Here's my story on two bad batches of Mead I made over 11 years ago that I have given up on. If you have any suggestions or comments please offer you opinion. I am making better Mead today, but still have a lot to learn. I Started making mead in 2004 and just joined GotMead a few days ago. I am a bee keeper so all my honey is from local Missouri wild flowers, never heated and never filtered.
Over the years and countless meads, I have only lost two batches. It sounds horrible to loose a batch, but I really didn't know what I was doing. During this same time I created some darn good ones too! Both bad batches were using fresh fruit and after aging in bottles for 11 years I am about to pitch them. The first was a fresh peach melomel I made in 2005. Essentially I used 12#'s raw honey, 4 gallons of spring water Red Star Champagne yeast. The FG was 1.010 give or take. That's it, in those days I was not aware of nutrients and all the technology available today. During the same time period I made several sweet or Polish type mead with basically honey, water and yeast. I always aerated with a drill and mixing rod, but at that time never used additional additives or nutrients. My cleanliness is impeccable and when in doubt I have discarded hoses, tubes and buckets for the fear of an infection, so I don't believe I have ever had an infection of sorts. The Peaches I used were picked fresh, peeled and frozen, thawed and added to secondary. I left the Mead in primary for 30+ days without thinking twice. I then added the peaches and transferred the mead and left this concoction for another 30+ days. That's it, during the same time period I made the exact same mead without fruit and today it's one of my better meads. The fresh peach Melomel was a disaster and after 11 years it has not lost the heavy medicine taste and smell. I am not sure if anyone can offer advice, but time has not cured the medicine flavor. What I am really looking for is any correlation between aging with the fruit, or where does the medicine flavor come from?
The second bad mead was using fresh never frozen Blue Berries. I basically followed the same 12#'s honey, water and Red Star Champagne Yeast. My FG was around 1.010 or so. The Blue Berry looked great! Nice and clean, slight blue color tones, but tasted like grass. I made another Blueberry with a Blueberry extract I found at Fruitfast in Michigan it turned out great with no grassy flavor.
So I have two meads over 11 years in bottles and one taste like a medicine bottle and the other is grassy? I would sure like to know what causes these off flavors. There's been much written about aging and how giving the mead a few years to settle down, which i 100% agree with, but if 11 years isn't enough what is? Thanks for reading my ramble!
Over the years and countless meads, I have only lost two batches. It sounds horrible to loose a batch, but I really didn't know what I was doing. During this same time I created some darn good ones too! Both bad batches were using fresh fruit and after aging in bottles for 11 years I am about to pitch them. The first was a fresh peach melomel I made in 2005. Essentially I used 12#'s raw honey, 4 gallons of spring water Red Star Champagne yeast. The FG was 1.010 give or take. That's it, in those days I was not aware of nutrients and all the technology available today. During the same time period I made several sweet or Polish type mead with basically honey, water and yeast. I always aerated with a drill and mixing rod, but at that time never used additional additives or nutrients. My cleanliness is impeccable and when in doubt I have discarded hoses, tubes and buckets for the fear of an infection, so I don't believe I have ever had an infection of sorts. The Peaches I used were picked fresh, peeled and frozen, thawed and added to secondary. I left the Mead in primary for 30+ days without thinking twice. I then added the peaches and transferred the mead and left this concoction for another 30+ days. That's it, during the same time period I made the exact same mead without fruit and today it's one of my better meads. The fresh peach Melomel was a disaster and after 11 years it has not lost the heavy medicine taste and smell. I am not sure if anyone can offer advice, but time has not cured the medicine flavor. What I am really looking for is any correlation between aging with the fruit, or where does the medicine flavor come from?
The second bad mead was using fresh never frozen Blue Berries. I basically followed the same 12#'s honey, water and Red Star Champagne Yeast. My FG was around 1.010 or so. The Blue Berry looked great! Nice and clean, slight blue color tones, but tasted like grass. I made another Blueberry with a Blueberry extract I found at Fruitfast in Michigan it turned out great with no grassy flavor.
So I have two meads over 11 years in bottles and one taste like a medicine bottle and the other is grassy? I would sure like to know what causes these off flavors. There's been much written about aging and how giving the mead a few years to settle down, which i 100% agree with, but if 11 years isn't enough what is? Thanks for reading my ramble!
