Mead Fermentation help!

[lswhi3]

Hey guys,
I made a sweet must on the 10th of April, and am a little concerned about its progress...
I'll give you all the details first:

2 litres Orange Blossom Honey
6 litres of bottled spring water
Staggered yeast nutrient on days 1, 2, 3 and 10. Yeast nutrient is primarily DAP i believe.
Pitched with Lavlin 71B yeast at 25C and repitched on day 11 at 19C. The yeast is just about on its use by date, but has been refrigerated by the home brew shop guys, who advised me that it should be fine.
I rehydrated the yeast both times at lukewarm temperature for 25 minutes.

Throughout the whole process the yeast has been at a steady 16C - 19C.
I was concerned that the yeast had gone into hibernation because there was hardly any activity at all on top of the musk or in the airlock for the first 11 days. It seemed to pick up a little after I re-pitched the yeast.


I also gave it a vigorous stir on day 2 to aerate it (honey has lower nitrogen levels than grapes so this shouldn't be a problem until fermentation is 1/3 in).

OG was about 1.140
SG 15/April was 1.105
SG 21 April 1.085
SG 23 April 1.083
SG 28 April 1.071

It's still ridiculously sweet though, which makes me think that there's still a lot of sugar to be consumed by the yeast.

Anyway, my burning and naive questions are:
1) if it's now the 30th of April, should I be concerned about the high sugar levels? Should I repitch the yeast again?
2) should I be thinking about racking now even though I want to increase ABV content / lower the sweetness, in order to avoid off flavours?
3) would the consistently low temperature simply be elongating primary fermentation?

Keep in mind that I saw very little visible fermentation activity both on the surface of the musk (literally a bubble here and there), and airlock activity has been no more than about 1 per minute. However, each time I did a gravity reading, there was a lot of CO2 bubbles in the hydrometer. In the last reading I did a few days ago, the CO2 bubbles had reduced very significantly.

This is about all the detail I can think of.

Can anyone give me some tips etc of what to do with this batch, and anything I should do differently with my next batch? Next batch is going to be an apple pie cyser, and will include:
6 litres of Orange Blossom Honey
18 litres of apple juice with no preservative (probably going to use nudies 100% apples from coles)
2 cinnamon sticks
1 vanilla bean
yeast nutrient, staggered
Lavlin 71B

I'm very open to suggestions with how to improve that recipe because I'm pretty much just winging it, and would really appreciate any help on how to improve the current batch.
Cheers!
Luke

 

[TimT]

It's dropped a lot though, hasn't it? From 1.140 to 1.071, 70 points. With an OG of 1.140 you're pretty much going to end up in sweet mead territory (though you obviously don't want crazy sweet). It looks like the yeast is doing its work. The sugars in honey are funny; while some will ferment quickly, others will take more time for the yeast to work at, which is why you get an initial peak ferment with a long tail. The other thing, of course, is the more alcoholic the mead will become, the more your yeast will drop out until you effectively reach a point at which no yeast can ferment any longer. So those gravity figures don't look too bad. Perhaps your technique should be Forget About It For A Couple Of Months Until Its Well And Truly Ready.

 

[geneabovill]

Yeast always go for the easy sugars first. So simple sugars like glucose and maltose (in beer) go first, then long-chain carbohydrates second. To a point.

Yeast cannot break down complex sugars, which is why you generally end up with residual sweetness in some fermented drinks - those sugars weren't able to be fermented by the yeast. (But the amylase in your saliva converts them and you taste them as sweet anyway).

Add the fact that your starting gravity was huge, and the yeast were probably stressed by 1) being almost out of date, 2) osmotic pressure from the sheer amount of sugar in the must and 3) yeast doesn't like alcohol, that's why they excrete it, probably means it's going to take a long time to ferment all the way out - and may not actually ever end up fermenting fully.

I'd agree with the above comment: leave it be for as long as you can. There should be a CO2 blanket on top of the fermenting must (if you haven't opened the lid too much) so the risk of infection is fairly low.

Hope that helps.

 

[niftinev]

Give it a gentle swirl, you'll find it is still fermenting just takes longer and longer as the alcohol increases.

I leave my meads sit for up to 5 months before I rack (usually 3-4) and don't have any problems. but my meads always have some raisons or sultanas in them as well as other fruits and spices and I only rack when fruit has sunk to bottom (min 3months)but sometimes still let it age for another month or two

 

[Airgead]

71B has a tolerance of around 14% your recipe has a potential of 19% there is no way it will dry that out.

There are very few foam stable compounds in honey and water so there won't be much visible foam on the top of the must as it ferments. Just lots of little tiny bubbles in the liquid. As your airlock may be clogged with kittens.

If its at 1.070 now, its at around 10% ABV so it has a little way to go yet. It will probably end in the 1.030s somewhere. Still super sweet. It will probably take a few months to get there as the yeast starts to struggle.

If you want dry, you will have to use a yeast like DV10 or EC1118 to finish it off. DV10 is a good one for that as it is very tolerant to starting in an already high alcohol environment.

Cheers
dave

 

[geneabovill]

Further to Dave's comment, it might not be a bad idea to rack it off the lees now and inoculate it with the yeast he mentioned to avoid autolysis of the current yeast due to all the ethanol already there.

Just a thought.

 

[Airgead]

Oh... and BT- on your new recipe...

6 litres of Orange Blossom Honey
18 litres of apple juice with no preservative (probably going to use nudies 100% apples from coles)
2 cinnamon sticks
1 vanilla bean
yeast nutrient, staggered
Lavlin 71B

Wayyyyy too much honey. The juice will start you at around 1.040 - 1.050. 6l of honey in 18l of water will get your around 1.100 (if I do my sums right). So you will end up in the 1.140s to 1.150s. Cut it back to maybe 2 or 3 kilos. That will get you to around 1.1 which is about 13%ABV and within the range for 71B.

And it will save you 30 bucks in honey,

Cheers
Dave

 

[lswhi3]

Kind of want the mead ready for a special occasion in 8 weeks (game of thrones final), hence the 71B.

So if the mead is going to end up around 1.030, unless I switch yeasts, I'm presuming it's going to be so sickly sweet that it will be drinkable within that timeframe.

Would you guys recommend racking now, and pitching a new yeast? I'd pitch another 71B into the must because of the time frame I have in mind (Unless switching wouldn't effect timeframe). Would the 71B yeast be able to tolerate the must if it's already at 10%? Otherwise I could just leave it a while longer and hope it gets down to 1.030 without autolysis...

Also, thanks for the tips with the recipe in the next batch! I'm hoping this one is much better than the one I'm currently doing, and I have an unlimited timeframe with this one as well. I'm not a wine drinker at all, so I'd hope it'd be a little sweet once it's time to drink it.
I'm actually hoping to make a high ABV cyser next, so maybe I should switch yeasts? What would you recommend, the EC1118 or the DV10? I haven't heard of the DV10. If I was to switch, do you know what OG would be best to start at in order to maximise ABV % as well as retaining a little sweetness in the mead? Definitely not as sweet as this batch. I also heard someone talking about slowly adding honey as the weeks go by in order to increase the ABV because it's better for the yeast?

Cheers guys,

Luke

 

[niftinev]

Kind of want the mead ready for a special occasion in 8 weeks (game of thrones final), hence the 71B.

So if the mead is going to end up around 1.030, unless I switch yeasts, I'm presuming it's going to be so sickly sweet that it will be drinkable within that timeframe.

Would you guys recommend racking now, and pitching a new yeast? I'd pitch another 71B into the must because of the time frame I have in mind (Unless switching wouldn't effect timeframe). Would the 71B yeast be able to tolerate the must if it's already at 10%? Otherwise I could just leave it a while longer and hope it gets down to 1.030 without autolysis...

Also, thanks for the tips with the recipe in the next batch! I'm hoping this one is much better than the one I'm currently doing, and I have an unlimited timeframe with this one as well. I'm not a wine drinker at all, so I'd hope it'd be a little sweet once it's time to drink it.
I'm actually hoping to make a high ABV cyser next, so maybe I should switch yeasts? What would you recommend, the EC1118 or the DV10? I haven't heard of the DV10. If I was to switch, do you know what OG would be best to start at in order to maximise ABV % as well as retaining a little sweetness in the mead? Definitely not as sweet as this batch. I also heard someone talking about slowly adding honey as the weeks go by in order to increase the ABV because it's better for the yeast?

Cheers guys,

Luke

Patience is the key, next time give yourself more time and use alcohol calculator to work out % so you can cross check this with your yeast tolerance. This will give you an idea wether it will be sweet or dry.
Way too much honey in your cyser, you'll have a high ABV and end up with an extremely sweet wine style drink, nothing like a cyser

 

[Airgead]

71B isn't a particularly fast fermenter and mead really is a patient man's game. Regardless of your recipe an yeast, not many meads will be particularly drinkable at 8 weeks.

For a short timeframe, your best bet would be something like a Braggot - honey beer which has it origins is a norse drink from the Viking era so would be totally GoT appropriate. Easy, quick and tasty.And viking... just remember pillage first, then burn.

The trick with a sweet mead is to look at the alcohol tolerance of the yeast. If we take 71B as an example that will tolerate up to 14%. Anything under 14% potential will ferment out as a dry mead. Anything over 14% will leave residual sweetness. If you aim for 15% you will get a somewhat sweet mead, 16% will get you sweeter and 18% will get you lolly water. Roughly. The 14% tolerance is a rough estimate and depends on a bunch of stuff so this does take a while to dial in.

Your other alternative is to make the mead to whatever strength you like and taste regularly. Stop the fermentation when its at the sweetness you want. you can do this by cold crashing, by heavily sulphiting or by pasturising or sterile filtering. You will then want to stabilise the mead with a yest inhibitor like sorbistat to prevent re-fermenation.

Either way you want to get some age on it before drinking. 6 months in the bottle at least. Preferably maybe 3-6 months bulk aging on oak then another 6 in the bottle. Longer if you have the patience....

Cheers
Dave

 

[TimT]

See what it's like in 7 weeks. I have heard that regular additions of yeast nutrient, timed for important moments in the life cycle of the yeast (so, plenty of nutrient at the start while the yeast are growing, more nutrient at high krausen, more nutrient a few days after that, etc) can make mead mature in a relatively short time frame, but I do not have enough experience to vouch for that.

If the mead settles out in that period, you may still find that it has a powerful sweet/alcoholic kick. Normally after the initial fermentation it's recommended that the mead be aged over other ingredients to give it balance and flavour and depth - often something woody or spicy to add in tannins, like cinnamon or oak chips. However it looks like you may not have enough time for that; perhaps you could short cut that process by making a mulled mead: you could use it to provide a sweet base and mix it in with a dry wine and spices like rosemary and cinnamon and orange peel and coriander - this would be perfectly appropriate for the season and the show, because hey, Winter Is Coming*..... Or you could just use it to add sweetness and alcohol to some other drink. Up to you.

*I don't even watch the show and I still know that slogan, damn you, publicity!

 

[Airgead]

Oh.... missed your racking question.... I rack as little as possible. racking is when the mead is most likely to suffer oxidative damage. I generally rack once when the mead drops clear. If its a fruit mead then I rack off the fruit after a week or so then again when its cleared. I'm guessing yours is still pretty cloudy.

You won't get autolysis flavors in weeks. You get them by leaving wines on the lees for months.

If you want to pitch a new yeast, pitch it straight in. More 71B won't help... its already at the top of its range so you want something more tolerant. EC1118 or DV10 will do the job.