Off flavors in young mead...Traditional vs Melomel.

[Mikek]

Wondering if anyone with more experience than me can answer this relatively vague question.. I have made 3 batches so far.. Two Melomels and 1 Trad. The two melomels tasted surprisingly good upon going into secondary.. The Trad was racked to secondary yesterday and had something off about it.. Almost a touch sour, maybe a bit yeasty tasting.. No sulfur or spoiled type odors or flavors but certainly not a pleasant drinking experience.. I know age is vital to these meads but is the fruit the main reason the Melomels were more palatable early on? and is it normal for a Trad to have some of those off flavors prior to back sweetening/aging/clearing and bulk aging?

Thanks for any advice.. Going to leave it be a long while regardless and not try chasing it to "fix" it but wanted to see what others thought.

[bernardsmith]

Hi Mikek - and welcome to the forum. You don't really provide us with enough detailed information for anyone to offer constructive suggestions but my understanding is that you are most likely to produce a yeasty flavored mead when you pitch too few viable yeast cells and so stress the cells you did pitch with far too much sugar to ferment. Now, if your pitching rate is the same for the melomels as for the trad the simple fact that the melomels have other flavor characteristics may be enough to mask or hide this problem.. Of course, if you pitch an appropriate colony size for the volume of must and the starting gravity then you can dismiss my first thoughts..

[darigoni]

Was it clear?

Was it dry? If not, what was the specific gravity?

What was the ABV?

Did you use nutrients?

[Squatchy]

This is exactly why I promote making trads when you start until you can make good ones every time. This will raise the bar for everything else you will ever make. You can't hide mistakes in a trad. But you do in melomels and other styles.

[Toxxyc]

This is exactly why I promote making trads when you start until you can make good ones every time. This will raise the bar for everything else you will ever make. You can't hide mistakes in a trad. But you do in melomels and other styles.

That's exactly why I'm dead-set on making a perfect traditional in as short an amount of time as possible before I start playing with other things. I've now learned so much about mead, it's not even funny. Nothing too technical, but mostly hands-on experience, and that's irreplaceable.