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stephen7727

NewBee
Registered Member
Sep 18, 2016
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So I bought a six gallon wine kit to start making fruit wine then I found Mead on line . I thought that sounded more cool to make. Yaaaaa. So I found a recipe on storm castle for a one gallon of orange Clove Mead. That's sounds yummy. So I multipled all ingredients by six except yeast. I used two packs because one would only do five gallons. So here is the recipe six whole oranges sliced up,six cinnamon sticks, size whole cloves, six pinch nutmeg, six pinch of all spice. 150 white raisins, 19.6 lbs cover honey that was raw unfiltered was told there was alot of pollen in it that's why it wasn't that clear, and five gallons of spring water. Wow this is alot of typing. Day one a comedy of errors. During sanitizing broke the hydrometer. So no Beginning sg awww. Warm Honey to 140 put two packs of Montrachet yeast in 1/2 cup water forgot to warm the water to 100 so added more warm water to get it to 100 waited 15 min, I did see bubbles forming so I guess it's ok. Got everything in eight gallon primary with honey and fruit I'm up to over 7 gallons ,too full to pirate with drill statered coming out the sides. So sealed lid and put on airlock. 12 hrs later it's bubbling great. So I think everything is ok I hope. And I broke the floating thermometer when cleaning up . That's were I'm at at this point. Thanks in advance for any input


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Because of the whole oranges and raisins is there still a need for nutrients or enzymes I am on day five and it is still bubbling one right after the other in the air lock

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I'm gonna bet you will have a hot batch on your hands and a 70% chance it won't even finish.

As far as feeding the yeast. Would you like to go to work and run a marathon with nothing to eat???

Stick around here and read and learn. It's not any harder to make a great mead than it is to make a bad one. Just depends on what habits you employ.

Welcome to the forum :)
 
Squatchy said:
I'm gonna bet you will have a hot batch on your hands and a 70% chance it won't even finish.

As far as feeding the yeast. Would you like to go to work and run a marathon with nothing to eat???

Stick around here and read and learn. It's not any harder to make a great mead than it is to make a bad one. Just depends on what habits you employ.

Welcome to the forum :)
Click to expand...
What does hot batch mean? And what do you mean it might not finish?😑 Here is a pic of stuff I have on hand how much of what should or could I add at this point day five?

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Actually, this sounds pretty damn similar to Joe's Ancient Orange Mead (JAOM) http://www.gotmead.com/forum/showth...lproof-Ancient-Orange-Clove-and-Cinnamon-Mead
The JAOM is claimed to be pretty much idiot proof.
Check if any of your ingredients are any less than those in the JAOM recipe and match them, especially when it comes to raisins and oranges since these will also provide nutrients for the yeast. You might want to add even more raisins for good measure since you're using a wine yeast rather than a bread yeast. Alternatively you can boil a pack or two of bread yeast and add those to the batch for nutrients.
Btw, the consensus is that adding the pith of the orange i.e. the white stuff with the rind is a bad idea. Recipes calling for oranges are generally considered better without pith.
You will want to read the newbee guide found HERE when you decide to move forward from making JAOMs. Now, there isn't anything wrong per se with jaoms, in fact many experienced mazers enjoy jaoms from time to time. It's just that eventually you might want something more to your particular taste and with more 'finesse'.
Good Luck!
 
stephen7727 said:
What does hot batch mean? And what do you mean it might not finish?�� Here is a pic of stuff I have on hand how much of what should or could I add at this point day five?

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Click to expand...

I front-load (add all in at the beginning) my honey for my meads. I don't have problems with the ferment process as long as the temps stay lower. I use cotes de blanc, not motrachet, and have had uniformly good luck with the final product. So don't despair on your mead at this point.

If you broke the hydrometer and thermometer in your mead, make sure when you rack or bottle that you do so through a fine filter or layers of cheesecloth to strain out any glass, though.
 
stephen7727 said:
What does hot batch mean? And what do you mean it might not finish?�� Here is a pic of stuff I have on hand how much of what should or could I add at this point day five?

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Click to expand...

Hi Stephen and welcome to the forum.

I hope your batch turns out great. Let us know how it unfolds. I would be afraid that you may have wounded your yeast when you rehydrated . I would suggest using 3 -4 packs next time you do a batch this size. I would also be concerned that you want do a batch this size without feeding it. That yeast is a nutrient hog in my opinion. Even if you use a non-nutrient hog I would still be afraid to not feed such a batch. Stasis gave good advice to boil a few packs of bread yeast/ cool and feed. You can do this a few different times. Did you crush/slice your raisins to allow the yeast to get into the flesh? If you start to get a stinky batch going on, feed it even more and stir it real good a few times a day. If you can keep your temps in the mid sixties that will also help out a lot.
 
I was under the impression that by using the whole orange and raisins that would feed the yeast . I cut the oranges into 1/8 and smashed the raisins. I 6 days in should I add yeast nutrient I have some granular. It's still bubbling at the airlock really well

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Temperature 65 67° yeast nutrient I have is urea and diammonium phosphate granular

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If the ferment is 6 days in I wouldn't add those nutrients. What nutrients to add, how much and when is a whole other discussion. Basically, you would want to add diammonium phosphate at the beginning, if at all. Later, you might want to add organic nitrogen. I am a believer to go 100% organic because I think it tastes and performs better. I use diammonium phosphate (dap) only for high ğravity meads. There are others who think dap is perfectly fine... in time decide for yourself.
You can also stagger nutrients or front-load. I prefer staggering i.e feeding in steps. The last feeding step is when the ferment is 1/3 done or at most halfway done. Rather than going by fermentation progress or suger breaks (e.g. 1/3 sugar break i.e when 1/3 of sugars are eaten) you can go on alcohol levels in your must. Without hydrometer readings I cannot say for sure wheter or not you should feed nutrients now.

The short version is: if the ferment is producing bad/ sulphurous smells you might want to add raising or boiled yeast. You can also preemptively add those as nutrients now and it will probably help your ferment even if it would have never seemed that anything was wrong
 
Thank you so much. I did get an other hydrometer just didn't get the initial reading so I will never know what the alcohol percent will be. I don't have any bad sulfurous smell. It smells like orange alcohol out from the small closet I have it in. So I guess everything it a ok😀😀😀

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I would still take hydrometer readings from time to time, especially if the ferment seems to be slowing down so that you can catch a sluggish ferment that might peter out before completion. If you can catch it before it actually sticks you have a better chance to help it to completion rather than restarting a stuck ferment. Easiest way to know wheter or not a ferment might stick is through experience though
 
Ok hydrometer reading today is 1.60 air lock bubbling every couple seconds about two a three good pop's every three seconds

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Ok 1.030 today wondering when I should move to glass carboy

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Keep stirring up the yeast into suspension and don't rack until a few weeks after it hasn't dropped for a couple weeks. That's unless you want it so sweet. It may be finished moving already. What sweetness level were you hoping for?

If you rack it off the lees know more likely than not it will stop fermenting all together and you'll get stuck with a super sweet mead.
 
The wife likes semi sweet. Is there a specific gravity you would stop fermentation if you want sweet or semi sweet. And I think I read about adding something to stop fermentation besides racking to secondary

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