New Meadmaker, Few Questions and a Few Batches

[CrimsonVelos]

Hello everyone,

My friend has made a few batches of mead and has gotten me into the hobby. As with most hobbies, I immediately started looking for a forum and information and got myself probably more equipment than I need. For Christmas, I got 2 1 gal jugs, racking cane, siphon hose, stoppers, airlocks, and yeast. Last Saturday, I also bought myself a 2 gal bucket and lid and I started 3 batches. One was based on JAOM but I used D47 and yeast nutrient rather than bread yeast and raisins. I also started a 1 gal batch in the bucket with the inner part of a lemon included, D47, nutrients, and 3 lbs of honey. The final batch was something I saw on a LHBS website. Lord Dominic's Blackberry Mead. This one is meant to be quick, two+ week ferment, then refrigerate, backsweeten, and enjoy. I scaled the recipe down to 1 gal:

1.6 lbs honey
1.6 cups juice (I chose blackberry, blueberry, acai) I checked for no preservatives.
1/4 tsp nutmeg
2 whole cloves
D47 yeast
No Nutrients

I enjoyed putting those together so much that I went and bought 6 gal and 5 gal carboys, hydrometer, and wine thief. I've started a little more than 5 gal metheglin that includes allspice and star anise. Now for my questions.

Hopefully an easy one. I forgot to add water to JAOM after a few days, so today(a week later) I added some water and gently rocked the jug to mix the water into the must. I used a sanitized wine thief to do so without adding a lot of oxygen. I figured the extra water was to keep the oranges covered and avoid problems with possible mold or something as it sits two months. This one has been bubbling quite well lately and only slowed down a little yesterday because the temperature in my closet dropped from 70 degrees to 60 degrees in about 6 hours. After I added the water and put the cork back on it, I still notice lots of bubbles inside the must coming up, but the water in the airlock has not moved. I'm curious, how long after opening up a jug or carboy does it take for the water to move to one side and start bubbling?

Question 2: With the blackberry juice mead, I've seen bubbles and there's a little lees on the bottom, but it's bubbled much slower than JAOM and yesterday it stopped bubbling. I know 60 degrees isn't too cold for D47. I measured the specific gravity today and got about 1.060. I also tasted it and I think it'll be good. My girlfriend commented on the yeasty taste and that helps confirm my theory. I didn't take an original gravity but according to the mead calculator, I think the OG was near 1.063. I don't think this one has really fermented much. My idea is to repitch yeast and add nutrient this time. Any other thoughts?

Thank you for your time.

 

[darigoni]

Thoughts?

Yeah:

1. Read the NewBee guide (top of web page).

2. Listen to the gotmead podcasts, starting on 9-5-17, talking about modern mead making techniques.

3. Watch the 9 part Meadology series, by the Canadian Sasquatch. Also watch his BOMM video and his Blood Orange Melomel series.

4. Don't use recipes you find on LHBS sites. For the most part beer brewerers don't know how to make good mead. Run your recipes by gotmead members.

5. Read and ask questions. It sounds like you are jumping into this "full bore", which is great, but you might want to slow down a little and avoid all the mistakes and pitfalls that other members have already made

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi CrimsonVelos - and welcome . Darigoni is right. My one additional comment is that the JAOM recipe is a novlty recipe and is meant to be followed precisely. If you don't use bread yeast then the mead will ferment too dry. The bread yeast is designed to stop the fermentation before all the sugars have been fermented.

 

[Squatchy]

D47 will make rocket fuel is you don't keep it below 65F. Not adding nutrients will also make rocket fuel.

 

[CrimsonVelos]

Thoughts?

Yeah:

1. Read the NewBee guide (top of web page).

2. Listen to the gotmead podcasts, starting on 9-5-17, talking about modern mead making techniques.

3. Watch the 9 part Meadology series, by the Canadian Sasquatch. Also watch his BOMM video and his Blood Orange Melomel series.

4. Don't use recipes you find on LHBS sites. For the most part beer brewerers don't know how to make good mead. Run your recipes by gotmead members.

5. Read and ask questions. It sounds like you are jumping into this "full bore", which is great, but you might want to slow down a little and avoid all the mistakes and pitfalls that other members have already made

Thanks for the feedback. I'd discovered the NewBee guide, it's really good. I've started listening to those episodes of the gotmead podcast now, they're interesting. I'd already started on the Meadology series but haven't finished it yet. Those are all great resources. I'll definitely post my ideas for future recipes when I start another batch.


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[CrimsonVelos]

Hi CrimsonVelos - and welcome . Darigoni is right. My one additional comment is that the JAOM recipe is a novlty recipe and is meant to be followed precisely. If you don't use bread yeast then the mead will ferment too dry. The bread yeast is designed to stop the fermentation before all the sugars have been fermented.

That's a good point that I forgot about when I made the must. I've had some meads that were made with D47 and 3 lbs of honey that weren't too dry for my liking, so hopefully I'll still enjoy this one with the extra half pound of honey. At worse, maybe I can backsweeten it.


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[CrimsonVelos]

For anyone that's interested in the answers to these questions:

Q1: I think it doesn't take long at all for an actively fermenting mead to start bubbling in the airlock again. After a few hours I saw that my JAOM still wasn't bubbling. I had overfilled the airlock a little and while that shouldn't matter, I decided to pour a little out. When I put it back on it was bubbling in just a minute or two. I doubt it was the water level so maybe the seal wasn't great the first time.

Q2: I decided to repitch yeast and add some nutrients as well. This seems to have helped.


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[bernardsmith]

The first thing to suspect - all other things being equal - (and that is always a question for the novice - what are you in fact taking into account when you say "all other things being equal"? ) - is a poor seal when you don't see bubbling in an airlock.

The other thing is that rather than re-pitch yeast if there seems to be a problem a far better approach is to add the problem batch to the yeast. In other words, you need to turn the process on its head. Here's why: if there is a fundamental /systemic problem with the batch and the yeast you pitched does not seem to be able to ferment the sugars then unless you have crippled the yeast (rehydrated the yeast in water that is far too hot, added the wrong nutrients to the rehydrating solution, stored the yeast in a way that allowed bacteria to infect the cells, or you are using yeast whose 'sell by" date had long, long expired etc etc etc) then you should assume that the problem is located in the must and not the yeast. In which case there may be some catastrophic problem with the must (too acidic, contains sorbates, contains other compounds that hobble the yeast) - simply adding another batch of yeast will simply expose the second batch to the same catastrophic problem. So what you do is this:
You rehydrate the fresh batch of yeast and then you add say, a cup of water with enough sugar to raise the gravity by about 40 points (1.040). When you KNOW that the yeast is actively fermenting this sugar (and 40 points is not stressful - it is the equivalent of 4 oz in 1 quart (100 g in 1 L) ) then you add 1 cup of your stalled fermentation to this cup. And when you KNOW that these two cups are now actively fermenting you add 2 cups from the stalled batch to these two active cups... and you keep on repeating this, doubling the volume in the second batch each time until every last drop of your stalled batch is now actively fermenting with the new batch of yeast. If , on the other hand the active fermentation stalls again then you know that the problem is not easily repaired simply by pitching fresh yeast. Bottom line - regarding Q2 - You were lucky... but you don't always dodge that bullet.