Wyeast Vintner's Nutrient - first batch

[Irish1225]

Hello everyone,

Not a new member to HBT at all and been brewing beer for a number of years now... but I brewed my first mead on Monday - 1 gallon. Just a plain mead, I used 3lbs of wildflower honey and some champagne yeast. I also added some "Wyeast Vintner's Nutrient" when pitching the yeast.

My question regards the Wyeast nutrient... the instructions say 1/2 tsp/5 gallons so I used 1/10 tsp for my 1 gallon jug. How much is appropriate for mead? Should I have scaled the nutrient 1:5?

I've done some reading on SNA and was planning on adding some more nutrient on Friday (4 days in) and then some more when my SG hits around 1.045 (my OG was ~1.090, I wasn't thinking that the honey would take up so much volume so I had some must that I just tossed down the drain...).

 

[fatbloke]

Their guidance is for wines, which by nature are different. Meads are famously low in natural nutrient and more often need more, not less or the same.

Plus they often need pH buffers.

Meads are sufficiently different from wines and beers to need considerable variation from those techniques.....

 

[Irish1225]

Thanks, fatbloke.

It looks like it has nitrogens, phosphates, and some zinc in there that I would need but I will have to contact them and see how much by volume.

I may just half it rather than what I did on Monday. I'll throw in 1/4 tsp tonight and a 1/4 tsp at half-gravity.

 

[fatbloke]

Thanks, fatbloke.

It looks like it has nitrogens, phosphates, and some zinc in there that I would need but I will have to contact them and see how much by volume.

I may just half it rather than what I did on Monday. I'll throw in 1/4 tsp tonight and a 1/4 tsp at half-gravity.

Generally it seems to be about how much nitrogen it gives, though at the same time, especially early on in the ferment, it also needs enough thiamine a.k.a. vitamin B1 as this is connected to H2S production (there's a link I posted last year, in my blog, to an article from Zymurgy magazine, about mead nutrition, written by Ken Schramm - I don't recall it mentioning the nutrient you mention, but it gives you some good info to look into).

It does explain some way to understanding the ntrogen and other requirements etc......