Primary fermentation: just water and honey?

Waterbear · Sep 4, 2014

Ive made a couple batches of basic recipes, and I am trying something a little different this time. I guess I just want some feedback as to what you guys think.

Instead of adding any ingredients during primary, I just mixed up some water and honey to 1.095. Added in some nutrient(raisins) and pitched my lalvin ec-118. Planning on adding in flavoring(more honey, oranges, and cinnamon) after I rack and stabilize it. Any ideas on how it would turn out vs. adding everything in during primary fermentation?

Honeyhog · Sep 4, 2014

If that's the route you are going to go I would also boil a packet of bread yeast and put it in the must as well to act as nutrient along with the raisins.

mannye · Sep 4, 2014

I think you will be surprised at how nice just water and honey can be. I would have gone a little bit higher starting gravity, maybe 1.100 or 110. You can always step feed it or just add right now!

This traditional style can bring out the flavors of your honey that fruit additions will often mask. It will also make a great base mead for your later additions/infusions.

Sent from my galafreyan transdimensional communicator 100 years from now.

Waterbear · Sep 4, 2014

Wow, never heard that before. I guess I was just being cheap when I bought supplies, should have gotten some actual nutrient. I have some bread yeast at home, ill look more into that. Thanks.

Waterbear · Sep 4, 2014

mannye said:
I think you will be surprised at how nice just water and honey can be. I would have gone a little bit higher starting gravity, maybe 1.100 or 110. You can always step feed it or just add right now!

This traditional style can bring out the flavors of your honey that fruit additions will often mask. It will also make a great base mead for your later additions/infusions.

Sent from my galafreyan transdimensional communicator 100 years from now.

I was thinking about avoiding step feeding it, I'm not really going for a high abv. I guess as long as I'm at least around 10% ill be happy. That's why I wanted to just stabilize and then backsweeten it. Do you know if this method would take less time to age?

Chevette Girl · Sep 5, 2014

How long a mead takes to age is going to depend on a lot of things, from your recipe to the health of your fermentation... not being a really high ABV is in favour of needing less age, if your yeast is improperly fed it might make compounds that will take a while to age out.

Adding things in secondary after you've fermented the sugar out of the must is going to be different from putting it in up front. Think wine versus adding grape juice to vodka to get the same alcohol concentration. I'm not entirely sure what the effect is going to be with the cinnamon because there's nothing really fermentable in it, and if you're using the zest of the orange, again there's not a lot of anything fermentable in it, but there are probably some volatile chemicals in the flavour profile that will be driven off during fermentation and will be retained if you add the stuff in secondary. You might lose a little bit of flavour by having them in early but it might make up for it by driving off the harsher notes early on so it needs less aging. But this is pure speculation (based on what I've read here) on my part since I have never added fruit in secondary, so it might be worth it to run a similar batch with everything in at primary and see how they compare.

Or don't. This line of thinking is how I ended up with more carboys than I have room for

Waterbear · Sep 5, 2014

Very interesting. I only thought about how much the flavor would be diminished if I added it all in at the start. Definitely going to start up another batch and see how it turns out, the more carboys the merrier lol. Thanks for the help, its much appreciated

Search

Primary fermentation: just water and honey?

Waterbear

NewBee

Honeyhog

NewBee

mannye

Administrator

Waterbear

NewBee

Waterbear

NewBee

Chevette Girl

All around BAD EXAMPLE

Waterbear

NewBee