few question about racking and secondary fermentation!

[Aachen Wu]

Hi guys!

I've been fermenting my first batch of mead for three weeks and I'm going to rack it this weekend.

I used 560g(1.2346 lbs) 79.6% multi-flower honey and mixed it with 2L(0.53 gallon) pure water,and added EC-1118 and nutruition,according to the calculator my mead is supposed to be a ABV of 11.24 and SG of 1.084.

So I got some questions:

1.Can I backsweeten it with some caramelized honey?I really like some smokey flavor in my mead.

2.How do I sanitize cheeries if I want to put some in for secondary fermentation?I was told freeze cheery can kill most of the
bacteria,is that true?

3.Are yeast energizer and nutruition needed in order to start the secondary fermentation process?

Sorry if my English feels weird to you but I'll be really thankful if someone can answer my question!

 

[Squatchy]

Your English is excellent. And welcome to the forum friend.

Yes, you can caramelize some honey to backsweeten it. But you first must stabilize your mead so that the yeast will not just chew through the new honey and leave you dry again and at a higher ABV.

You can toss the cherries into your mead. The freezing won't kill everything. But a combination of the alcohol and the sulfites you added to stabilize will keep the nasties at bay. Make sure to lightly crush the fruit to break the skins before you add it to the mead.

The "secondary" is a bit confusing. Maybe more so for a person who speaks English as a second language. The only true "secondary fermentation" happens with wine when they do a malolactic fermentation. This causes lots of problems even in English for new comers.

What you refer to would be better described as a secondary phase of the mead making process. This refers to what happens on the back side of the stabilization. It is when one adds different adjuncts to finish the desired flavor profile according to the maker's personal desire. So. No, you don't need more yeast.

Read this.




mcafee paypaldiscoveramexmastercardvisa
Authorize.Net Merchant - Click to Verify E-Commerce Solutions
Any wine with residual sweetness - in my opinion - must be stabilized before bottling, or else you run very high risks of re-fermentation, malo-lactic problems and "spritziness" in your bottles. Besides being an unpleasant drinking experience, this will also leave behind dead yeast, off-flavors, and can (very easily) blow out your corks, leaving a mess on your floor. Here are the do's and don't's of stabilizing wine.

The first thing to know is that no additive we will discuss here can safely STOP an active fermentation. Sure, you can dose enough metabisulfite into your wine to kill everything, but you will be drinking pure chemical flavor by that point. Therefore, you MUST wait for a fermentation to end on its own accord before you kill off the yeast and stabilize it.

(The only way to manually stop an active fermentation is to throw the fermenter into a refrigerator and drop the temperature close to freezing. This will shut off the activity, at which point the following procedures can be applied to the liquid in that fermenter - remember, keep the wine cold while stabilizing it, or else it may start re-fermenting BEFORE the stabilizers can take effect... Once the stabilizers have taken effect - about 12 hours - the wine may be warmed u...but this is the hard way to do it. Most people let their fermentations run their course till they are done.)

OK, the fermentation is dead, there is no activity, everything has run its course. The wine is now ready for stabilization.

For a five gallon batch of wine, do the following: In a small drinking glass, put about 1/2 cup of good-tasting water. Add 1/4 teaspoon of potassium metabisulfite AND 3.75 teaspoons of potassium sorbate (also called Sorbistat-K) into that water; stir until fully dissolved. Both powders should dissolve into pure, clear liquid. Gently add this water/liquid into your five gallons of wine and stir gently for about a minute. Re-seal the fermenter and let the wine sit, undisturbed, for 12 hours.

At this point, your wine is ready to be sweetened, or bottled. Add either boiled sugar/water or fruit juice/etc. to your wine to bring back sweetness and flavor to taste. We also stock at Main Street a non-fermentable sugar liquid that can be added directly into your fermenter. Do not over-add sweetness, because you cannot remove it after this point. Add sweetness slowly and taste often. Once the wine has reached the proper sweetness level, according to your personal tastes, it is ready to be aged until crystal clear, or bottled, if the wine is crystal-clear already. WARNING: DO NOT BOTTLE CLOUDY WINE.

See our page of bottling wine for more info, and

look here https://morewinemaking.com/products/potassium-metabisulfite.html
https://morewinemaking.com/products/sorbistat-potassium-sorbate.html

 

[Stasis]

Smokey flavor through caramelization? I'm not sure I'd refer to the taste like that. Maybe using some oak can help achieve this flavor depending on what you mean

 

[Aachen Wu]

First of all,thank you for your detailed explanation!

I learned mostly from youtube videos and they talked so much about the "secondary fermentation" which gives me the image that it's different from the "first fermentation",and what I thought was to add more nutrition or even some extra yeast to start this procession.It seems this will only lead to a dry and strong taste of mead,so the best way is to stop the fermentation process at the right time.

And I noticed that stabilization is the major point of your advices which I never noticed before.My mead is BARELY bubbling but I can see the fermentation process is still going,so I may wait for another week until it completely stop or just add some stablizer,then I'll consider about backsweetening and flavor.

Anyway,thanks for your help!It's really good to know a forum like this especially in China where just very few people know about mead,not even mention brewing.Again,apologize if I use the wrong English and hope you have a nice day!

 

[Aachen Wu]

Smokey flavor through caramelization? I'm not sure I'd refer to the taste like that. Maybe using some oak can help achieve this flavor depending on what you mean

Well what I mean was caramalized flavor but I can't find the right word to put it...But no doubt oak will be something I gonna try later since you mentioned it.Thank you and have a good day!

 

[Aachen Wu]

Your English is excellent. And welcome to the forum friend.

Yes, you can caramelize some honey to backsweeten it. But you first must stabilize your mead so that the yeast will not just chew through the new honey and leave you dry again and at a higher ABV.

You can toss the cherries into your mead. The freezing won't kill everything. But a combination of the alcohol and the sulfites you added to stabilize will keep the nasties at bay. Make sure to lightly crush the fruit to break the skins before you add it to the mead.

The "secondary" is a bit confusing. Maybe more so for a person who speaks English as a second language. The only true "secondary fermentation" happens with wine when they do a malolactic fermentation. This causes lots of problems even in English for new comers.

What you refer to would be better described as a secondary phase of the mead making process. This refers to what happens on the back side of the stabilization. It is when one adds different adjuncts to finish the desired flavor profile according to the maker's personal desire. So. No, you don't need more yeast.

Read this.




mcafee paypaldiscoveramexmastercardvisa
Authorize.Net Merchant - Click to Verify E-Commerce Solutions
Any wine with residual sweetness - in my opinion - must be stabilized before bottling, or else you run very high risks of re-fermentation, malo-lactic problems and "spritziness" in your bottles. Besides being an unpleasant drinking experience, this will also leave behind dead yeast, off-flavors, and can (very easily) blow out your corks, leaving a mess on your floor. Here are the do's and don't's of stabilizing wine.

The first thing to know is that no additive we will discuss here can safely STOP an active fermentation. Sure, you can dose enough metabisulfite into your wine to kill everything, but you will be drinking pure chemical flavor by that point. Therefore, you MUST wait for a fermentation to end on its own accord before you kill off the yeast and stabilize it.

(The only way to manually stop an active fermentation is to throw the fermenter into a refrigerator and drop the temperature close to freezing. This will shut off the activity, at which point the following procedures can be applied to the liquid in that fermenter - remember, keep the wine cold while stabilizing it, or else it may start re-fermenting BEFORE the stabilizers can take effect... Once the stabilizers have taken effect - about 12 hours - the wine may be warmed u...but this is the hard way to do it. Most people let their fermentations run their course till they are done.)

OK, the fermentation is dead, there is no activity, everything has run its course. The wine is now ready for stabilization.

For a five gallon batch of wine, do the following: In a small drinking glass, put about 1/2 cup of good-tasting water. Add 1/4 teaspoon of potassium metabisulfite AND 3.75 teaspoons of potassium sorbate (also called Sorbistat-K) into that water; stir until fully dissolved. Both powders should dissolve into pure, clear liquid. Gently add this water/liquid into your five gallons of wine and stir gently for about a minute. Re-seal the fermenter and let the wine sit, undisturbed, for 12 hours.

At this point, your wine is ready to be sweetened, or bottled. Add either boiled sugar/water or fruit juice/etc. to your wine to bring back sweetness and flavor to taste. We also stock at Main Street a non-fermentable sugar liquid that can be added directly into your fermenter. Do not over-add sweetness, because you cannot remove it after this point. Add sweetness slowly and taste often. Once the wine has reached the proper sweetness level, according to your personal tastes, it is ready to be aged until crystal clear, or bottled, if the wine is crystal-clear already. WARNING: DO NOT BOTTLE CLOUDY WINE.

See our page of bottling wine for more info, and

look here https://morewinemaking.com/products/potassium-metabisulfite.html
https://morewinemaking.com/products/sorbistat-potassium-sorbate.html

sorry I forgot to reply with quote lol

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi Aachen Wu - and welcome. If smokey is a flavor you are looking for you might consider adding some Lapsang souchong tea. That has a pleasant "smokey" flavor. Caramelizing honey - ignore most of what you see on youtube. Many of the people who claim to be "caramelizing" their honey are simply burning it. It's the difference between (edible) toasted bread and burnt toast. You can caramelize honey at either 230 F or 320 F (depending on what sugars you want to caramelize) but if you choose the higher temperature (and so caramelize the glucose and sucrose ) you will have over-cooked the fructose). I am no expert but I have a communication from a professor at the U of Tennessee (John Skinner) who is an expert on bees - not food science - who states that you can caramelize honey at far lower temperatures - he says at 122 F (50 C) for 48 hours - and at that temperature you caramelize the honey while preserving key compounds and enzymes. That is something I intend to try this summer using a crock pot (slow cooker) and a temperature regulator (Inkbird)

 

[Aachen Wu]

Hi Aachen Wu - and welcome. If smokey is a flavor you are looking for you might consider adding some Lapsang souchong tea. That has a pleasant "smokey" flavor. Caramelizing honey - ignore most of what you see on youtube. Many of the people who claim to be "caramelizing" their honey are simply burning it. It's the difference between (edible) toasted bread and burnt toast. You can caramelize honey at either 230 F or 320 F (depending on what sugars you want to caramelize) but if you choose the higher temperature (and so caramelize the glucose and sucrose ) you will have over-cooked the fructose). I am no expert but I have a communication from a professor at the U of Tennessee (John Skinner) who is an expert on bees - not food science - who states that you can caramelize honey at far lower temperatures - he says at 122 F (50 C) for 48 hours - and at that temperature you caramelize the honey while preserving key compounds and enzymes. That is something I intend to try this summer using a crock pot (slow cooker) and a temperature regulator (Inkbird)

Hi Bernard!

Never heard of the Lapsang Souchong tea but I'll check it out,I don't know if it's the flavor I desire for I don't really like tea flavor...

And what I intend to do is heat some honey indirectly through hot water and see how it goes,but since you mention the slow cooker I will try your way too!

thank you for your reply