Please help me troubleshoot.

[Tea]

Hello everyone. I admit up front that I am new to mead making. I decided a couple of years ago that I wanted to make a mead for our 25th wedding anniversary. I have to admit that that date has come and gone and still no mead.
Here is the recipe that I used. The local brewery shop here was of no help, and I didn't realise that the time that yeast could make such a difference to the final product. All I know is that it was a sweet wine yeast and the name wyeast, I think, sounds familiar.

3.5kg Outback honey (quality brand store bought)
3kg beechworth honey (quality brand store bought)
75ml vanilla extract
3 cinnamon sticks
4tsp acid blend
5tsp yeast nutrient
rain water to 22ltr
sweet wine yeast (all that I could find available here)
1/3 tsp sodium metabisulfite (because it said so).

initial SP 1.150 was actually a little higher, but that was the last measurement on my hydrometer

I have racked this three times in the last 2 years, because it was put in a corner and forgotten about. Racked this week and the SP was -0.98.

This time I could at least drink it, although it is not very sweet, and almost no spices came through, and feels very watery. I have, since making this found a supplier of raw honey, so 4 days ago I added another 4 cups of this honey along with a strond tea of cinnamon, vanilla beans, nutmeg, cloves and 2 tea bags. I added the tea and left the bag of spices hanging. Tasted yesterday and the spices are coming through quite strong, and the mead was marginally sweeter. I took the spice bag out after 48 hours, as I don't want these flavours to be too over powering. Can always add them back in later if I need to.

I am wanting a sweet mead, (that is our personal preference), and I was reading that for a sweet mead the ratio should be 3:1. If that is the case, then I have a lot of honey to add to bring it up to that ratio. Would I be correct in my thinking? My carboy holds 25 ltr, so that would mean I should have aprox 6.5 ltrs of honey to 18.5ltr water/juice? If that is so then I am way under in the honey department.

I was wondering if I should maybe pour off a litre or 2 every couple of weeks to a month and top up with honey for a while, and see if that improves the feel?
I've come this far, and I am prepared to wait another 2 years if I have to, but I would like to resurrect this one if I could first.
I agree that store bought honey is not the way to go, and was dissappointed that I could use raw honey in the first place. The next mead I make will definately be made with better honey.

So any advice, hints and tips would be much appreciated. I wish I had found this place before I started, but I guess, better late then never.
Many thanks.

 

[wayneb]

G'day, Tea! Welcome to the "GotMead?" community!!

From the quantities of honey and water in your original recipe, it appears that your original gravity should have actually been around 1.090, rather than the 1.150 that you indicate. It is possible that you drew the sample you tested for initial gravity from a portion of the must with some undissolved honey in it. It appears from everything that you say that you have fermented to dryness, so you currently have a dry mead that has approximately 11.5% alcohol by volume. Despite your "sweet wine" yeast strain, the yeast was able to take this mix completely dry. It is not surprising that the mead tasted a bit thin at that point, since this is a fairly low starting gravity for a mead, and with no residual sugar present, the honey flavors and mouthfeel will not begin to show itself again until an additional year or more of aging.

Since you want a sweet mead, the preferred approach at this time is to backsweeten, i.e., to add more honey to taste, exactly as you have guessed. I would also recommend that you consider using some additional potassium metabisulfite (rather than the sodium -- the sodium can leave a salty taste in your finished mead) along with some potassium sorbate to stabilize the batch as you add that additional honey -- else you run the risk of a renewed fermentation.

I would not suggest trying to achieve a sweet result simply by computing ratios of honey to water. Rather, I would suggest that you add a fixed qty of honey and stir it in well, albeit slowly, to ensure that it is completely dissolved. Then taste the result. If that is sweet enough, then you can stop adding and simply let it age a bit more to allow the flavors to integrate. If you still want it sweeter, then add an additional dose (I'd recommend a 1/2 liter for that second addition as the sweetness will become more apparent to your palate from smaller incremental additions from this point forward). Keep adding incrementally, until you achieve the sweetness that you desire.

FYI, you can find out much more about adjusting the sweetness of your final product simply by searching for the term 'backsweetening' using the forum search tool from the forum index.

Good Luck!

 

[Tea]

Many thanks Wayneb, and my apologies for not replying sooner. Had a virus try and eat the computer, but I think we have it beat.

Ok back to the mead. A week after adding the original honey and spice, and flavours are completely different. The spice was quite harsh at first, but have mellowed out nicely at the moment. It was still a little "tart" so yesterday I added another 2 cups of honey. Also I have not had any hint of fermentation even looking like it was going to start up again.
I thought that I might leave it for another 3 months, and rack, and see what I think then, and continue to do this up to a year, adding as I think it needs it? Would that be advisable?
Many thanks again for your help.

 

[wayneb]

Aside from also adding some potassium sorbate to ensure that none of the dormant yeasties wake back up and begin to reproduce, I'd say you have a fine plan to get this one exactly where you want it to be!

Good luck with it, and keep us posted on progress -- clearly those updates won't be very frequent, but knowing where you eventually end up would be great.

 

[Tea]

Thanks again Wayneb for your reply, they are really appreciated.
I have been reading like crazy, there is so much to glean here. Another thought has been rolling around. I was wondering if I put some oak or something similar in there. Would that help round out the flavours? If I was to, and having never used them before, would you recommend light or dark, and how much for a 5 gallon container? I don't know, I still feel that it need something else in there. Or maybe I could decant off some into a 1 gallon container and try putting oak in that first before I add to the whole lot? But then that would leave me with a lot of head room.
Questions, questions??

 

[Tea]

Well I decided to add some French Oak, and the packet said 1tsp/ltr, so did that and already I can taste the difference. It seems to have rounded the edges somewhat. Only supposed to leave in for a week, so will rack next week, and make further decisions then.

 

[wayneb]

One tsp per liter? Does that mean you used oak powder? If so, then I would recommend that if you want to add oak to a mead in the future, that you try oak cubes or oak staves. They allow the oak characteristics to infuse into the mead over a longer period, and add a greater degree of complexity than the powder. Nonetheless, I'm glad that the oak addition helped your batch!

 

[Tea]

Hi Wayneb, the only oak that I could find suitable for the mead was this one, and although I saw the blocks that you are talking about, unfortunately they were all for rum or whiskey. This one although it is not a powder, it is in splinter form, and I thought that a measurement of a tsp value was an unusual way to go too. Ended up using about half the packet. Thought I could add more later if I wanted to.
I know I wasn't going to, but I added another 2 cups of honey today. I just wish my JAO would be ready, it might help take my attention off this one, as I feel like I am micro managing this mead at the moment. :help:
Anyway, thanks again, and I will keep you updated on it's progress.

 

[wayneb]

Yes - don't tend it too much, since you can run the risk of doing more harm than good at this point. Patience, and benignly ignoring the batch for a few more months (at least) are probably your best approaches to a mead that has finished primary so long ago.

 

[Teufelhund]

Hello Tea!

Welcome to GotMead?!

I use a 200 ml graduated cylinder filled with 100 ml of mead. By adding 10 ml amounts and checking SG, you can estimate per liter how much honey you need to back-sweeten to your tastes.
I always make extra must (honey & juices ), label and freeze it if I ever do need to back-sweeten. It adds to the overall depth of the meads taste as it already has the same amounts as the recipe called for. This is also helpful if you make meads with alot of lees and lose a gal of mead everytime you rack off.
Just my .02 worth.

:cheers:

DD

 

[Tea]

Hi teufelhund, and thanks for the tips. My hydrometer has calculations for added extra sugars, but that's sugars, not honey, so for the moment I was aiming more for taste and feel, as there is question as to the validity of my OSG.

Great idea about the extra must. It has always bothered me added water to top up the carboy, and wondering what my other options were. Do many others do this too, is it an excepected practise? Just wondering what others think.

Also just wondering. The instruction on the packet of oak that I added said to leave in for a week. Just wondering if this is an absolute, or could I leave it in and rack in a couple of months. Just trying to get into the habit of leaving this mead alone, as it is only 2-3 weeks since I last racked? It's just I have read were usually the oak is left in for the long haul, so wondering what the prons and cons would be?

Sorry, but the more I read, the more questions I have.
Many thanks for your help.

 

[wayneb]

Hi again, Tea!

I generally make enough extra must to allow me to keep an additional gallon or two in a supplementary carboy for later topping up. I think that many, if not most, of us do that.

In general if you add oak powder or chips to the mead, you've pretty much extracted all you're going to get from that oak after a week or two. Longer exposure times are usually more beneficial for oak cubes (beans) or staves, as it takes longer for the constituents at greater depths in that oak to come out. I don't imagine that there would be any problems inherent in leaving any oak chips or powder in longer, unless you added so much to begin with that there is a possibility of over-oaking. To prevent the possibility of over-oaking if you like the taste of what you've got now, and if you don't think that any additional oak character would help further, then rack off the oak and allow the mead to age with nothing else in there for a bit.

 

[Tea]

Ok one more question, and I promise to stop bugging you.
I racked today, and got rid of the oak. Did an SG and it read 1.020. So my question is, having taken a final SG before, and now having back sweetened, without there being any further fermentation, the SG of 1.020 is really showing me the new sugar content and not the ABV%, right?
The alcohol would be worked using your estimated OSG of 1.090, and the final fermentation SG of -.98 giving me a final % of around 11-12%. Correct?
Ok another question. Now that I have head room again, and I don't want to play with it anymore for now, should I just top it up with marbles?
Many thanks again.

 

[wayneb]

Yes, the alcohol content is calculated from the difference between your initial gravity and the final gravity when fermentation stopped, not that resulting from backsweetening. The new final gravity of 1.020 indicates that you added enough honey to increase the gravity by .022, and now you have a sweet mead. You did not change the overall volume of the mead enough with that addition to change the concentration of alcohol appreciably.

Topping up with marbles is OK (sanitize them first), or you can purge the headspace in your carboy using CO2 gas. Either way will work.

 

[Tea]

Thanks. Good to know that I have something straight in my head.
Again many thanks, and I will keep you updated.

 

[Tea]

Well it happened, and I know your going to say "I told you so", but my mead is now carbonated, which I am guessing means that the yeasties came back to life.
I haven't replaced the bung yet with the airlock, as it doesn't seem to be displacing the bung for the moment. I wasn't wanting to add any more chemicals etc to this, but it appears that I may have to if I am to stop the fermentation. So I need to add some potassium metabisulfite to this now, as the mead is definately not as sweet as it was a week ago.
Apart from the "stressed yeast fuelage taste", which I can't detect at the moment, should this have harmed the mead in any other way, other than possibly raising the ABV% marginally?

Many thanks.

 

[Tea]

I have found some potassium sorbate in the pantry, and it says "fermentation inhibitor" 1gr per gal + 1 campden tablet. Would I need to still add the 1gr per gal considering fermentation is fairly weak, and is the campden tab necessary?

 

[wayneb]

No worries about the re-started fermentation at this point. You haven't let it proceed long enough to have any appreciable effect, other than the loss of some sweetness as you've already noted.

If you plan to use potassium sorbate to stabilize your mead, you should also use a source of SO2 (campden, or potassium metabisulfite) as part of that process. The metabisulfite actually kills off yeast cells if added in proper amounts (that is, enough to raise the equivalent free SO2 level to at least 75 ppm). Those cells left alive after the sulfite treatment are for the most part finished, but a small fraction of them, if allowed to do so, could still bud and form more yeast cells. That would be bad, because it means that fermentation could re-start at some point in the future. The sorbate acts as "birth control" for those remaining cells by inhibiting the production of a protein that allows them to bud. So the few survivors from the SO2 treatment will never reproduce, as long as they continue to live, making re-fermentation practically impossible.

You should use sulfite as well as sorbate because the two together are more effective than any one alone for preventing a re-start, but also to make sure that you don't have any lactic bacteria alive in the must. SO2 will also kill the malolactic bacteria outright, if added in sufficient quantity. Malolactic bacteria, in the presence of sorbate, will actually metabolize (eat) the sorbate and will produce a nasty "rotten geranium" smelling compound in the process. That compound is not removable once it is present in your mead, and so it is to be avoided at all costs.

 

[Tea]

Ok I have added the sorbate and the campden at the recommended rates. How long should it be before I can expect the fermentation to stop, and how long before I can taste test again.
BTW I love you "birth control" analogy, very apt.

 

[wayneb]

It should have been nearly stopped, or at least dormant, before your sulfite and sorbate additions. It will be stable enough to bottle within a day of adding the chemicals if the must is already clear. If it still has suspended yeast in it, I'd give it some time to clarify before bottling. You can taste test at any time --the amount of sulfite and sorbate that you added should not influence the taste profile at all, and it is safe to drink immediately after the additions.