I started my berry mead batch on Saturday, 7th of October. The recipes consist of 5L of water, 2kg of honey, 100g of berries, and a handful of raisins and cinnamon sticks, topped off with 5g of mead yeast- OG was at 1100. On the morning of the next day I woke up to the sight of foam resting over the top of the brew, so I felt confident that things were going well- but that was soon over. From that day until now my airlock has had 0 activity, and the foam is completely gone- the only thing that points to activity is that there is active carbonation and today's gravity check dropped down to 1090. Is anything wrong with the fermentation, or is this normal? I'm planning on re-racking this and siphoning it into another container so the fruit and everything else is removed, but judging by the pace of the fermentation I'm a bit lost on when I should do that. If any additional information is needed please ask and I'll be glad to provide it. Thank you for your time and help!
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Is my fermentation halted/severely slow?
- Thread starter Abrafo
- Start date
Hey Abrafo, welcome to Gotmead, and apologies on the delayed reply. Sometimes new members/posts have to wait til they come up.
I'm glad that you have hydrometer readings, as they're the best way to measure your ferment instead of the airlock. But this does look like it has stalled.
First, you don't make any mention of nutrients. If you have a brewstore nearby, go try to pick up some fermaid K or O asap. Honey has almost no nutrients for yeast, and fruit will do next to nothing to help.
Second, you should try shaking and stirring it up to aerate and degass, usually twice a day for the first week, or at least once a day until fermentation ends.
Third, how did you pitch your yeast? Did you dump it straight in, or did you rehydrate it at all?
You might need to repitch to help get this going again, but first get the nutrients.
The last thing you should check is the ph. The fruit would help buffer it, but if its too low (around 3) the ferment can stall. Degassing helps buffer the ph, but you can also get potassium carbonate or bicarbonate.
Also, what temperature were you fermenting at?
I'm glad that you have hydrometer readings, as they're the best way to measure your ferment instead of the airlock. But this does look like it has stalled.
First, you don't make any mention of nutrients. If you have a brewstore nearby, go try to pick up some fermaid K or O asap. Honey has almost no nutrients for yeast, and fruit will do next to nothing to help.
Second, you should try shaking and stirring it up to aerate and degass, usually twice a day for the first week, or at least once a day until fermentation ends.
Third, how did you pitch your yeast? Did you dump it straight in, or did you rehydrate it at all?
You might need to repitch to help get this going again, but first get the nutrients.
The last thing you should check is the ph. The fruit would help buffer it, but if its too low (around 3) the ferment can stall. Degassing helps buffer the ph, but you can also get potassium carbonate or bicarbonate.
Also, what temperature were you fermenting at?
You need to add yeast nutrients like go ferm and firmaid k or firmaid o. also, by this time your batch might be infected, but you could try getting a nice vigorous yeast culture going and then repitch.
I wouldn't rack as you will remove the must from the yeast biomass. That is if you even have any active yeast. I would bet it's all dead. That will however give a new pitch some food to chew on. You need to learn how to rehydrtae and attemperate your yeast prior to pitching.
Page seven in the bible. Read this and you will be miles ahead of most everyone else that have not. http://www.scottlab.com/pdf/ScottlabsHandbook2017.pdf
Page seven in the bible. Read this and you will be miles ahead of most everyone else that have not. http://www.scottlab.com/pdf/ScottlabsHandbook2017.pdf
