does mead ferment slower?

[brewskiez]

I've made some wines/lots of beers and now on my third 5 gallon batch of mead. I get lots of honey from cutouts so this is what I do with what I can't possibly eat in a reasonable time frame. I have just recently gotten into making mead so I haven't even tried any of what I have made.

Brews ferment so rapidly I have to have a blowoff tube for most or else suffer the consequences but meads I've made don't seem to need a blow off tube and certainly don't appear to have done as much fermenting as the brews even though theres a lot more sugar and a higher alc tolerating yeast. Is something wrong or is this how it is and if so why?

 

[Maylar]

Dunno why. But you can speed things up a bit by stirring / degassing the mead to keep yeast in suspension, and by adding nutrients at the correct times.

 

[bernardsmith]

when you say that mead does not seem to be doing "as much fermenting" are you simply looking at how much less froth and foam is produced by the yeast when it is asked to ferment sugars that have very little protein mixed with them. There is no "krausen" with honey because there is for all intents and purposes no protein. So while wort may look all sturm und drang during the first week or so , must made with honey is more like a deep dark and silent pond but barely visible there is at least as much writhing and rolling taking place.

But if you are asking why a solution with perhaps 3 or more pounds of sugar per gallon takes longer to ferment to 1.0 or less (a typical mead) than a solution that has more like 1 pound of sugar per gallon takes to ferment to about 1.015 (beer) despite the fact that you pitch about the same number (or perhaps fewer) yeast cells in both solutions, then I think the answer is found in the way I am describing the difference.

The other factor may be the access to needed nutrients that the yeast have. With beer there is rarely any shortage of either organic or mineral compounds that the yeast need to manufacture esters and other chemicals they need to create membranes and transport sugar through cell walls. Honey, on the other hand is a desert when it comes to nutrition and if you fail to provide the building blocks for the yeast they struggle to ferment the simple sugars that comprise the honey.

 

[brewskiez]

I put the recommended amount in of yeast nutrient like 1/2 tablespoon per gallon.

I was specifically referring to the amount of bubbling I see in the airlock I would think the mead would produce more but it hasn’t been the case.

I just added some more yeast nutrient and it created a lot of gassing and foaming what kind of reaction is that?

 

[bernardsmith]

Oh, that I think is caused by nucleation: the particles allow the CO2 to form larger conglomerations in the liquid using less energy and those larger masses of gas enable the gas to collect as bubbles with enough energy to rise to the surface while pushing ahead of each bubble a column of liquid.
One danger is if you are fermenting in a carboy with a narrow neck that neck can then cause the column of liquid to rifle and you then have a volcano of liquid that can paint your walls and ceiling. The solution is to always dissolve or mix anything you add in water so that you are not creating points of nucleation in the mead (or wine).

 

[brewskiez]

Thanks!