So right now I have (my first) a small batch of mead going in 2x4L carboys. One of them is wildflower honey with crushed blue and blackberries and the other is clover honey with a few bags of tazo organic chai. Both are being brewed with bread yeast.
Please bear with me as my procedures were rather unorthodox--most of the information I went off of what I got from a friend whose parents own a meadery and another friend who brews his own cider as well as a few online sources.
The wildflower melomel has been going on undisturbed since 5/6. I boiled the honey and berries in reverse-osmosis filtered water, added some inactive yeast (a trick I use at my job when I want to accelerate the growth of yeast for medical research I do). I ended up mixing a bit too much must so I set up two 750 ml wine bottles to ferment as well. The carboy has a nice thick head of foam sitting at the top of it. Recently the two bottles stopped bubbling so I put them in the fridge for a few days and decanted them. Today I had a bit of it and quickly discovered that it tasted nasty and sat in my stomach like a rock and induced a hell of a headache. The smell is rather acrid, as though someone had eaten a lot of fruit and then puked. I figured that was from the yeast acidifying its medium, but this smells nothing like the yeast I grow cultures of or the starting must. I then went online and did some research and found that, unlike the cider my friend brews, mead must be aged.
The second carboy I've got going I made on 5/10 using deionized water from work. I tore open the tea bags and boiled the loose leaves in the water, then let it cool a little bit, then added the honey and stirred. I let that cool off, then I added some bread yeast and inactive yeast. That one's been sitting undisturbed for a while now and has a very pleasant spicy aroma similar to the must, unlike the other one. It hasn't developed a foamy layer yet but it is audibly and visibly bubbling. I may have used less honey on this one than the other.
So, with that all said, I have a set of questions I want to ask:
1. Is that fruit-puke smell normal? Should I ditch my brew?
2. I've heard that leaving fruit pulp in melomel too long will produce a lot of tannins, is it a bad thing that I've left it floating in the carboy since I first set it up? When should I strain em out?
3. Should I take any precautions when adding honey to an existing brew?
4. When I went to drink the young mead, I added sugar and lemon juice to it to make it bearable to drink (it did). Will that affect the aging process at all?
Please bear with me as my procedures were rather unorthodox--most of the information I went off of what I got from a friend whose parents own a meadery and another friend who brews his own cider as well as a few online sources.
The wildflower melomel has been going on undisturbed since 5/6. I boiled the honey and berries in reverse-osmosis filtered water, added some inactive yeast (a trick I use at my job when I want to accelerate the growth of yeast for medical research I do). I ended up mixing a bit too much must so I set up two 750 ml wine bottles to ferment as well. The carboy has a nice thick head of foam sitting at the top of it. Recently the two bottles stopped bubbling so I put them in the fridge for a few days and decanted them. Today I had a bit of it and quickly discovered that it tasted nasty and sat in my stomach like a rock and induced a hell of a headache. The smell is rather acrid, as though someone had eaten a lot of fruit and then puked. I figured that was from the yeast acidifying its medium, but this smells nothing like the yeast I grow cultures of or the starting must. I then went online and did some research and found that, unlike the cider my friend brews, mead must be aged.
The second carboy I've got going I made on 5/10 using deionized water from work. I tore open the tea bags and boiled the loose leaves in the water, then let it cool a little bit, then added the honey and stirred. I let that cool off, then I added some bread yeast and inactive yeast. That one's been sitting undisturbed for a while now and has a very pleasant spicy aroma similar to the must, unlike the other one. It hasn't developed a foamy layer yet but it is audibly and visibly bubbling. I may have used less honey on this one than the other.
So, with that all said, I have a set of questions I want to ask:
1. Is that fruit-puke smell normal? Should I ditch my brew?
2. I've heard that leaving fruit pulp in melomel too long will produce a lot of tannins, is it a bad thing that I've left it floating in the carboy since I first set it up? When should I strain em out?
3. Should I take any precautions when adding honey to an existing brew?
4. When I went to drink the young mead, I added sugar and lemon juice to it to make it bearable to drink (it did). Will that affect the aging process at all?
It's usually pretty awesome tasting until all the sugar's gone, THEN it needs aging before it's worth considering again. Or backsweetening, but be careful not to oversweeten if you backsweeten it early, there's a perception of sweetness that comes back to meads after about six months of aging. 
