Dear all,
Thanks for the load of interesting information, and the nice community you have going on this website. I have decided to try and make my first mead after receiving some old demijohns from my parents. I tried to read as much as possible, but I still have some concerns.
The recipe I used is the following:
- 14 pounds of store-bought standard honey. This is a rather hard (i.e., not liquid), light yellow polyfloral honey from non-EU sources (I live in Belgium).
- 1 packet of mead-yeast from Mangrove Jack's craft series.
- 15 grams of nutrivit
I sanitized everything with an oxygen-based cleaner, and I dissolved the honey in warm water, without boiling. Poured everything into the demijohn, and added the nutrivit. I added cold filtered tap-water (which is pretty pure and clean here) with a lot of splashing and shaking, and sprinkled the dry yeast on top, leaving about 4 inch headspace. After one night, this was bubbling very well (2-3 airlock bubbles a second), and you could see a layer of foam sticking to the glass in the headspace, glad I left so much space. I keep it in a dark basement, at a constant 63 degrees.
I then filled up the bottle with clean water to reduce headspace, and only then noticed a little mark on the glass telling me that this was a 6.5 gallon bottle, where I thought it was a 5 gallon bottle. Will this strongly affect the resulting mead, as I now have only 2.2 pounds of honey per gallon? Should I try to add more honey to it, although the bottle is completely full now?
Furthermore, I noticed a foul sulphuric odor after 24 hours of fermentation, and read about rhino farts and the need to add more nutrient. I added another 10 grams of nutrivit, which seemed to improve the foul odor after some hours. Nevertheless, now after 5 days of fermentation, the smell out of the airlock is still pretty awful, like a yeasty fart, with hints of honey and white wine aroma. Is this normal or should I be concerned, and add some more nutrients? The bubbling is now between 1-2 per second, and there is a load of activity in the bottle (lots of large bubbles, about half an inch of frenzied, clear bubbling foam on top).
I did not take gravity readings, as I wanted to give this a try first before buying more equipment. I intent to ferment until dry, stabilize with sulphite and sorbate, and age for a long time in bottles.
Thanks for the load of interesting information, and the nice community you have going on this website. I have decided to try and make my first mead after receiving some old demijohns from my parents. I tried to read as much as possible, but I still have some concerns.
The recipe I used is the following:
- 14 pounds of store-bought standard honey. This is a rather hard (i.e., not liquid), light yellow polyfloral honey from non-EU sources (I live in Belgium).
- 1 packet of mead-yeast from Mangrove Jack's craft series.
- 15 grams of nutrivit
I sanitized everything with an oxygen-based cleaner, and I dissolved the honey in warm water, without boiling. Poured everything into the demijohn, and added the nutrivit. I added cold filtered tap-water (which is pretty pure and clean here) with a lot of splashing and shaking, and sprinkled the dry yeast on top, leaving about 4 inch headspace. After one night, this was bubbling very well (2-3 airlock bubbles a second), and you could see a layer of foam sticking to the glass in the headspace, glad I left so much space. I keep it in a dark basement, at a constant 63 degrees.
I then filled up the bottle with clean water to reduce headspace, and only then noticed a little mark on the glass telling me that this was a 6.5 gallon bottle, where I thought it was a 5 gallon bottle. Will this strongly affect the resulting mead, as I now have only 2.2 pounds of honey per gallon? Should I try to add more honey to it, although the bottle is completely full now?
Furthermore, I noticed a foul sulphuric odor after 24 hours of fermentation, and read about rhino farts and the need to add more nutrient. I added another 10 grams of nutrivit, which seemed to improve the foul odor after some hours. Nevertheless, now after 5 days of fermentation, the smell out of the airlock is still pretty awful, like a yeasty fart, with hints of honey and white wine aroma. Is this normal or should I be concerned, and add some more nutrients? The bubbling is now between 1-2 per second, and there is a load of activity in the bottle (lots of large bubbles, about half an inch of frenzied, clear bubbling foam on top).
I did not take gravity readings, as I wanted to give this a try first before buying more equipment. I intent to ferment until dry, stabilize with sulphite and sorbate, and age for a long time in bottles.