First mead in the fermentor, tell me if I did it right.

[Thirsty Boy]

Hi guys,

A couple of weeks ago I put on a 1 gallon batch of melomel.

I used a nice Yellow Gum (Australian eucalyptus tree) single variety honey, which is quite light in colour but really tasty.

Recipe is

4 litre batch size

1 Kg Honey
100g Cane sugar
12 x cumquats (halved)
1 x cinnamon stick
1 x whole clove
0.5 x tsp Yeast nutrient

OG = 1.11

yeast = Safbrew S33 dried yeast

I'm looking for a semi sweet mead and I want to carbonate it.

The plan was that the yeast according to the manufacturers (Fermentis) info, should manage to ferment to around 11.5% and then crap out. With my 1.11 OG that should leave me at an FG of 1.025 ish, which I think will be sweet, but not too sweet.

Then I will let it age in bulk, then when its crystal clear, I will rack, feed it a little bit more honey and a gram or two of fresh dried yeast and bottle.

The new yeast should just about manage to carbonate the mead before turning up its toes.

Or I could just force carbonate it and be done??

Does that all sound just about right?? or am I kidding myself?

Thirsty

[yabodie]

I think your plan will be OK. What yeast will you use to carbonate? Same stuff or different? If it is the same it might not take off, due to the alcohol content when you bottle. I’ve never carbonated mead in a bottle, so I would suggest putting it in a keg and carbonating it that way. Safer and more control too.

I have to admit it is nice having 4 meads on tap. no need for a fridge as they are cellar temp.

The other thing I would suggest is to rack off the spices in about 3 weeks, or when the flavor gets to be stronger than you want. It will mellow over time. If you leave it on the spices until you bottle/keg it might be a bit strong...

[Thirsty Boy]

Thanks Yabodie,

I think I will probably force carbonate it, but if I were going ot bottle condidtion it..

I thought that I would use the same yeast. I dont want a more alcohol tolerant one, or it will just eat through all my residual sugar.

I figured that I would pretty much "Krausen" it. Make up a small amount of must with the required amount of sugars for carbonating the batch. Pitch the yeast and let it get going, once its krausening away, I would dose the new must into the old mead and bottle it up.

That way there should be enough momentum in the nice new yeast to eat up the nice fresh sugars and carbonate the mead, but it should keel over and die before it gets to eating up my residual sweetness...

Bit risky really. Might just force carb it. Maybe one bottle of conditioned, just as an experiment.

Thanks for the advice about the spices. As soon as the airlock stops bubbling regularly, I will give it a taste and see what the spice levels are. Fortunately with just one cinnamon stick and one whole clove... I dont even have to rack. I can just fish them out with sanitised tongs Thats if they dont sink to the bottom in the meantime.

Cheers mate

Thirsty

[DannyW]

Uh oh. I found this on gotmead.com:

Raymond Malpas wrote, "Eucalypt often do not make the best meads, ...species such as Yellow Box , Red Gum, Yellow Gum, Jarra, Marri
which are all part of the Eucalypt species are difficult to make mead from, mainly because of the typically strong overt flavours.

Sounds like you may be in for a long wait with that yellow gum honey.

I (Malpas) have spent a lot of time making meads from Eucalypt varieties against conventional wisdom. I have found these meads to be more
difficult to make (very long initial ferment 12-18 months, to ferment to dry) and long aging up to 2 years before producing something reasonable.

Thirsty, have you ever had the opportunity to try Yellow Gum mead before? How did it taste?

[Thirsty Boy]

Uh oh. I found this on gotmead.com:

Raymond Malpas wrote, "Eucalypt often do not make the best meads, ...species such as Yellow Box , Red Gum, Yellow Gum, Jarra, Marri
which are all part of the Eucalypt species are difficult to make mead from, mainly because of the typically strong overt flavours.

Sounds like you may be in for a long wait with that yellow gum honey.

I (Malpas) have spent a lot of time making meads from Eucalypt varieties against conventional wisdom. I have found these meads to be more
difficult to make (very long initial ferment 12-18 months, to ferment to dry) and long aging up to 2 years before producing something reasonable.

Thirsty, have you ever had the opportunity to try Yellow Gum mead before? How did it taste?

Yeah I have. It tasted lovely. Virtually no trace of the gum tree flavour. Just subtle hints. Of all those eucalypts named above, I'm pretty sure that Yellow Gum is the lightest and most mildly flavoured. At any rate it was the honey recommended to me by the Meadmaker and Apiarist that I bought the honey from... it was his mead I tasted. His advice was that it should be fine in 3-4 months and get better with age from there. So hopefully I will be OK.

But your are certainly on the ball... Its my understanding that the general wisdom is indeed that eucalyptus honeys aren't suitable for meadmaking. They are certainly bloody nice on toast though

Thanks for the heads up

Thirsty