Strange floater on my mead

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HedgeKnight

NewBee
Registered Member
Oct 8, 2012
6
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Vancouver, BC
Last tuesday I came home from work to inspect my mead's progress, and I discovered a strange looking, almost grease/fat looking deposit floating on the top of my cherry berry. I made this batch on the 13th, so it's only 5 days into primary at the moment. I've been monitoring it for the last couple days now, and it doesn't appear to be growing in size....noticeably, anyways. My question is, has anyone had this happen to them before? And is it something to be concerned about? I think i can fish this baby out with a spoon or something. My personal suspicion is somehow a contaminate from a new 8 gal. fermenter. Although, I washed this thing thoroughly, so I doubt it, but its similar in look to a grease maybe from the nozzle. I've posted some pictures below, I apologize for the size..... Your thoughts/opinions would be appreciated! :)

Edit- I should mention the ingredients in the must is 1 gal. tart cherry juice, 4 gal water, 20lbs of clover honey, 2 tsp energizer, 2 tbsp nutrient at the moment. This produced 8 gal, which I've divided into 2 carboys.

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did you smell or taste it? Sometimes a light film will manifest itself, that is usually from the yeast that you used and is not overly harmful. Mainly proteins and the like... I didn't see any way to see the pictures, they're not there as of this post.

best guess is to either skim off the questionable film or rack the clear liquid off to another vessel. generally speaking tough, if you don't see any tendrils (read: stringy stuff that you can barely see coming from the bottom of the film..like a jellyfish) then you are probably OK.

Smell and Taste! that will be your first clue... if it smells like vinegar, then it already is; take it away from the rest of your wine and enjoy some vinaigrette in a few weeks ;) .
 
Thanks for the advice Khan. I tested the gravity at the same time. Og 1.090, sg 1.062. It tastes nice, a little bubbly, and definetly a bit of alcohol showing through. It doesnt appear to be harming the batch anyhow. I was unsuccesful at fishing it out. Gonna have to pick something up from the store. I linked the photos from my iCloud account, apparently it doesn't work! I will fix that tomorrow. It's a mass that's about a pennies diameter. Semi transparent in color, mostly a tone of white. I'll just fix the pictures ;D