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SG reading at day 12

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columbiacritter

NewBee
Registered Member
Aug 30, 2012
20
0
0
Straight mead, no fruit.
5 quarts wildflower honey, 4 g water, d47 yeast, 2 1/2 tsp nutrient. In a dark closet around 65 degrees. Leaky fermenter so no bubbles out the airlock but fizzing nicely.
Started at 1.112 sg and now at day 12 the bubbling has slowed and the SG is 1.055. Is that a normal progression?
Smells very alcoholly especially when I overflowed the hygrometer measure vial all over my shoes. No off odors, the surface looks good with a few yeast islands. starting to see lees building up on the bottom.

What is the optimum SG to rack at?

Sigh, trying to be patient.
My 1g of JAOM is do very nicely, slowing it's bubbling and starting to clear with a build up of lees. Still another 5 to 6 wks to even consder bottling. With my schedule I just might leave it until the thanksgiving holiday. Hopefully the oranges will have sunk by then.
 

fatbloke

good egg/snappy dresser.....
GotMead Patron
There's no set level or point for time particularly.
PHP:

It looks like you're at the half break, but I'd have thought the steady movement is more about the nutrient level. You don't mention whether its straight DAP or like FermaidK/combined nutrient ? You could try some combined nutrient or even just give it a good stir and some boiled bread yeast to speed it some.....
 

columbiacritter

NewBee
Registered Member
Aug 30, 2012
20
0
0
I used a brewcraft product just called Yeast Nutrient that's labelled as "Thiamine Vit. B complex" it was what the home brew place recommended

I just gave it a good stir. It foamed up like a fresh beer and smelled good.
 

fatbloke

good egg/snappy dresser.....
GotMead Patron
I used a brewcraft product just called Yeast Nutrient that's labelled as "Thiamine Vit. B complex" it was what the home brew place recommended

I just gave it a good stir. It foamed up like a fresh beer and smelled good.
Ah, well that helps some..... the combined nutrients tend to have stuff like the Thiamine, but also some DAP, yeast hulls and a few other micronutrient type materials.

I find that it's usually better to have researched first, as the HBS will suggest "the best" as being the one that they want or have to sell the most of i.e. will usually work, but there's often better products (yes I'm very cynical about them - they often seem to recommend stuff that will work but isn't necessarily the best, whereas I would always opt for the best).

The foaming would be expected, as you will have some carbonic acid from the ferment, thus far, dissolved in the brew, and when you give it a stir, you bring the sediment back into suspension which creates nucleation points for the carbonic acid to bind to in it's gaseous form a.k.a. carbon di-oxide. The reaction can be quite quick, and it's where you can sometimes get a mead fountain, especially if you've used a carboy type fermenter which constricts the rise of the layer of bubbles.

Hence buckets can often be better, especially if you've used fruit as the layer of fruit pulp can both produce and seemingly hold more carbonic acid/CO2, buckets just let the layer rise up, hopefully before it spills over the top of the bucket (quick stirring at this point often breaks the bubbles preventing over spill).......

I suspect that your remedy should work, so just let it do it's thing but keep testing so you can see when the ferment finishes. And don't presume it's finished just by the lack of bubbles in the airlock. Your hydrometer is your friend and it's usually 3 identical gravity results across a period of about a week (3 or 4 days apart for each test) when you can presume that the ferment has finished.

Ah yes, and the little caveat to consider when using D47, is that it has a relatively narrow temperature range compared to other yeasts and that when it's used with honey musts, you need to keep the ferment below 70F/21C because above that its known to produce fusels (presume this isn't the case with grape musts but don't know - it certainly is with honey musts). They will take a very long time, if ever, to mellow out.
 

Darren

NewBee
Registered Member
Dec 9, 2012
12
0
0
I am very knew to this but i think you want to get the SG down to 990 / 995. Give it a good shake up see if you can get some more fermenting going... continue to take readings and when bubbling stops you know your close to reracking.
 
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