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My first mead tastes like washing up liquid

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sangrim

NewBee
Registered Member
Apr 27, 2014
5
0
0
hull
Hello,
First mead 1 gallon, 5 weeks old racked once, then racked again onto camden tablets. before i did this i tasted it it wasn't pleasant. It smelled floral which was good. I plan to back sweeten hence the camden tabs. I used lalvin k111v yeast, cheap blended honey 3lb, fermented at 17 -19 c

Will the taste develop into something better?
whats the best honey to back sweeten with?
cheers
 
It would be much easier to answer those questions if you give us the recipe and maybe a bit more detailed method (OG and FG?). All I can say at this point is that 5 weeks is a bit early to have a clear indication of taste. You might also want to age this before back sweetening to see how the flavor develops as it ages. After a year or so you might realize you do not need to back sweeten so much. This is especially true since as your first mead you might not know what level of sweetness you prefer. I'm not sure what you mean by washing up liquid either. Too floral?
 
Also, if you plan to add more sweetness you need to use potassium sorbate and campden tablets, preferably after fermentation has finished, and most of the yeast have floculated out of the mead...
 
5 weeks. Way too early to tell. What yeasts did you use?


Sent from my galafreyan transdimensional communicator 100 years from now. G
 
sangrim said:
Hello,
First mead 1 gallon, 5 weeks old racked once, then racked again onto camden tablets. before i did this i tasted it it wasn't pleasant. It smelled floral which was good. I plan to back sweeten hence the camden tabs. I used lalvin k111v yeast, cheap blended honey 3lb, fermented at 17 -19 c

Will the taste develop into something better?
whats the best honey to back sweeten with?
cheers
Click to expand...
did you take any gravity readings ? What about nutrient of some sort ? K1V is good for esters so the floral aroma isn't a surprise.

As one of the others said, to back sweeten you will need sorbate too - might be labelled as potassium sorbate or I think Ritchies label it as "Wine Stabiliser".

If you're gonna back sweeten with honey, I'd suggest you take a gravity reading, because most commercial meads we can get are dessert sweet i.e. with FG of about the 1.035 to 1.040 area. Some like that, but its too sweet for my taste.

Also, honey has a habit of causing a haze when used for back sweetening, which is why I sweeten to the numbers of about where I like my meads - depressing as hell to get it all cleared etc, only to have the f****r haze up when you mix in the honey. So I sweeten to the numbers and then clear it.

There's no "best"for back sweetening. Maybe you can find tiny pots to taste or maybe if you know you like a certain type (Rowse are the only "brand" I'm aware of that routinely do different varieties (identifiable varieties - Aldi/Lidl have some generically named ones like forest/meadow/summer and nonsense like that). There's always Paynes but you'd likely have to mail order a few likely sounding ones in 12oz pots to taste - you're in Hull, they're down here.....

As long as you like the taste of the sweetening honey, it should be fine........
 
Oh and by "washing up liquid" is it actually soapy tasting ? Or just that its not sweet and what with the floral hints (likely from the honey), the taste might be weird anyway. Young meads can be like that, yet the usual "cure" is aging and we all want our first batches to be ready to drink "yesterday" !

The sweetening will help a bit but its likely you're just gonna have to clear it and age it.

Fermented honey should be nice shouldn't it.........yeah I know, its weird. It took me a while to get my head round aging and so on when I started......
 
Recipe 1 gallon of mead
3lb honey from aldi
lalvin k111v, yeast 2tsp yeast nutrient, b1 tablet

got the yeast going in a starter with nutrient and b1 day before

honey and water in the demijon for primary fermentation. 16.04.2014 starting SG 01.070
lots of lees so racked to another demijon 03.05.2014
racked onto camden tabs 17.05.2014 final Gravity 00.95 16%abv

Thats what i did and stuff I used, I was hoping just to leave it now for a year.

washing up liquid taste is a soapy taste aye.

I have 3 more separate gallons of mead also on the go one with raspberry. I like dry stuff personaly but I want to be able to brew some of the sweet stuff as thats what my mates are used to.
 
Get_Wiggly said:
could it be that you had soap in the demijon? :)
Click to expand...

Possible but if the honey is floral the esters can come across. I'd have thought its just the typical and weird young mead flavour that can come over in traditionals.......

As for sangrims enjoyment of dry stuff ? I prefer dry too but I don't drink whites except meads and I can't get my head round dry mead.....

I'd either sweeten it now before it clears or age it then see, but that could haze up with honey sweetening and eithr need reclearing with time of bang it with finings........

And possibly increased racking loses.......
 
I washed demijohn with warm soapy water, rinsed, then water and steriliser, rinsed twice. so I am assuming it isn't left over soap. Probably an age thing, it is clear as crystal at the moment so I think I should just leave it and sample in 6months with the idea of leaving it till next April.

Thankyou for all your replies, looks like patience is the thing for newbies and mead.
 
Thanks for posting full recipe and method sangrim. Wish more new people to this forum would do this :)
 
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