Hi All,
I found this forum on my various internet trawls when trying to figure out what's going on with my latest batches. (Hi everybody!).
I started my journey as a Mazer using Craft a Brew's Mead kit. I followed it to the letter. It turned out decently, even though it was a fairly amateurish attempt. No gravity readings, no cold crash, no auto siphon, no backsweetening.
After that moderate success, I set out to try some more variety. To that end, I set my sights on 3 1 gallon batches. One batch of a sweet standard mead, one batch of a blueberry and an acerglyn. All gravity readings should be taken with a grain of salt as it was my first time doing them. I filled the cylinder to the suggested line and made sure to swirl the meter to remove bubbles prior to taking the reading on the line, not the meniscus.
Sweet: 3.82lbs honey, 5g D47, 6g Day 1 CaB yeast nutrient and jugged mineral water to 1 gallon fill. OG: 1.168
Blueberry: 2.96lbs honey, 5g D47, 6g Yeast nutrient, 2lbs of frozen/thawed/slightly mashed blueberries that had been hit with a campden tablet and pectic enzyme 24 hours prior to pitching, mineral water to 1 gallon OG: 1.18
Acerglyn: 2.59lbs honey, 5g D47, 6g YN, 2oz dark brown sugar, 12oz maple syrup, mineral water to 1gal fill. OG: 1.10
For all three batches, the yeast was mixed with a little tupelo honey and warm water and allowed to re-hydrate prior to pitching, about 15-20 mins hydration period. The CaB YN was mixed with a little of the water and formed into a slurry. This was added to the must after all the honey+extras were thoroughly mixed, but before yeast slurry was pitched. I did not use Fermaid O or K, GoFerm, or any sort of yeast energizer.
For about the first 5 days, they went like gangbusters. The blueberry and sweet ones actually over flowed the airlock and I had to clean them out and put new ones on (all sanitized of course). On days 2 and 5, they all received ~4g (I don't have a scale that can do 0.1g increments, my fault) of the Day 2 CaB YN. They were swirled to degas daily. At about day 7, fermentation activity in all three severely slackened off and I was getting a bubble in the airlock maybe every 10 mins.
They are sitting in my interior bathroom bathtub in the dark. The house fluctuates from 71-76F during the day (hooray Florida). The web says that D47 can tolerate up to 18% abv and temps anywhere from 65-86F (got different answers from everybody though).
Yesterday I re-racked the blueberry one off the berries into a clean carboy (they were looking pretty gross). I had made sure to swirl that one more often to "punch down" the fruit as they were free-floating and not in bag (will do that differently next time). I took gravity readings and sampled all 3. There weren't any off or sulfurous notes, obviously pretty yeasty, and what seemed like a little carbonation. The blueberry had notes of fruit, the sweet one was still pretty sweet and I could actually detect a little maple in the acerglyn.
Sweet: 1.01 (20.7% abv !?)
Blueberry: 1.01 (22.3% abv ?!?!)
Acerglyn 1.004 (12.6% abv, actually seems nominal)
I'm not really sure what to do at this point. It seems like the two with high ABVs will have killed or put all the yeast to sleep, however the acerglyn should still be chugging along. 8 days does not seem like anywhere near enough time to fully ferment, so what gives? Is there anything I can do to save them? If they're fine, or saveable, I had planned to add orange peel, blueberry juice and a little extra honey to the blueberry and a piece of toasted maple and more syrup to the acerglyn during secondary. I wasn't going to add anything to the sweet one.
My current hypotheses:
Thanks,
Will
I found this forum on my various internet trawls when trying to figure out what's going on with my latest batches. (Hi everybody!).
I started my journey as a Mazer using Craft a Brew's Mead kit. I followed it to the letter. It turned out decently, even though it was a fairly amateurish attempt. No gravity readings, no cold crash, no auto siphon, no backsweetening.
After that moderate success, I set out to try some more variety. To that end, I set my sights on 3 1 gallon batches. One batch of a sweet standard mead, one batch of a blueberry and an acerglyn. All gravity readings should be taken with a grain of salt as it was my first time doing them. I filled the cylinder to the suggested line and made sure to swirl the meter to remove bubbles prior to taking the reading on the line, not the meniscus.
Sweet: 3.82lbs honey, 5g D47, 6g Day 1 CaB yeast nutrient and jugged mineral water to 1 gallon fill. OG: 1.168
Blueberry: 2.96lbs honey, 5g D47, 6g Yeast nutrient, 2lbs of frozen/thawed/slightly mashed blueberries that had been hit with a campden tablet and pectic enzyme 24 hours prior to pitching, mineral water to 1 gallon OG: 1.18
Acerglyn: 2.59lbs honey, 5g D47, 6g YN, 2oz dark brown sugar, 12oz maple syrup, mineral water to 1gal fill. OG: 1.10
For all three batches, the yeast was mixed with a little tupelo honey and warm water and allowed to re-hydrate prior to pitching, about 15-20 mins hydration period. The CaB YN was mixed with a little of the water and formed into a slurry. This was added to the must after all the honey+extras were thoroughly mixed, but before yeast slurry was pitched. I did not use Fermaid O or K, GoFerm, or any sort of yeast energizer.
For about the first 5 days, they went like gangbusters. The blueberry and sweet ones actually over flowed the airlock and I had to clean them out and put new ones on (all sanitized of course). On days 2 and 5, they all received ~4g (I don't have a scale that can do 0.1g increments, my fault) of the Day 2 CaB YN. They were swirled to degas daily. At about day 7, fermentation activity in all three severely slackened off and I was getting a bubble in the airlock maybe every 10 mins.
They are sitting in my interior bathroom bathtub in the dark. The house fluctuates from 71-76F during the day (hooray Florida). The web says that D47 can tolerate up to 18% abv and temps anywhere from 65-86F (got different answers from everybody though).
Yesterday I re-racked the blueberry one off the berries into a clean carboy (they were looking pretty gross). I had made sure to swirl that one more often to "punch down" the fruit as they were free-floating and not in bag (will do that differently next time). I took gravity readings and sampled all 3. There weren't any off or sulfurous notes, obviously pretty yeasty, and what seemed like a little carbonation. The blueberry had notes of fruit, the sweet one was still pretty sweet and I could actually detect a little maple in the acerglyn.
Sweet: 1.01 (20.7% abv !?)
Blueberry: 1.01 (22.3% abv ?!?!)
Acerglyn 1.004 (12.6% abv, actually seems nominal)
I'm not really sure what to do at this point. It seems like the two with high ABVs will have killed or put all the yeast to sleep, however the acerglyn should still be chugging along. 8 days does not seem like anywhere near enough time to fully ferment, so what gives? Is there anything I can do to save them? If they're fine, or saveable, I had planned to add orange peel, blueberry juice and a little extra honey to the blueberry and a piece of toasted maple and more syrup to the acerglyn during secondary. I wasn't going to add anything to the sweet one.
My current hypotheses:
- Yeast activity in such a high gravity environment caused a heat spike and they cooked themselves
- Too much yeast nutrient
- Ambient temperature in the house is too high for D47
- Improper sanitiziation
- Campden tablet residue or pectic enzyme messed with blueberry (doesn't explain the other two)
- I have angered Dionysus somehow
- Not enough degassing or yeast nutrient additions
- Not using Fermaid or GoFerm on pitching yeast
Thanks,
Will
