First time brewer: Odd smelling mead?

[Chevette Girl]

Well, if it still tastes sweet, it's definitely not ready to bottle. If it's been a slow ferment, you may never have that hot alcohol taste.

Check your hydrometer again, and if you haven't gotten one with numbers yet, do yourself a favour and get one, the beer one is just not appropriate to this situation.

[Leeham991]

Originally Posted by Chevette Girl

Well, if it still tastes sweet, it's definitely not ready to bottle. If it's been a slow ferment, you may never have that hot alcohol taste.

Check your hydrometer again, and if you haven't gotten one with numbers yet, do yourself a favour and get one, the beer one is just not appropriate to this situation.

I wasn't planning on putting it into secondary until the end of the month, but I took hydrometer readings on it because I was curious about it. Mine does have numbers on. It's got 3 sets of numbers actually. One seems to be simple on the side which says "start wine" "start beer" "bottle beer" etc etc, another side with very small numbers which appear to be the same, and on the other side is an alcohol potential chart.

I'll take another reading later in the day and give you better information. I wish I'd written down the number I got this morning but I was worried by the sudden drop in airlock bubbles to almost nothing and the bizarre sweet yeast taste and panicked a little

EDIT:
Took a reading. Around 1.090

There is also no foam and it smells sort of off. Smells a lot like my grandfather's compost heap actually...

[Chevette Girl]

Yeah, that's still got a fair ways to go.

Compost heap, huh... well, I've definitely had fermenting stuff in my compost but I've never had the same smell from a wine... rotten egg, barf, vinegar, spoiled fruit, but not rotting compost.

[Leeham991]

It doesn't smell of rotten egg, rubber, vomit or sulphur though, so I think what I'l going to do it seal it up as well as possible and forget about it for 2 weeks, then see what happens then.

I'm still a little worried about the fermentation. When it started it was bubbling every 20 seconds for days days, then it stopped and it didn't seem to be strong enough to bubble more, just push the water all into one side of the airlock. Then I added the extra honey a few days later and it repeated the 2 days of bubbling every 20 seconds, then back to just moving all the water to one side of the airlock and not seeming to bubble. I imagine that the air is escaping from the bad lid which I haven't been able to fully close, but still it seems a little slow to me.
Also the lack of foam on top of the mix is worrying me a little, although there is a centimetre of stuff at the bottom of the fermenter. I should note though that the bottom of my fermenter is coned inwards a little so that all of the sediment goes to the sides, so not sure how accurate the amount it by the measurement of height.

[Chevette Girl]

This is exactly the reason we tell folks to go by their hydrometer, not by their airlock. I've got one bucket with such a crappy seal that it's never bubbled, I've even used a solid plug in its hole when I ran out of airlocks. And not all batches foam much, if at all. Trust your hydrometer, you can't honestly tell by sight how your fermentation is doing.


Have you been aerating it so far? I generally find that splashing it around is a good way to blow off stinkies from a must, also sometimes the stinkies can be caused by yeast in need of something, which might even turn out to be oxygen (in the first half of your fermentation, anyway).

I know you added some nutrients at the beginning, but likely the amount was geared towards a grape must, which already has some good nutrition for yeast, and you're making mead, not wine... perhaps your yeast need a little bit more? If you only had the one packet, you can always take a few tsp of bread yeast and microwave or boil it in some water. Sometimes this can soak up off odours too, as much as it may stink your house up while you're preparing it!

It's definitely early enough in your fermentation to still be aerating and possibly also adding nutrients.

[Leeham991]

I've got another packet of yeast nutrient stored away, I could easily mix it in.

And honestly I'd not really put much thought into aerating, I have it written down as something I need to do, but not sure how to go about it. I imagine shaking up the barrel a little would do the job?

[Chevette Girl]

If you're using a bucket, sanitize a whisk or plastic spoon or something and get in there and make as many bubbles as you can (without slopping over the edges) for as long as your arm holds out. If it's in a carboy, it's a little more difficult, it's almost easier to pour some out into a sanitized blender (liquidizer) and whip the crap out of it.

Be careful about just shaking it, you've shaken an open can of carbonated beverage before? Same deal, sometimes that can get kind of messy. Swirling it for a little while to dislodge some CO2 and then shaking it can help, but you need to make sure the lid's off so you're not just shaking it around in the carbon dioxide it's been making, remember, your goal is to get oxygen in to your yeasties. Anything that splashes it around (air entrainment) is fine.

Typically we do this a few times a day for the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the fermentation.

And if you're adding anything powdered to an active ferment, aerate it first or you're just asking for an eruption...

[Leeham991]

UPDATE:

Decided to rack the mead today as it is the only free time I had for a few weeks and it just felt like the right day. Right in the middle of the times on all of the various recipes I've looked at.
The gravity reading was about 1.035 I think. I'm definitely getting a more expensive hydrometer for my next batch of anything I do... I was also beginning to mistrust the fermenter, so ya; I got up in the morning and get it set into my head that I must rack this stuff tonight, so that's what I did.

Anyway, a few things have changed since my last update. The smell has changed to a sort of sweetish sourish smell with a lot of yeast.

Racking went well, got out a full 23 litres without picking up any of the beige gunky stuff at the bottom of the barrel.

I also tasted it, which was the most interesting part for me.
It tasted slightly yeasty, but also bitter and pretty sharp. A definite alcohol taste too, definitely more ABV than I was expecting given my pessimism, maybe around 10%, but not exactly a hot taste. I'm guessing in the ABV based on the alcohol taste being about twice as strong as a 8% cider I had today and taking into account un-aged alcohol. Though you guys might tell me that it's more likely just really hot at about 3% ABV, which wouldn't surprise me by my luck xD
Anyway the thing that surprised me is that it had an under taste which was mead. It tasted like mead like I buy in a bottle, only with a layer of sharpness. Surprised me because I had more or less been expecting it to taste like sour milk and vodka xD

Anyway, odd smell, odd taste, though I'm sort of encouraged by it. But I'll leave it up to you people of experience to tell me to be happy to put it away for a few months or just put it back into the big barrel and make it into vinegar xD

[Deacon Aegis]

Originally Posted by Leeham991

UPDATE:

Decided to rack the mead today as it is the only free time I had for a few weeks and it just felt like the right day. Right in the middle of the times on all of the various recipes I've looked at.
The gravity reading was about 1.035 I think. I'm definitely getting a more expensive hydrometer for my next batch of anything I do... I was also beginning to mistrust the fermenter, so ya; I got up in the morning and get it set into my head that I must rack this stuff tonight, so that's what I did.

Anyway, a few things have changed since my last update. The smell has changed to a sort of sweetish sourish smell with a lot of yeast.

Racking went well, got out a full 23 litres without picking up any of the beige gunky stuff at the bottom of the barrel.

I also tasted it, which was the most interesting part for me.
It tasted slightly yeasty, but also bitter and pretty sharp. A definite alcohol taste too, definitely more ABV than I was expecting given my pessimism, maybe around 10%, but not exactly a hot taste. I'm guessing in the ABV based on the alcohol taste being about twice as strong as a 8% cider I had today and taking into account un-aged alcohol. Though you guys might tell me that it's more likely just really hot at about 3% ABV, which wouldn't surprise me by my luck xD
Anyway the thing that surprised me is that it had an under taste which was mead. It tasted like mead like I buy in a bottle, only with a layer of sharpness. Surprised me because I had more or less been expecting it to taste like sour milk and vodka xD

Anyway, odd smell, odd taste, though I'm sort of encouraged by it. But I'll leave it up to you people of experience to tell me to be happy to put it away for a few months or just put it back into the big barrel and make it into vinegar xD

From the sounds of it, be pretty happy about it. The 1.035 is a pretty sweet mead, but most meads fresh out of the fermenter taste like crap. Gotta give it six months to a year to age for it to really come into its own. I've got one that is at four months now and it is starting to smooth out nicely and taste fairly good. Give it time. It will improve dramatically with age.

[Leeham991]

Originally Posted by Deacon Aegis

From the sounds of it, be pretty happy about it. The 1.035 is a pretty sweet mead, but most meads fresh out of the fermenter taste like crap. Gotta give it six months to a year to age for it to really come into its own. I've got one that is at four months now and it is starting to smooth out nicely and taste fairly good. Give it time. It will improve dramatically with age.

I looked this morning and saw that the airlocks have started up again into a mild set of bubbles, so it might lose the sweetness a little. I'm guessing that I was a little too rough with the racking as I had a real awkward job getting the siphon right. Pretty sure I need to do a little bit of improvement on the nozzle xD Anyway I'm not too worried, and I can see this being a good thing. Though I assume that I'll have to rack it again in a few weeks since fermentations has restarted? Or will it be fine to age how it is now until it's ready for bottling?

[Deacon Aegis]

Originally Posted by Leeham991

I looked this morning and saw that the airlocks have started up again into a mild set of bubbles, so it might lose the sweetness a little. I'm guessing that I was a little too rough with the racking as I had a real awkward job getting the siphon right. Pretty sure I need to do a little bit of improvement on the nozzle xD Anyway I'm not too worried, and I can see this being a good thing. Though I assume that I'll have to rack it again in a few weeks since fermentations has restarted? Or will it be fine to age how it is now until it's ready for bottling?

As long as you aren't using D21 yeast, you'll have no problem letting it sit on the lees for any length of time up to several months. I'd let it continue to ferment after the rack until the numbers on your hydrometer don't change for several weeks. Once it starts to clear a bit, rack it over again onto some sulphates and sorbate to assure the fermentation is halted and let it age and clear a bunch more then rack it again and backsweeten to flavor with some more honey and let it age some more and clear. That's how I'd handle it. If the final gravity is 1.015 to 1.020, then you can skip the backsweetening on it and simply let it age and clear. I tend to rack my meads over every few months after that as it is aging and clearing to move it off of the sediment. As it stands, I am not going to even begin bottling any of meads until they have bulk aged for at least a year, then I'll bottle some of them.

[fatbloke]

Originally Posted by Deacon Aegis

As long as you aren't using D21 yeast, you'll have no problem letting it sit on the lees for any length of time up to several months. I'd let it continue to ferment after the rack until the numbers on your hydrometer don't change for several weeks. Once it starts to clear a bit, rack it over again onto some sulphates and sorbate to assure the fermentation is halted and let it age and clear a bunch more then rack it again and backsweeten to flavor with some more honey and let it age some more and clear. That's how I'd handle it. If the final gravity is 1.015 to 1.020, then you can skip the backsweetening on it and simply let it age and clear. I tend to rack my meads over every few months after that as it is aging and clearing to move it off of the sediment. As it stands, I am not going to even begin bottling any of meads until they have bulk aged for at least a year, then I'll bottle some of them.

Have you had a problem ageing D21 ? Or were you thinking of 71B ?

Cos I've had no probs with D21, but I'm fully aware of the issues with 71B.....

[Leeham991]

My yeast came in a white packet with 'champagne yeast' on the front and 'open here' with a line on the back. No idea which breed number it is xD

[kudapucat]

Hehe. Try to steer away from no name yeasts. It's impossible to know what they are. I'm guessing it would be similar to SN9 or EC-1118 though.
Having yeast with documentation helps you plan and manage your brews.

[Deacon Aegis]

Originally Posted by fatbloke

Have you had a problem ageing D21 ? Or were you thinking of 71B ?

Cos I've had no probs with D21, but I'm fully aware of the issues with 71B.....

Fatbloke, you're right. I was thinking of 71B... My bad.

[Leeham991]

Originally Posted by kudapucat

Hehe. Try to steer away from no name yeasts. It's impossible to know what they are. I'm guessing it would be similar to SN9 or EC-1118 though.
Having yeast with documentation helps you plan and manage your brews.

I can't remember the website it came from, but it was definitely shown with a different packet on there. It was a purple packet as far as I remember. Although it could have been a different yeast because a friend sent it over, but he linked to the page with the yeast in the purple packet to show what he was sending.

Now can take a shot in the dark with the aging for it. Do SN9 and EC-1118 age well?

[kudapucat]

Sure. Most meads age well no matter the yeast.
Ageing's more to do with the alcohol content. 3% braggots or hydro meld don't age as well as 12% meads.
But then, they don't need as much ageing either.

[kudapucat]

Sounds like a safale yeast. They're in purple and pink sachets.