Possible layering/separation in batches?

[Dubz]

Hey everyone! Fresh to the forum and hopeful I can get some wise sage advice. A couple batches I've made, one weak orange mead (7%, common) and one strong (~13%, very few bottles), taste inconsistent from bottle to bottle. Some will taste sweet and boozy while others will be watery. Is it possible the batches separated out in the carboy? Alcohol and water should mix thoroughly I would think. Or is this some issue in aging or bottling? It's only happened twice but I want to stop this from happening again.


P.S. Very first forum ever as well, so let me know if I posted properly!

 

[joe.vinciguerra]

Need a lot more information. What were your recipes, steps, and notes? Did you take gravity readings to make sure fermentation was complete?

 

[Stasis]

The posting is good Dubz. We're quite casual here although more information would have been very helpful.
Not sure this is a recipe problem Joe, but who knows.

I have a feeling these batches have not been well taken care of and were bottled with little aging. Which bottles taste which way? Does the stronger batch taste boozy as well as the lighter one? Does the stronger batch taste watery as well as the lighter one?

Since I have little information about your batch let me talk a bit more in general.
1.
When a mead is young and hasn't aged much it will go through cycles. One week (or however long it's cycle is) it will taste good, another week it will taste not so good... I think this is more pronounced when bad fermentation techniques are used. Since you have split the batch into bottles the bottles will be going through these phases at different times. While some bottles will be going through one part of a cycle, other bottles will be going through another phase. I.e. all bottles might be alternating between boozy and watery and it might only be your impression that they separated.

2.
When a mead is not aged in bulk you will get inconsistent taste between bottles. Again I think this is more pronounced when poor technique is used So it might be that the bottles all started out the same but have aged differently. This will depend on the amount of aeration while racking to bottle, the condition the bottles were kept in (even small differences might have a long term effect)...

3.
Mead does seperate. At the very least if you rack a young mead, the mead towards the bottom of the carboy will have more yeast and other heavy particles which normally are racked off but in this case might have not had the chance. The bottles might seem the same now but if you wait a couple of months you might see that some bottles have a fine dusting of sediment while others less so. when suspended in the bottle these particles might give a different taste to mead. I think finer particles such as fusels might also separate (fusels cause the booziness taste and are considered a defect) although I have not found information about this. When I say separate I do not mean that all fusels will form a band, but rather that a higher concentration might be found at the top.
I think this has happened to me in the past because out of 72 bottles from a 54 liter batch which was aged over a year about 65 of them were fine to slightly fusely while around 7 were rocket fuel. Since I improved my technique this hasn't really happened to me again

 

[Toxxyc]

I took this picture last week of my mead. IMO, separation is completely possible, from my very newb experience:

 

[Stasis]

That's the particles precipitating to the bottom. If you can actually see layering you should certainly not be bottling the mead. I assumed this type of layering was not the case

 

[Dubz]

The posting is good Dubz. We're quite casual here although more information would have been very helpful.
Not sure this is a recipe problem Joe, but who knows.

I have a feeling these batches have not been well taken care of and were bottled with little aging. Which bottles taste which way? Does the stronger batch taste boozy as well as the lighter one? Does the stronger batch taste watery as well as the lighter one?

Since I have little information about your batch let me talk a bit more in general.
1.
When a mead is young and hasn't aged much it will go through cycles. One week (or however long it's cycle is) it will taste good, another week it will taste not so good... I think this is more pronounced when bad fermentation techniques are used. Since you have split the batch into bottles the bottles will be going through these phases at different times. While some bottles will be going through one part of a cycle, other bottles will be going through another phase. I.e. all bottles might be alternating between boozy and watery and it might only be your impression that they separated.

2.
When a mead is not aged in bulk you will get inconsistent taste between bottles. Again I think this is more pronounced when poor technique is used So it might be that the bottles all started out the same but have aged differently. This will depend on the amount of aeration while racking to bottle, the condition the bottles were kept in (even small differences might have a long term effect)...

3.
Mead does seperate. At the very least if you rack a young mead, the mead towards the bottom of the carboy will have more yeast and other heavy particles which normally are racked off but in this case might have not had the chance. The bottles might seem the same now but if you wait a couple of months you might see that some bottles have a fine dusting of sediment while others less so. when suspended in the bottle these particles might give a different taste to mead. I think finer particles such as fusels might also separate (fusels cause the booziness taste and are considered a defect) although I have not found information about this. When I say separate I do not mean that all fusels will form a band, but rather that a higher concentration might be found at the top.
I think this has happened to me in the past because out of 72 bottles from a 54 liter batch which was aged over a year about 65 of them were fine to slightly fusely while around 7 were rocket fuel. Since I improved my technique this hasn't really happened to me again

Thank you for the timely response!

The real culprit was the weak batch, I've done a grand total of 15 batches so far, 12 of which I tasted. The stronger only had one bottle come out watery, while most of the weak one came out watery with few being slightly sweet. Both were done similarly with a minor adjustment to the amount of honey and number of oranges in the recipe (would be my 6th and 7th batches, strong then weak alternatively).

The batches consisted of a boiled honey must with 13lbs (strong) or 7lbs (weak) of honey, total volume of 5 gallons. I added Diammonium phosphate and yeast energizer (amino acid blend) to the carboy to help start the yeast fermenting with plenty of P and N resources (added directly in carboy when cooled). Once that was complete I added a mix of oranges with and without skin to the carboy. Everything was thoroughly sterilized with Sodium metabisulfite, and I mean everything. The batch took about 2-3 weeks before CO2 off gassing stopped, I left it for a couple weeks to ensure full fermentation in the carboy, before being racked into another clean sterilized carboy with a fresh air lock. I then left them for a period of approximately 2 months to settle out, my notes were not very accurate back then so I don't know the exact time (way better now). Once settled and checked for clarity (flash light), I bottled them both, once again everything was thoroughly sterilized. There may have been some addition of oxygen at this point due to a bad siphon setup. The bottles were stored in a dark room sideways at around 18-20C before drinking. Also I don't age my wine very long before me and my friends drink it.

I thought it was entirely based on the alc %, except it happened in the strong version as well.

As for the layering, I was referring to chemical layering not sediment and yeast. Kinda like oil and water, which doesn't make sense because everything should be miscible. I'll have to read into fusels though! I never knew about them, so now I've got some homework! Haha

 

[Dubz]

I took this picture last week of my mead. IMO, separation is completely possible, from my very newb experience:

Oh no I was referring to chemical separation, like the alcohol was floating on top of the water portion or something similar. Which makes no sense because everything should mix homogeneously. Thank you for the picture, looks like it'll be tasty!