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Traditional Short Mead

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Traditional meads often run into problems with low pH, but it does depend on the honey and the yeast. Some honey doesn't drop so much. Some yeast can tolerate low pH better. The Champagne yeast tend to be pretty tolerant of low pH (EC-1118, DV10, Premier Cuvee). Vintner's Harvest SN9 is reputed to be tolerant, K1V also does pretty well. D47 works well even with a pH of 3.0 in most cases, and 71B is usually able to get a mead done.

The Wyeast sweet mead yeast is very finicky and doesn't like low pH. Many other yeast get stressed and sometimes stinky when facing low pH.

I find it really helps to be able to monitor and adjust pH, and if you plan to make a lot of traditional meads, a pH meter is well worth the investment. Lacking a meter, one approach recommended by Roger Morse is to add cream of tartar (4 grams per gallon) which will help stabilize the pH (you can get it at the supermarket).

Medsen
 
It will add some acidity. That may sound contradictory, but it tends to stabilize the pH around 3.6. That may, in fact, improve the flavor of many meads.

Generally I don't want to add anything unless I really need it, so I'd probably be inclined to go without adding cream of tartar. If it ferments successfully, you'll know you don't need it for that honey/yeast combination. If you run into fermentation problems, you'll probably want to try the cream of tartar with that honey/yeast combination in the future.
 
After having some pH problems with some previous traditionals (fixed around SG 1.025), the last one I fermented I added 1/2 g/gal of potassium carbonate at the beginning. No problems with that one. Could have worked without it, but perhaps it helped.
 
OK. I think this will be the last question before I actually begin. How do you determine what amount of honey to use? Using the calculator on this site 7 LBs would create a starting gravity around 1.126 which has a potential to ferment to ferment at about 16.23% abv. This should be a little bit higher than the 71B yeast I am going to use will handle so it should leave a little residual sweetness. Is there another way to better estimate the final gravity?
 
Even if you use more than the yeast alcohol tolerance, you should understand that a colony in one mead will be different than the same yeast in another batch. During the growth period, the yeast evolves itself through budding to best survive in their surroundings. So by the time you're approaching their tolerance level, while most of the colony will start to die, you can bet that there will be survivors who adapted to the high alcohol content. So you can't really know where they might stop. But if it's more than ~2% more than what the yeast can handle, you should end up with something higher than 1.000, but be prepared to backsweeten, just in case the fittest yeast do survive. Good luck!
 
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What I would recommend is planning some temperature control, even something as simple as putting the jug/whatever into a pool of water at putting a t-shirt or something over it to wick up the water and cool it through evaporation. A water bath with a frozen water bottle thrown in a couple times a day might also help.

The reason for this is twofold. One, cool fermentations will produce a mead that is smoother sooner. Secondly, 71B is a bit of an odd yeast in my experience, if you leave it at room temperature it can chew through right past 16%, even to 17%, but keep it in the low 60s fahrenheit and it just might stop sweet.

Also, you could consider only putting in enough honey to get to about 1.090 (12% ABV). This will go dry, but I think you might find that you like that, and you can always stabilize and backsweeten later if you want. Just another option to throw at you!
 
I wouldn't suggest starting with such a high gravity. If it sticks, it will be far too sweet. Starting at a more modest level and you should still be able to finish with some residual sugar, but if it does stick you'll have a gravity that will be much more drinkable (at least for my tastes - YMMV). 71B is normally pretty good about stopping at 14% ABV in traditional meads, which means it will typically chew up about 105 gravity points. If you start with a gravity of 1.110, you'll have a good chance at ending around 1.005. If it needs more sweetening at that point, you can add more honey.

AToE's suggestion to start a lower gravity and ferment it dry, then backsweeten to taste is also a great approach.
 
I was trying to leave it a little sweeter because of the comments about sweet meads taste cleaner sooner but starting drier and then back sweetening sounds like an even better idea.
 
OK so the fermentation has been going along slowly. I noticed that there is a buildup of lees on the bottom of the fermenter. It's about a half inch thick but if I put a flashlight up to the side of the container you can see some of the yeast coming back up with the bubbles. This brings up 2 questions.

When is it time to rack off the lees? And would stirring the lees back in to solution help the fermentation progress faster?
 
If you're still in primary fermentation, even if stirring up the lees doesn't help, it sure won't hurt.
 
I would swirl or gently stir it regardless of whether you run into a snag. Stirring helps release CO2, which is good for the yeast, puts yeast back up into suspension to ferment more easily, breaks up any possible pockets of spoilage organisms (lessening their likelihood of survival) and even when primary finishes, the yeast you swirl up into suspension will act as a rudimentary fining agent, helping your mead clear faster.
 
How would stirring the must and bringing the yeast back into suspension work as a fining agent? Would it require time for the yeast to settle out again?

It seems that if I stir the must the fermentation looks more active later on. Or at least there is more CO2 coming out of suspension but it makes me feel better to think the fermentation is more active..
 
ruinarion said:
How would stirring the must and bringing the yeast back into suspension work as a fining agent? Would it require time for the yeast to settle out again?
Click to expand...

It actually can work to speed clearing. As the yeast/lees are resuspended, they can bind with more particles becoming even larger. They'll usually settle out faster in any case.
 
It does sound counter-intuitive, I know, but the way it works is that there's some attraction between the particles and larger particles settle out faster, so if you mix it all up, the little stuff sticks to the big stuff and gets dragged down when the big stuff settles out. It's one of the things they do in water treatment facilities to get the water to clear more, you'd think that adding more crap to the water wouldn't help but it does :)
 
I saw a question earlier in the thread about pH.

DV10, K1V-1116 and EC-1118 are all tolerant of lower pH in mead and wine. My choice is DV10, cleaner and more neutral than the other two.

Cheers,

Oskaar
 
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