Dandelion Honey Mead - Bitter Aftertaste

[corwin3083]

I fermented a varietal honey show mead with dandelion honey; it fermented out completely. As I've heard is typical with dandelion honey, it still has a sweet taste to it, but unfortunately, it also has an unpleasantly bitter aftertaste.

I did not add anything to this mead other than dandelion honey, yeast nutrient, and water.

My questions, therefore: Do I simply attempt to bulk age this flavor out? Or perhaps attempt to sparkalloid it out, as this mead is clearing very slowly? Or could something such as e.g. acid blend or wine tannin help balance out these flavors?

 

[Arpolis]

Wine tannin is bitter itself so not that and I rarely think meads need acid blend since honey is acidic itself. If it is dry the I might try and stabilize and back sweeten. If you still like it kinda dry then just bring the gravity up to about 1.002 - 1.004. The rest will fix itself with time.

 

[corwin3083]

Any thoughts on how long to bulk age versus clarifying and aging in bottles?

 

[biochemedic]

Interesting flavor report given the honey source...dandelion can be used as a bittering agent...I have had dandelion IPA and it is quite good (I don't think it was entirely bittered with dandelion...)

Generally if you have an unpleasant or overbearing flavor, you need to do something to balance it out. Yes, sometimes things will mellow with time, like the time I used 3 pounds of ginger in a 6 gallon batch! After over a year and a half, it has mellowed significantly, but was still very hot. I ended up back blending that mead with a base mead done with the same honey (orange blossom), and also lightly back sweetened it (gravity 1.006 after sweetening). It came out really, really nice...I actually just bottled it last night.