started my first Mead today.

[mrnye]

After a lot of reading and connecting with a local beekeeper, I started my first Mead today. It's a 4-5 gallon peach melomel. The recipe goes,

~12 Lbs Honey
~6 Lbs Peaches, sliced to fit in carboy
2 Lbs brown sugar, (I'm planning on adding cinnamon and clove)
Enough water to bring it up to the last 4 or so in of the carboy.
Lavlin k1-v1116 starer in white grape peach juice
1 Tbs fermax

When I rack I plan on adding a cinnamon stick, a clove or 2 and a teaspoon of Darjeeling tea, but the problem is that my son broke my hydrometer yesterday and I don't know iif I'll be able to get one before it's done(we're on a small budget) so I have no way of assessing %abv or even when its ready to rack/done fermenting. I was aiming for a sweeter one too. Do I just have to fork over the cash for a new one, or is there a way to tell with a whiskey hydrometer?

Thanks for listening, advice welcome

 

[Squatchy]

We're talking 10 bucks here. You can collect cans and earn that in one day. That little amount of peaches will probably not even be recognizable. That's closer to a gallons worth of fruit. If that's all you plan on using you might be best served by adding it after you stabilize. The tea amounts are very sparse as well. It wont end up sweet either as that yeast will eat that dry. Maybe you would do better making a 3 gallon batch

 

[mrnye]

Hi, thanks for the ideas. I thought I paid more for my hyrdometer, although I could be wrong. I'll have to wait until my next day off to find out.
Say I threw in another 6 Lbs after racking? Would that be enough to notice? Or would 8 or 9 be better?
Also, how much tea would you recommend?
BTW, maybe it wasn't clear, but I already started here... Maybe jumped the gun a bit, huh? :/
Well other than the amounts of Peaches and tea, and accepting that it will be a dry Mead, which I really don't mind, will this be a decent first attempt? In other words, will my Mead be drinkable???

 

[Squatchy]

Hi

It's unclear how you rehydrated your starter. That can make a big difference to flavor. If you don't want to use Go-ferm then just clean water is best to re hydrate with. Once you have done that you can put it into your juice. You would do best by adding small amounts of your must to your starter every so often to get your yeast used to there new home.

Depending on how fruit forward you want your peach presence the 8 or 9 more pounds would start to get medium fruity. If you add more honey after you stabilize it will help the peach flavor as well. Normally I make an extra gallon of must so I can add more to my carboy after I rack it and lose some volume. Recently I just made a 5 gallon batch of traditional to be able to top off carboys as need be.

 

[mrnye]

Hi

It's unclear how you rehydrated your starter. That can make a big difference to flavor. If you don't want to use Go-ferm then just clean water is best to re hydrate with. Once you have done that you can put it into your juice. You would do best by adding small amounts of your must to your starter every so often to get your yeast used to there new home.

Depending on how fruit forward you want your peach presence the 8 or 9 more pounds would start to get medium fruity. If you add more honey after you stabilize it will help the peach flavor as well. Normally I make an extra gallon of must so I can add more to my carboy after I rack it and lose some volume. Recently I just made a 5 gallon batch of traditional to be able to top off carboys as need be.

I rehydrated my yeast in white grape/peach juice for a week before i started the must. I had to burp it quite often and added extra honey to the juice to get it used to honey o guess.
The airlock is bubbling away today and the Peaches are breaking down.
The medium fruity level is about as far as I want to take it. I want honey to be sort of the primary flavor, with peach and the herbs and spices being the afternotes. The extra gallon of must is a good idea that I will definitely be using, as I didn't want to add straight water after racking. Seemed counterproductive.

 

[Squatchy]

You harm the yeast when you rehydrate the way you did. It's best to just use 104 degree water unless you also use Go-ferm. It has it's own protocol. Also, the yeast manufacturers load the dry yeast up with food/nutrients. If you wait more than 30 minutes after you rehydrate the additions are all used up and you won't benefit from the extra boost they are born with. I use 3 packets of dry yeast when i make a 6 gallon batch and follow the Go-ferm protocol. Lastly, if you start any higher than 1120 your yeast will suffer from osmotic pressure. I'm not familiar with Fermax but I'm guessing you can use more of that too. Especially when your yeast started off somewhat crippled to begin with

 

[JayH]

You have a monstrously high OG for your mead if my quick calculations are correct, but then again never trust my brain on mead without at least a pencil, or my trusty old slide rule.

My quick in the head calculations run to 40 points per pound per gallon for sugar and 37 points per pound per gallon for honey. so if you figure that you said that you started with 12 lbs and then added 6 lbs of honey plus 2 lbs of brown sugar (and this isn't even calculating for the sugar in the pears, or if they are taking up some of the 4 gallons of volume, in which case were have an even higher OG) I come up with something in the range of 1.186 which if fermented to 1.000 gives as a potential alcohol of between 24 and 25% This is going to push even the most robust yeast such as EC 1118

If you add more water to bring it to 5 gallons of liquid (in addition to what ever volume the peaches take up) Then you bring the Gravity down to something more in the line of 1.15 and 19.5 to 20% alcohol, still high, but your yeasties will thank you for it.

You are going to have to monitor this very closely to keep it from sticking and get it to a decent level. Even then my experience tells me that you will probably a very sweet mead and are going to have to let this age for quite a bit, so just be prepared.

Then again I'm drinking a very nice dry Prickly pear mead that went from 1.122 to .998 in just over a week on D47 and that is supposed to have an Alcohol tolerance of around 14%, not 18, so go figure.


Cheers
Jay

 

[mannye]

Yeast does whatever it wants whenever it wants usually in an inverse relationship to your wishes.


Sent from my TARDIS at the restaurant at the end of the universe while eating Phil.