A Collection of Newbie Questions

[TheNotoriousM.E.A.D]

I wish there was a "sticky" thread up top because I have a feeling that some of my questions might already be addressed, but here goes:

1. I am using Lalvin D47, which I basically chose at random. I've read through a large number of threads on here and few people seem to use that. Why? Are there yeasts that are known to be better for mead?
2. What do you age mead in? I'm patient and I have no issues with waiting months/years for mead to mellow out. But what do you age it in? Let's say I do a primary of a month and then a secondary for another month. Do you just age it in bottles at that point? Or use another glass container? How do you age larger quantities, like 20 gallons?
3. Are there accepted ratios of how much fruit to use for X gallons of mead? Most videos I see online basically have people just stuffing in their flavors at random. But surely there must be some thoughts on how much to use.
4. How do you determine the length of your primary? I have read recommendations for everything from 2 weeks to 2 months. From what I can gather, the shorter the primary, the sweeter it will be?

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi TheNotoriousM.E.A.D - and welcome to the forum and to mead making. It's a great hobby. Let me try to answer each of your questions
1. Just about any wine yeast (or beer yeast) will make a good mead. The key issue is that you know what the characteristics of the yeast are and you choose your yeast for those characteristics - Some yeasts produce a more viscous mead (mouthfeel) , other yeasts bring out fruity notes while yet other yeasts can handle temperature better (or worse). D47 tends to prefer lower temperatures and if fermenting at higher temperatures can produce many flavors that CAN be viewed as flaws - but if you are making low ABV meads that means that there is not a great deal of honey per gallon then the flavor from the honey is not right in your face and that CAN mean that you want those flavor notes that D47 produces. It is, as they say, horses for courses.
2. Bulk aging has advantages - a) you can expect various compounds to drop out of solution and form sediment months and months after fermentation has finished - subtle chemical activity is ongoing - mead is organic and "alive". It's not a manufactured product. So it is more aesthetic to bottle just before you intend to drink the mead and b) - and this may be more my imagination but allowing all the mead to be in contact with all the rest of the mead results in a more consistent outcome. I age my meads in the vessels I use as the secondaries.
But here's the thing: mead can be absolutely perfectly drinkable in a one month; in two months; in six months. It is a myth that mead takes YEARS to be drinkable. And that myth is the result of poor mead making. The secret of good mead is in the protocol. And learning to master that protocol is what takes time. Also the higher the ABV of the mead the longer it needs to age.
3. In my opinion, there is an enormous amount of self published nonsense about mead making. Read some books published by reputable publishers: watch youtube for entertainment, not education. How much fruit to add? That depends on what flavor profile you are aiming for. Take cranberries for example: If you use cranberry juice in place of water you will get a mead that is so tart that it will pucker your mouth, but if you replace 1 pint of water with 1 pint of juice for every gallon of mead then the result is very drinkable. With papaya you might use 100 percent of the juice. But here's the thing: many folk talk about fruit wines and meads (melomels) as if they really only want to allow the fruit to be hinted at rather than to take center stage. So they tend to use a lot less fruit. If the fruit is to be the star of the show I would use enough fruit to produce 100 percent of the liquid (think cyser - apple mead). No water. If the fruit is to be the sidekick you might use about 3lbs of fruit/gallon. With coffee and cocoa you are talking about perhaps 4 oz. But note: Adding fruit to the primary produces a different profile than adding fruit to the secondary. There is no law that prohibits you from adding fruit to both the primary and the secondary .
4. How long should a mead sit in the primary? Well, if you are wise you use a bucket as your primary - loosely covered so that you can easily stir to degas and add nutrients as needed. When the gravity falls to close to 1.005 you rack to the secondary - a carboy with narrow neck and which you fill to the tippy top to ensure as little head room as possible. This you then seal with an airlock. How long does it take yeast to chow down to 1.005? Depends. How large was the yeast colony? How viable was it? How much sugar is in the must? How much nutrient? What is the temperature of the must? What yeast have you selected? How active was the yeast when you pitched it? ... so many variables. You measure the gravity. Tells you everything. Can be as short as a week (or less) or two weeks .. or a month... or... This is a living process not an engineering project. Takes as long as it takes. . Good luck!

 

[johnnyseko]

Great questions, thanks for the explanations Bernard!

 

[Maylar]

A while back, someone posted a list of fruits and the relative quantities that give the best results, but I haven't been able to find it with the search. That's the sort of thing that aught to be a sticky.

 

[bernardsmith]

I dunno ... I think the amount of fruit depends on a whole host of variables including the must or mead to which the fruit is being added. It strikes me that the way to know how much to add is to bench test: adding known quantities of juice to known volumes of fruitless mead (adding to the secondary) or blending known quantities of juice with water and adding those volumes to honey (adding to the primary). Determining in advance, the quantity of juice to be added seems to me a recipe for a very so-so approach

 

[Maylar]

All true. But if I were going to make my first melomel, I would certainly appreciate empirical data from someone who's been there, done that. A known (or assumed) starting point is better than winging it. As I recall, the post I'm thinking of was very nicely presented. Wish I could find it.

 

[fossilcat]

When I first started to make mead (about 4 years ago) I used the attached amounts and this short on line guide: https://www.winning-homebrew.com/melomels.html . Good starting points in my opinion but as bernardsmith suggests, if you're serious, and you'll know after your first brew, research Amazon and buy some reference material from the experts.

Mead is an ever changing environment in which yeast live. Your challenge is to make the yeast happy during the course of their life, treat them like you would a loving pet and you'll be rewarded with something delicious.

4 years is not a long time to have made mead, I am continuously reviewing my notes, reading what other's experiences are and what solutions they've employed to adjust, and constantly seeking reference material that will help me improve my brews. The reference material I've supplied in this post is only a starting point. I don't even look at them any more.

 

[S-Met]

Another variable is the fruit itself. This essentially renders empirical data irrelevant as the fruit can vary widely depending on controllable and uncontrollable factors. Steady-state commercial juices are the most consistent - think Motts, Martinelli, Tree-top.

Some years the peaches are amazing, other years they are... meh. Georgia Peach vs California Peach? Home grown? Same can be said for any fruits, juices.

 

[bernardsmith]

S-Met hits the nail smack on its head (though I am not sure I agree that I would view commercial juices as the gold standard. They are likely far superior to store bought fruit but they have their faults - not least being that you cannot macerate the fruit skins). Fruit sold in supermarkets is picked unripe so that it can be shipped from the other side of the world, be warehoused and then shipped from who knows where in the USA to your local store with enough durability to be stocked on their shelves for who knows how long. Local fruits sold at farmers markets (AP style guide says no apostrophe) are far more likely to be picked ripe, but I imagine that if you know exactly what you are looking for, picking your own fruit is really the only way to go if you are looking for fruit with the most flavor picked at the very peak of ripeness.

 

[S-Met]

I agree. And to clarify, I do not suggest that commercial juices are a gold standard, rather that they are standardized and relatively consistent in flavor profile from any date/year of purchase.

If not mentioned here already, commercial juices as mentioned above are designed for drinking, not fermenting. The can produce a decent cider, but think of it like table wine, not fine wine.

 

[KTbrew]

I tend to recommend this video a lot. You don't need to make meads as big and bold as this guy does but he has an excellent process. Pay close attention to the staggered nutrient addition that he uses and then go read about it. I recommend using this method with Lavlin 71-B yeast. It's cheap, easy to use and works well with this process.
I also recommend finding some good information on how to read a hydrometer and buying one. This will help you to accurately determine how much honey/water to add, when your mead is ready to transfer or done and the ABV.

 

[bernardsmith]

I tend to recommend this video a lot. You don't need to make meads as big and bold as this guy does but he has an excellent process. Pay close attention to the staggered nutrient addition that he uses and then go read about it. I recommend using this method with Lavlin 71-B yeast. It's cheap, easy to use and works well with this process.
I also recommend finding some good information on how to read a hydrometer and buying one. This will help you to accurately determine how much honey/water to add, when your mead is ready to transfer or done and the ABV.

Off topic, I know - so apologies - but is there any real solid evidence for the difference between feeding the nutrient load when pitching the yeast and staggering the feeding with SNA - I am lazy and I feed my yeast a large dose of nutrients day 1. What does staggering the feeding do that giving them a large single dose doesn't?

 

[KTbrew]

Off topic, I know - so apologies - but is there any real solid evidence for the difference between feeding the nutrient load when pitching the yeast and staggering the feeding with SNA - I am lazy and I feed my yeast a large dose of nutrients day 1. What does staggering the feeding do that giving them a large single dose doesn't?

I doubt that the wine industry would be using SNA if it was pointless. I have used both methods on different occasions and found that there are appropriate times to use both. If your going to use a monster yeast that will power through anything such as ec-1118 one large dose at the beginning is usually fine. Other yeast such as 71-B may consume all of the nutrients earlier in the fermentation and finish sluggishly or not fully attenuate. I have tried them side by side with different results.

However, I'll admit that adding one large dose is a much simpler method and may be a better way to for someone new to the hobby. Sorry if you found this to be off topic. Just trying to share some basic knowledge and sprinkle in a little info on how some of the most awarded mead makers in the country do it.

 

[bernardsmith]

No no - it was my post that I wanted to recognize as "off topic" - going more deeply into a question of TOSNA or SNA vs a single feeding. The OP had asked only very basic questions about mead making. So my post should (arguably) have started a new thread. I didn't, hence my apology to the OP.

 

[Maylar]

Off topic, I know - so apologies - but is there any real solid evidence for the difference between feeding the nutrient load when pitching the yeast and staggering the feeding with SNA - I am lazy and I feed my yeast a large dose of nutrients day 1. What does staggering the feeding do that giving them a large single dose doesn't?

That's something to ask Squatchy and the boys over at GotMead.

 

[bernardsmith]

Perhaps - but 1. Groennfell Meadery argues that there is no value added with TOSNA or SNA and
2. Admittedly, I am a social scientist , not a natural scientist but it seems a wee bit random - to say the least that any scientific process refers to 1/3 sugar breaks as the best time to make any additions when 1/3 and 2/3 is VERY different when the SG was 1.060 or 1.120. If the process was about feeding the yeast when they had consumed X points of sugar and then 2X points etc OK I can make some sense of that but 1/3 of 60 points is 20 points and 1/3 120 is 40 ... so why would the yeast with the lower sugar content need more nutrients BEFORE the yeast with the higher sugar content? Kinda random, no?

 

[KTbrew]

Perhaps - but 1. Groennfell Meadery argues that there is no value added with TOSNA or SNA and
2. Admittedly, I am a social scientist , not a natural scientist but it seems a wee bit random - to say the least that any scientific process refers to 1/3 sugar breaks as the best time to make any additions when 1/3 and 2/3 is VERY different when the SG was 1.060 or 1.120. If the process was about feeding the yeast when they had consumed X points of sugar and then 2X points etc OK I can make some sense of that but 1/3 of 60 points is 20 points and 1/3 120 is 40 ... so why would the yeast with the lower sugar content need more nutrients BEFORE the yeast with the higher sugar content? Kinda random, no?

First of all, sorry for jumping to conclusions on the off topic thing.

I'll admit that in addition to trying single nutrient addition, SNA and TONSA I have simply played it by ear and added nutrient as I felt it was needed. I once did small additions every day untill about 3/4 of the sugar was consumed.

Now I'm not scientific enough to do this but I'd like to see a nutrient schedule where the quantity of the additions and timing is based on sugar content. Am I thinking about this correctly? Doesn't it make sense that the amount of nutrient needed would vary based on the sugar content and the amount of work the yeast needs to do?

Perhaps this method already exists and I'm just too dense to know.

 

[KTbrew]

BTW- Steve Fletty is a champion mead maker and he uses a single addition.

 

[bernardsmith]

Totally, agree - I would think that any nutritional protocol must surely be based upon the total amount of sugar and the amount of work the yeast is doing to deplete the sugar - and metrics that are based on "thirds" has nothing to do with any absolute amount fermented. If yeast need X g of nutrient because they are fermenting Y g of honey then at different amounts of Y 1/3 will vary. If I use the SAME size yeast colony with the SAME viability (ie the same number of viable cells per cubic ml) but with DIFFERENT total amounts of honey then why would the SAME depletion not require the SAME amount of nutrient? This model says, No. The yeast require LESS nutrients at the SAME point of fermentation. Why is that?
Moreover, if there is a point where yeast cannot assimilate any nutrient and they cannot when the ABV exceeds 9% then for most folk who make rocket fuel mead - in excess of 15% ABV, they cannot use staggered nutrient additions as at the 2/3 "sugar break" (this is mead, for heaven's sake , not beer - there is no "break" in mead making - protein or sugar, (sigh)) the yeast can no longer take up any nutrient. In my opinion, this model is based on faulty thinking rather than any good science but I would really love to see proof that I am wrong and that there is chemistry behind this - chemistry and not alchemy.

 

[TheNotoriousM.E.A.D]

I want to thank all of you for the very thorough answers! I am a scientist during the day and I thought I was taking a measured approach but some of you guys *really* watch every ingredient!

Since I am new, my focus right now is on (1) trying different honeys (2) trying different yeasts and (3) trying different honey:water ratios.

I have obtained 12 half-gallon glass jars and am just trying different combinations of each to see what I like. At the moment I have two different honeys brewing and I should be obtaining two more first thing tomorrow morning.

I’m trying to find the best combination for a two week primary, no fruits, just straight honey wine. I’ll worry about the fruit combinations once I have a reliable recipe for the primary.

 

[S-Met]

To keep in the off-topic train:

1. The need for SNA in the wine industry may not be applicable on small scale applications.

2. I use fermax (just because no other reason), but aside from the name, I don't know much about them vs any other yeast nutrient. Realizing that nutrients may vary, does anyone know if it is ionic or covalently bound to must? Does the solvent properties of alcohol reduce its availability during fermentation?
Does it remain in solution or is it a suspension that can precipitate to the bottom? SNA may make sense in that part of the original addition of yeast nutrient could be sitting unused in the trub at the bottom of the fermenter.

 

[KTbrew]

Totally, agree - I would think that any nutritional protocol must surely be based upon the total amount of sugar and the amount of work the yeast is doing to deplete the sugar - and metrics that are based on "thirds" has nothing to do with any absolute amount fermented. If yeast need X g of nutrient because they are fermenting Y g of honey then at different amounts of Y 1/3 will vary. If I use the SAME size yeast colony with the SAME viability (ie the same number of viable cells per cubic ml) but with DIFFERENT total amounts of honey then why would the SAME depletion not require the SAME amount of nutrient? This model says, No. The yeast require LESS nutrients at the SAME point of fermentation. Why is that?
Moreover, if there is a point where yeast cannot assimilate any nutrient and they cannot when the ABV exceeds 9% then for most folk who make rocket fuel mead - in excess of 15% ABV, they cannot use staggered nutrient additions as at the 2/3 "sugar break" (this is mead, for heaven's sake , not beer - there is no "break" in mead making - protein or sugar, (sigh)) the yeast can no longer take up any nutrient. In my opinion, this model is based on faulty thinking rather than any good science but I would really love to see proof that I am wrong and that there is chemistry behind this - chemistry and not alchemy.

Good thoughts. I don't know the science well enough to determine exactly what's going on in a staggered nutrient feed. Hopefully someone will look into this and some day we will have a better process. All I know is that the methods we have today are way better than what I started out with. Back in the day the guy at the home brew shop handed you 3 lbs. of honey and a packet of yeast, gave you some simple instructions and basically said mix this up and wait a year.

A couple of years ago I tasted some mead which was made using a completely different process than I had ever heard of before and it was fantastic. They asked me not to share it with anyone at the time (probably for the purpose of competition) but I think enough time has elapsed at this point.
They were doing staggered yeast additions with very little DAP. They were making big, healthy, active pitches on a stir plate. I think they were pitching some DAP at the beginning. I haven't tried this myself yet but I keep saying that I'm going to. I can't remember which yeast they were using or the timing of the yeast pitches. I can say that they were making traditional meads that fermented out in two weeks and were drinkable in a month and they were fantastic.

 

[KTbrew]

I want to thank all of you for the very thorough answers! I am a scientist during the day and I thought I was taking a measured approach but some of you guys *really* watch every ingredient!

Since I am new, my focus right now is on (1) trying different honeys (2) trying different yeasts and (3) trying different honey:water ratios.

I have obtained 12 half-gallon glass jars and am just trying different combinations of each to see what I like. At the moment I have two different honeys brewing and I should be obtaining two more first thing tomorrow morning.

I’m trying to find the best combination for a two week primary, no fruits, just straight honey wine. I’ll worry about the fruit combinations once I have a reliable recipe for the primary.

Just a quick tip. Different yeast strains all have their purposes. They all contribute different characteristics and have their own strengths and weaknesses. While one yeast may work well in a traditional mead (honey only), you may be disappointed in it in a fruit mead. Fruit adds natural nutrient which yeast loves. There's a good chance that you will be impressed with ec-1118 in your traditional mead trials. This yeast could potentially be a wreck in a fruit mead.
Good job for being scientific about it though. A lot of people just take a shot in the dark and wonder what went wrong. Just don't discount a yeast because you don't like it on the first trial. It may be perfect for a different mead.

 

[TheNotoriousM.E.A.D]

Progress report - the first of my mead has been through its first racking, pic below. This is two different honeys in different honey:water ratios. I also made some tasting notes after sampling just a little from each.

Should I be concerned about the amount of space between the mead level and my airlock? Is that too much oxygen?

6 more half-gallon jugs to rack tomorrow! After that, I will probably start a new batch to start testing different yeasts.

 

[TheNotoriousM.E.A.D]

One more question: I am allergic to a lot of environmentals (flowers, trees, grass, etc, etc) and I sometimes use honey to help me with those allergies. When I eat local honey straight, it causes a reaction in me and that's fine, I'm used to it.

When I was doing my tasting today, I also had allergic reactions. I would have thought that at some point, the pollen in the honey would die off in the mead making process - am I wrong on that? Does it indicate anything right/wrong about my process thus far?

 

[TheNotoriousM.E.A.D]

Another observation - went to my first home brewing store today. I picked one according to Google Maps that had pretty decent ratings. The people there weren't very good though. I just wanted to browse the store and just take a little look at everything. But they were constantly on me and didn't just give me room to breathe. I managed to get some different yeasts to experiment with, but it should have been a completely different experience with more of an opportunity to browse.