This is my first-ever batch-- 3 gallons (ended up with about 2 2/3 gallons) made from 7lbs wildflower honey, Deer Park spring water, and D47. I fed it with some DAP/Urea mix my homebrew store sells (I'm not going to use that anymore). I started the batch on 10/17, racked to secondary on 11/1, and just racked into tertiary (3 one-gallon bottles, the last one is only 2/3 full). This was fermented at about 72-74 degrees (I know, I know, too hot) but there was nothing I could do about it at the time.
I inadvertently got a few mouthfuls of this stuff while siphoning. It's not bad but it's definitely not ready either. The mead tastes a little bit hot (nowhere near as fusel-y as I feared) but it has a sour taste up front. I don't think it's tainted/infected because the smell is ok-- it just smells like regular mead with a bit of cidery tang to it. It fermented bone dry, so the guy at my homebrew shop thought the sourness was caused by there being practically no sugar left.
I had to go out and get an auto-siphon today because my racking cane refused to cooperate. I just couldn't maintain good suction even when I put a small hose clamp on where my tube attached to the cane, so I would end up siphoning a little bit and then the rest would fall back into the carboy. I was able to get the first jug filled just by siphoning with just the tube this morning when the carboy was almost full but I had to use the auto siphon to force-pump the rest of it into the other jugs. I probably degassed it while doing it that way but I hope I didn't over-oxygenate it. At least I left all the dead yeast behind.
Is everything progressing as it should be at this point in time? Now I'm going to leave it alone for a few months and I'm hoping the hot alcohol will age out and more honey character will come to the front. In the meantime, I put 2 cinnamon sticks in a hop bag and put it into one of the full jugs to start turning it into a cinnamon metheglin. I'm going to back-sweeten the other full jug and carbonate/bottle the half-filled jug first so it won't oxidize too much.
I inadvertently got a few mouthfuls of this stuff while siphoning. It's not bad but it's definitely not ready either. The mead tastes a little bit hot (nowhere near as fusel-y as I feared) but it has a sour taste up front. I don't think it's tainted/infected because the smell is ok-- it just smells like regular mead with a bit of cidery tang to it. It fermented bone dry, so the guy at my homebrew shop thought the sourness was caused by there being practically no sugar left.
I had to go out and get an auto-siphon today because my racking cane refused to cooperate. I just couldn't maintain good suction even when I put a small hose clamp on where my tube attached to the cane, so I would end up siphoning a little bit and then the rest would fall back into the carboy. I was able to get the first jug filled just by siphoning with just the tube this morning when the carboy was almost full but I had to use the auto siphon to force-pump the rest of it into the other jugs. I probably degassed it while doing it that way but I hope I didn't over-oxygenate it. At least I left all the dead yeast behind.
Is everything progressing as it should be at this point in time? Now I'm going to leave it alone for a few months and I'm hoping the hot alcohol will age out and more honey character will come to the front. In the meantime, I put 2 cinnamon sticks in a hop bag and put it into one of the full jugs to start turning it into a cinnamon metheglin. I'm going to back-sweeten the other full jug and carbonate/bottle the half-filled jug first so it won't oxidize too much.
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