1st Mead Recipe...How's it Look?

mhenry41h said:

Dry Traditional Mead

13.5 lbs - Orange Blossom Honey
04.0 gal - Bottled Spring Water

5 tsp - Acid Blend (@ 1st racking)
2 tsp - Grape Tannin (in primary)

1.50 tsp DAP & 2.5 tsp Fermaid K (split into 4 doses - 1 at pitch, 1 on 2nd day, 1 on 3rd day, & 1 at 2/3 mark)

Goferm with Lalvin K1V-1116 (2 Pkgs)

Do you guys think Im making a winner?

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Hmmm, my first impressions are thus: K1V-1116 is going to take 13.5 pounds of honey in a 5 gallon batch pretty dry. I tend to run a bit more honey on a batch this size, but that's just me. I shoot for an original gravity around 1.140 on the trusty hydrometer. Not sure exactly how the acid and tannin blend will effect the final flavors, maybe someone who adds those things to their brews will speak up.

As for the nutrients, I think you will want to be using a slightly higher quantity and staging it slightly differently for optimum results. You don't want to add any of those nutrients when you pitch your yeast. Rather, you'll want to add them right after the lag phase, which is the time between the initial pitching of the yeast and when you see fermentation actively beginning. At that point, pitch your first batch of nutrients. As for the guantities, I'll let someone a bit more experienced chime in here, but I usually run 1tsp of Fermaid-K and 1tsp of DAP afert the lag phase. I then tend to pitch another teaspoon of each around the 1/3 sugar break and 1/2 tsp of each at the 1/2 sugar break. I'll change those quantities up a little bit depending on the type of mead I'm brewing and the ingredients I'm using, but this is my typical formula for a streight traditional mead. Hope some of this helps and good luck with your batch.

I would recommend adding the acid to taste, not measuring an arbitrary amount and dumping it in. You may find you need 1 tsp instead of 5. I tend not to add any acid at all.

2 tsp of tannin seems like a heck of a lot too. I'll sometimes add 2-3 grams of tannin to a 5 gallon batch, and I'm pretty sure a tsp is a lot more than a gram.

Start small, you can always add more of both tannin and acid.

I've heard about waiting to add nutrients until after lag phase before but I haven't heard the reason explained. The only thing I can see is that you want to feed the yeast after it's established itself rather than some errant bacteria that may be lurking before active fermentation. Or is there some other reason for waiting during this period ?

illuveatar said:

I've heard about waiting to add nutrients until after lag phase before but I haven't heard the reason explained. The only thing I can see is that you want to feed the yeast after it's established itself rather than some errant bacteria that may be lurking before active fermentation. Or is there some other reason for waiting during this period ?

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What I've been reading is that during lag phase, the yeast cells are beginning to reproduce, which is when they will be consuming a high amount of oxygen and natural nitrogens. Most of the additive nutrients use DAP, which is an inorganic nitrogen base, which is harder on the yeast cells to uptake and can even stunt yeast cell budding. Additionally, some of the micronutrients are also problematic for yeast cells when they are specifically engaged in cellular reproduction. It is after that first phase of growth in the yeast colony where massive amounts of cellular busding is occuring that the yeast colony size will achieve an equalibrium in the colony size and the yeast cells switch from reproducing to more actively metabolizing the sugars in their environment. While reproduction of yeast cells will continue through the lifespan of the yeast colony, the initial massive colony growth demands a slightly different nutrient chemistry then what is needed during active fermentation.

During the fermentation cycle, the yeast cells can more readily uptake the nitrogen and micronutrients from DAP and Fermaid or Fermax or whatever is used. That's kinda the gist of things as far as what I've been able to gather. Someone please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong or elaborate if I'm missing something.

mhenry41h said:

How much "tannic bite" do you get from your addition. I like my wines to have a decent amount, but then, its a mead and I dont want to blow people away...

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Not a ton of "bite", though the tannin/acid/sugar/alcohol balance in mead is just different than wine. Again, you can always add more later, but it's hard to take it out.