9 months since I started batch one. The water in the airlock was pulled towards the mead an later the level was even. It showed no activity in the airlock for about 2 weeks.

I added sulphite and sorbate as well as sorbate sugar (unfermentable) according to quantities on the sulphite packaging. The Sorbate packaging sait to add as much as the sulphite. Just tossed it in the carboy.

Now you must know summer has really started to kick in here so temperatures are getting higher (25-30 deg. celcius).

And I get pressure in the carboy again, as I can see from the airlock...

I probably cannot be certain it is stable ?

How can I get tis batch stable enough to bottle?


just took a new gravity measurement: 1020 - 1019, I will follow up on that. If it's still 1020 - 1019 in a week or twoo, it should be safe, no?

The problem is that by doing measurements I get more headroom and thus O2 in the botle...

I'm tasting it now and it's great ! It's still very spicy (clove) but also nice and honeyish and not as over the top cloveish like a couple of moths ago.
And I even thing the 25 cl I used for SG measurement is enough to get me just a tat drunk :p
It has a nice golden colour. The smell isn't so great, but I have nothing to campare to and next to that I suffer from pollen-alergie so I don't quite have that great of a nose :p
 
Ash, if your SG stays the same over the course of a few weeks (after you have stabilized it with sulphite and sorbate), then it is stable enough to bottle.

Watching the level of liquid in your airlock while the mead sets in a carboy is not a reliable indicator of whether or not there is any re-start of the fermentation. Simple changes in the temperature of the mead in your carboy, or changes in atmospheric air pressure as weather systems move in and out, will cause the liquid level in your airlock to shift one way or the other (assuming you're using one of the "s" shaped airlocks) even if the mead inside the carboy is perfectly stable.
 
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