I am new to mead making, having very successfully brewed great ales for years. I had a particularly good harvest of pears this year, and decided to use some of them in my first mead experiment. I sterilized my equipment and pasteurized the honey at 160 deg F for twenty minutes before adding it to the water, spices and pears, all of which were boiled prior to adding the honey.
Being new to mead, I thought I would start with a small batch. Basing my recipe on a grilled pear dish that we like, I added 5 pounds of pears, a handful of peppercorns and about a one inch piece of ginger root, grated, to the seven pounds of local clover honey, making a total volume of 2 gallons of finished must. I am looking for a dry finish, and my local brewing supplier recommended Lalvin champagne yeast, which I pitched after cooling the must to about 80 deg F. OG approx 1.140.
Fermentation at approx 70 deg F was steady for about 30 days, yielding a bubble at the airlocks of my two one-gallon glass fermenters approximately every 5 to 10 seconds. At 30 days, all activity seemed to have stopped.
Because there was so much sediment in the fermenters (about an inch, maybe in part because of solids precipitating out of suspension from the pears?), I re-racked yesterday, about a week after the stoppage, and filled the fermenters with sterilized glass marbles to keep the head space in the fermenters at what I believe to be the appropriate level, but things still appear to be stuck.
The current gravity comes in at about 1.065, which is much higher than I expect for the finished product. The taste is strongly alcoholic, leading me to question my OG reading, and very raw. I am told that mead in this range should age as much as two years before mature and ready to drink. Should I try a little yeast nutrient? Re-pitch a stronger, more tolerant yeast? Or do I just wait patiently for the yeast to do its thing?
I'm about to start my second batch, a vanilla metheglin at a lower OG (starting with 6 lbs of clover honey from the same farm) with the same yeast. I wanted to try meadowfoam honey, but was unable to find any locally. We'll see how that goes...
Being new to mead, I thought I would start with a small batch. Basing my recipe on a grilled pear dish that we like, I added 5 pounds of pears, a handful of peppercorns and about a one inch piece of ginger root, grated, to the seven pounds of local clover honey, making a total volume of 2 gallons of finished must. I am looking for a dry finish, and my local brewing supplier recommended Lalvin champagne yeast, which I pitched after cooling the must to about 80 deg F. OG approx 1.140.
Fermentation at approx 70 deg F was steady for about 30 days, yielding a bubble at the airlocks of my two one-gallon glass fermenters approximately every 5 to 10 seconds. At 30 days, all activity seemed to have stopped.
Because there was so much sediment in the fermenters (about an inch, maybe in part because of solids precipitating out of suspension from the pears?), I re-racked yesterday, about a week after the stoppage, and filled the fermenters with sterilized glass marbles to keep the head space in the fermenters at what I believe to be the appropriate level, but things still appear to be stuck.
The current gravity comes in at about 1.065, which is much higher than I expect for the finished product. The taste is strongly alcoholic, leading me to question my OG reading, and very raw. I am told that mead in this range should age as much as two years before mature and ready to drink. Should I try a little yeast nutrient? Re-pitch a stronger, more tolerant yeast? Or do I just wait patiently for the yeast to do its thing?
I'm about to start my second batch, a vanilla metheglin at a lower OG (starting with 6 lbs of clover honey from the same farm) with the same yeast. I wanted to try meadowfoam honey, but was unable to find any locally. We'll see how that goes...
