First Post, First Meads

[Lumenbeing]

Agreed. If you take SOME care, it'll work. And use ec1118 if you can. Also 1.033 is not that sweet. Dessert meads are 1.050+

If the Wyeast 1388 (liquid) smack pack I pitched in today is not going strong by tomorrow, I'll look at getting some different yeast. I just happened to have three of those smack packs in the fridge so I thought I'd give the lazy method a shot first. Worst case, I just drowned those poor yeasts in alcohol and their dead bodies will feed the next crop I pitch. We shall see.

The goal with batch 2 was mainly to find out what T-58 would do. I'm certainly not done experimenting with that yeast. I'm pretty sure I under pitched it originally. I divided out a 1/5 fraction of the pack because it wasn't a 5 gal batch. Frankly I was scared of this yeast based on what I had read about it and I didn't want a MEA. And I didn't have any goferm... but now I do, so the next T-58 batch I do will have a better chance. Next time I'll be using Bray's dry yeast SNA protocol. I also built a fermentation chamber in my garage with an old window A/C unit. So all future 1 gal batches will spend their lives in there instead of my basement.

Dadux, where are you pulling those numbers from for dessert mead? My understanding was that dessert mead was >1.020. But I think I just copied a table from Bray's site or somewhere. I guess sweetness scales are subjective.

In any case, it's too sweet for my tastes at 1.033 so I'm going to keep playing with it.


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[Dadux]

If the Wyeast 1388 (liquid) smack pack I pitched in today is not going strong by tomorrow, I'll look at getting some different yeast. I just happened to have three of those smack packs in the fridge so I thought I'd give the lazy method a shot first. Worst case, I just drowned those poor yeasts in alcohol and their dead bodies will feed the next crop I pitch. We shall see.

The goal with batch 2 was mainly to find out what T-58 would do. I'm certainly not done experimenting with that yeast. I'm pretty sure I under pitched it originally. I divided out a 1/5 fraction of the pack because it wasn't a 5 gal batch. Frankly I was scared of this yeast based on what I had read about it and I didn't want a MEA. And I didn't have any goferm... but now I do, so the next T-58 batch I do will have a better chance. Next time I'll be using Bray's dry yeast SNA protocol. I also built a fermentation chamber in my garage with an old window A/C unit. So all future 1 gal batches will spend their lives in there instead of my basement.

Dadux, where are you pulling those numbers from for dessert mead? My understanding was that dessert mead was >1.020. But I think I just copied a table from Bray's site or somewhere. I guess sweetness scales are subjective.

In any case, it's too sweet for my tastes at 1.033 so I'm going to keep playing with it.


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Hey so about the sweetness dont take me wrong. Personal preference is the way to go. If you feel is too sweet then definitely correct that. But the guidelines we (or at least I) usually go with are 0.990-1.010 is dry, 1.010-1.025 is semisweet, until 1.050 is sweet and 1.050+ is dessert. However this is subjective since not all honey tastes equally sweet nor all people like the same. And acidity, oak, carbonation and drinking temps also play on how sweet you feel a mead is.

A couple of comments: what is Brays dry yeast SNA? as far as i know he does liquid and the few times he does dry yeasts he uses tosna now i think http://www.meadmaderight.com/info.html

Also i have to say pitching the 1388 pack directly was a bad idea. Let me explain. When you pitch yeast directly into alcohol you will kill most of it and create a very stresful enviroment for the ones that survive, which will give you more off flavours. Also the smack pack comes with nutrients. If those nutrients are not consumed because the yeast is dead that can sometimes give bad flavours. Im sure you did not know all this so this is for the future. I completely understand someone not having time and wanting to do the fast way but next time dont do things half cocked. After all if you dont have time there is nothing preventing you from leaving the batch there for a few days or weeks or even months until you restart it decently. Im sure the effects of what you did wont be too big, but i'd say you'll probably need to repitch again and that if you had done it good since the start it would have been better. Again, just saying this so you know for next time

T58 was not really underpitched. I recommend you dont go that low but 2g per gal is about the minimum recommended. The problems are likely elsewhere (rehydration, nutrients, etc), altough pitching more yeast would have helped but it was not the main reason whybit stalled

 

[darigoni]

Dadux, where are you pulling those numbers from for dessert mead? My understanding was that dessert mead was >1.020.

Look at page #6:

https://www.bjcp.org/docs/2015_Guidelines_Mead.pdf

 

[Lumenbeing]

Okay, so the 1388 did not appear to take doing it the lazy way, so I went out today and bought some EC-1118 and a couple of new 1 gal glass carboys.
I also read the applicable section of the Scott Labs Fermentation manual.
The thing I'm not certain of is how much water and how much Goferm to mix together to rehydrate my yeast. The 1118 pack has 5g of yeast in it and the sticker on my package of Goferm Protect Evolution says to add 1.5 g of Goferm for each gram of yeast to 15ml of (distilled) water.
I'm going to ignore the distilled part based on advice from Squatchy I've seen in multiple threads.
But is it saying I should put 7.5 g GoFerm in only 15ml of water?
That seems weird.
The Scott Labs books says to dissolve it in 20x it's weight in water. So going by that, I so hold use 1500ml of water... Which seems like a lot.


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[Squatchy]

I always use the 20x weight for wster amount. Im sure if you reread the manual you will see that somehow you misread the distilled part wrongly. It says tap water

 

[Lumenbeing]

I always use the 20x weight for wster amount. Im sure if you reread the manual you will see that somehow you misread the distilled part wrongly. It says tap water

I think if you go back and read my post, you will see that somehow you read it wrongly. Sorry to be a smartass.
I said that the sticker on my package of GoFerm says to use distilled. And as I said I'm ignoring that thanks to your advice which is backed up by the Scott labs manual.

So how am I supposed to add 1500 ml of water/yeast to a one gallon batch? That's going to drop the SG alright, but by diluting it. Should I just use less yeast? I don't want to have to do this again.

*Edit* I think my math might have been wrong. 7.5g = 0.0075 liters
0.0075 liters X 20 = 0.015 liters, and that IS 15 ml, which is what the sticker on the GoFerm Evo package says. I guess they are just assuming you will use a 5g packet of yeast, although it's weird that they would carry that assumption to the amount of water but make you do the calculation for the amount of GoFerm.



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[Dadux]

I think if you go back and read my post, you will see that somehow you read it wrongly. Sorry to be a smartass.
I said that the sticker on my package of GoFerm says to use distilled. And as I said I'm ignoring that thanks to your advice which is backed up by the Scott labs manual.

So how am I supposed to add 1500 ml of water/yeast to a one gallon batch? That's going to drop the SG alright, but by diluting it. Should I just use less yeast? I don't want to have to do this again.

*Edit* I think my math might have been wrong. 7.5g = 0.0075 liters
0.0075 liters X 20 = 0.015 liters, and that IS 15 ml, which is what the sticker on the GoFerm Evo package says. I guess they are just assuming you will use a 5g packet of yeast, although it's weird that they would carry that assumption to the amount of water but make you do the calculation for the amount of GoFerm.



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Use 25x yeast of water. 5 g of yeast = 125ml of water
Use 1.25g of goferm pee g of yeast, that is 6.25 grams of goferm for 5 grams of yeast
Alternatively you can calculate water volume using 20x goferm of water (its the same, see, 6.25 x 20 = 125ml)

 

[Lumenbeing]

Well that got it going. I've got it temperature controlled at 70F. It's bubbling the airlock again. SG is at 1.030 now. Not sure if that's from dilution or what but I have a new baseline. We'll see where it gets in a couple of days.


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