Greetings!
I've been following this forum for the last couple of years, even though I'm a quite silent member, mostly trying to absorb the wise advices I read around here.
Most of the mead batches I made so far became something I'm fairly proud of, except maybe the ones where I got too confident and experimented a bit too much.
This last one, though, is having a troubled life.
Sorry for the long post, but since I'm supposed to give details about the recipe, and the recipe require some explanations, here they are.
The recipe, for 19 liters (so around 5 gallons), with some explanations of the ingredients afterwards:
6.5kg Raspberry blossom honey
6.6g yeast "activator"
10g yeast nutrent "Nutrivit"
10g yeast nutrient "Nutrisal"
5g Potassium Carbonate
1 package yeast "Bioferm Killer"
OG: 1.104
FG: 0.997
The ingredients are not the ones typically seen around here because I live in Europe (in the Netherlands) and it's hard to find some of the yeasts and nutrients recommended in the forum. I don't think they're the problem because I've used them before successfully.
Anyway.
The yeast activator is supposed to help with the beginning of fermentation. I used it as usually Goferm is used, during the rehydration.
Nutrivit is a complex yeast nutrient which contains DAP, so I used it as Fermaid K (although it's hard to figure out if it's really equivalent, since I can't find details about its composition).
Nutrisal is just DAP.
Bioferm Killer is one of the killer yeast strains. I've used before with good results.
The nutrients (Nutrivit and Nutrisal) were added in 3 steps, during the first days of fermentation.
That was a year ago already.
In the meanwhile I racked the mead twice. The last time I did that was in July. At the time it was doing very well, but it was still not totally clear. And that's when I blew it, I guess. There was probably 2L of head space and soon after that I moved to another house, which included obviously moving the mead around and also leaving it in a warm garage for a few weeks, before I finally had the chance to put it in the cool basement.
Today I bottled it. It has an amazing smell, but not the intended one. It's clearly oxidized. It reminds me of an old Polish dwójniak or port. But of course the flavour doesn't match that. It doesn't taste bad, but it's dry, as I intended in the beginning.
Now, even though I already bottled it (should have written this before doing it), is there something you would suggest I could do to "save" this batch? I would imagine that trying to match the expectations of the smell could be a solution, by fortifying and back-sweetening. It's going to be hard to get the same honey soon, though. The honey came from Poland. It's a fairly international batch.
Thanks in advance!
I've been following this forum for the last couple of years, even though I'm a quite silent member, mostly trying to absorb the wise advices I read around here.
Most of the mead batches I made so far became something I'm fairly proud of, except maybe the ones where I got too confident and experimented a bit too much.
This last one, though, is having a troubled life.
Sorry for the long post, but since I'm supposed to give details about the recipe, and the recipe require some explanations, here they are.
The recipe, for 19 liters (so around 5 gallons), with some explanations of the ingredients afterwards:
6.5kg Raspberry blossom honey
6.6g yeast "activator"
10g yeast nutrent "Nutrivit"
10g yeast nutrient "Nutrisal"
5g Potassium Carbonate
1 package yeast "Bioferm Killer"
OG: 1.104
FG: 0.997
The ingredients are not the ones typically seen around here because I live in Europe (in the Netherlands) and it's hard to find some of the yeasts and nutrients recommended in the forum. I don't think they're the problem because I've used them before successfully.
Anyway.
The yeast activator is supposed to help with the beginning of fermentation. I used it as usually Goferm is used, during the rehydration.
Nutrivit is a complex yeast nutrient which contains DAP, so I used it as Fermaid K (although it's hard to figure out if it's really equivalent, since I can't find details about its composition).
Nutrisal is just DAP.
Bioferm Killer is one of the killer yeast strains. I've used before with good results.
The nutrients (Nutrivit and Nutrisal) were added in 3 steps, during the first days of fermentation.
That was a year ago already.
In the meanwhile I racked the mead twice. The last time I did that was in July. At the time it was doing very well, but it was still not totally clear. And that's when I blew it, I guess. There was probably 2L of head space and soon after that I moved to another house, which included obviously moving the mead around and also leaving it in a warm garage for a few weeks, before I finally had the chance to put it in the cool basement.
Today I bottled it. It has an amazing smell, but not the intended one. It's clearly oxidized. It reminds me of an old Polish dwójniak or port. But of course the flavour doesn't match that. It doesn't taste bad, but it's dry, as I intended in the beginning.
Now, even though I already bottled it (should have written this before doing it), is there something you would suggest I could do to "save" this batch? I would imagine that trying to match the expectations of the smell could be a solution, by fortifying and back-sweetening. It's going to be hard to get the same honey soon, though. The honey came from Poland. It's a fairly international batch.
Thanks in advance!
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