A couple new meads I've started

[Travisty]

One of my girlfriend's co-workers had three cherry trees in her back yard and she said whoever wanted cherries should come out and pick what they wanted. So naturally we were there that night! haha Two of the trees are North Star Dwarf trees and the other is unknown to us but it is a much more sour cherry. We got about 15lbs of each kind and steam juiced them in separate batches. The North Star cherry juiceI started a cherry wine with. 3 gallon batch with a starting SG of 1.085.I just racked out of the secondary to a clean carboy. The color is awesome! Very dark. Kind of a ruby color. Hope it keeps that color. The sour cherries we decided to make mead with. Another co-worker of my girlfriend's has a lot of honey laying around. She tried my JAO and demanded I make more and said we could use her honey. Score! It's a dark honey. We don't know what kind it is though. I startedup a new 6 gallon batch of JAO (use EC-1118 for yeast though, like my last 1 gallon batch) and I started a 3 gallon batch (Starting SG of 1.085) using the sour cherry juice. I just transferred that to the secondary tonight. It's a much lighter color right now than the north star cherry wine, but I'm betting the color will deepen as it begins to clear. Interestly enough, I took a SG reading of the JAO before pitching the yeast. I used about 3.5 lbs honey per gallon and got a starting SG of around 1.140! Granted, I will be adding some water later to top up once the fermentation subsides, but I was not really sure if the yeast would fire up with that much sugar. But, a few hours later it was bubbling away.


Anyway, here's crappy camera phone picture since we all like picures!

From left to right: North Star Cherry wine, Sour Cherry Mead, JAO

 

[Waldo]

WOW..Might high starting sg...What is your target ABV for this one?

 

[Travisty]

WOW..Might high starting sg...What is your target ABV for this one?

For the JAO? I'm just going to let it go til the yeast is done. The only thing I did different from the normal JAO recipe is that I used EC-1118 instead of bread yeast. It should be similar to the last batch I did, but I never took a starting SG for that one and I used a different honey. I was curious this time what the SG would be and boy was I surprised! I wonder if different honey's have different levels of sugars in them. One would have to assume so. This honey seemed to pour much easier at room temp than store bought stuff so I would have thought it would have less suars (or at least solids in general) in it.

 

[Waldo]

I have found that honey is definately different. I had two quarts, sam type honey,from the same batch and both had different SG readings. I have learned to start out less than what a given recipe may call for and then adjust accordingly as required.

 

[Wade E]

With that high an SG and that yeast you are going to have some potent stuff that will need quite some time to chill. Dark honey is probably Buckwheat honey. Ive seen higher SGs that had no problem fermenting and lower SG;s that barely made it a few notches on the hydrometer. i know there is a tolerable level to each yeast strain though. Hope they all are great.

 

[smurfe]

Thats really not that high of an SG from my experiences. I checked the SG on one batch of JOA variation, the Kumquat mead and it was right at that. I believe it was 1.130 and it came out fine. I used 3.5 lbs honey pergallon. I used the cheapeststore brand honey from Wal Mart for this batch.I think it finished like 1.025 or so.I used the bread yeast though. I useNow, with the Lalvin yeast you will probably have a more thorough fermentation which will result in higher alcohol levels. It may need quite a bit of age to drink. Don't know though, I don't know the attenuation of the bread yeast.


The dark color will be much lighter after clearing and bottling as well. Notice the Kumquat went from this color:

To this after fermentation, clearing and filtering.

 

[Travisty]

Update on these meads. I racked the cherry mead of the gross lees a while back and it tasted absolutely horrible! But from my reading, this is normal so now it sits in my "cellar" waiting to become good.

I racked the JAO last night. It's been sitting with no activity for a couple months now and the fruit just started to drop. Looks like the EC-1118 decided to stop at about 1.042 or so. So it's about 13.5ish% ABV. Kinda surprised at that since EC-1118 should be good to 18% right? Maybe I should warm it up a bit and see it fermentation begins again. It tastes good right now. Sweet, but good. But I'd hate to have it start refermenting in the bottles! Thoughts on that?


BTW pulling 6 cut up oranges out of a 6 gallon carboy is a pain in the rear! haha The one gallon batch was easier in that regard.

 

[Waldo]

Next time trav use panty hose to put the oranges in first. Put one slice, tie it off, put in another, etc, etc. then you just have a long string of them that pulls out easily...Bet you didnt know I was that smart did ya

 

[Wade E]

I would sure try warming it up and adding some nutrient as that yeast should not have stopped there. 1118 is pretty tolerable to cooler temps to so thats weird. What were the temps in there.

 

[Travisty]

Temps would have been in the mid 70s during the active part of the ferment. Once it stopped bubbling I put it down in my cellar room which has been in the mid 60s down to 60 at the lowest I believe. The nutrient is probably a good idea. I wonder how much I should use. I'll try that and I'll slap my brewbelt on it for a few days and see if anything takes off.


The pantyhose is a good idea too Waldo. No worries, I figured you were about as smart you look!

 

[Waldo]

Hmmmmmmmm, I think I have been cut !!!

 

[Wade E]

I would add 1 tble spoon and the warmer temp with brew belt and give it a good stir to arouse it!

 

[Travisty]

All in good humor Waldo!

Wade, you and I must be on the same wavelength here. I did pretty much exactly that when I got home tonight. Only thing different I did was to add 1.5 teaspoon yeast energizer as well. We'll see what happens!

 

[Wade E]

Hopefully those get it going cause thats an awful high sg to end up with.

 

[Travisty]

True, it is a very high final SG. The sweetness wasn't objectionable though, even for me and I don't usually like very sweet wines. I would still like to see this finish out though. Maybe if nothing happens, I should pitch a new EC-1118 starter.

 

[NorthernWinos]

I am very interested in seeing how this turns out. I have my first ever honey Cyser going....it is fermenting like crazy.

When I mixed it up the S.G. was 1.088 and the next day I stirred it when I added the additives the S.g was up to 1.090....guess more honey had dissolved and th temp was probably a little more room temp....

I used K1-V1116 yeast and it's fizzing like crazy.

Do you stir Mead type wines everyday while it's fermenting???
I had read to do it twice a day, but it's bubbling/fizzing like crazy.

 

[Dean]

Usually with a mead, I like to break up the additions of nutrient in 3 stages, 1/3 at the start, 1/3 at 1.050, and 1/3 at 1.020. I usually stir during that time, however, you can safely treat this like wine,and just leave it to ferment. The breakup of nutrient additions can make a mead drinkable quite a bit earlier.

 

[Travisty]

Thought I would update everyone on this JAO. I ended up splash racking to try and get some more O2 to the yeast and I added some yeast nutrient. After a few days nothng was happening yet so I rehydrated some EC-1118 and slowly built up a starter by adding a little of the mead, waiting for that to start fermenting, and periodically adding more mead making sure it kept fermenting. After I got about a gallon of that I added it back to the carboy. That seemed to do the trick. It is still fermenting over a month later! I haven't taken any SG reading yet. I'll do that once the bubbling stops. I'm curious how long this will ferment.

 

[grapeman]

Just like the Energizer Bunny!


Glad it got going again for you. It will probably take a while to finish up with the alcohol building up more all the time.

 

[montyfox]

For those of you who have made the JAO before, can you give me some idea of outcome using wine yeast verses bread yeast. I made my first batch following the directions and used bread yeast. I had great results and everything fermented just fine. However, I'm wondering if the tast would be even better if I had used wine yeast. Has anyone compared this and if so, what do you think?


Monty