Mead questions

[Old_timer]

This is the first year I've made mead and I have a few questions. My first batch is still very young. I currently have it cold crashing but it almost tastes like sweetened grapefruit. Is this normal? My second question is I made a mistake making several batches at once and one of the batches. I only added about 2 lb of honey maybe less to my cyser and I forgot to take my SG I've worked 14 hours that day and was just tired and wasn't thinking. So my question is it's been going for about 4 days and I just caught it. Is it too late to pull some of the wine out and mix it with honey and add it back in to the mead?

 

[Hazelemere]

If it tastes sweet rack all of it to mix it and then leave it alone i.e. don't add more honey.

 

[winemaker81]

Welcome to WMT!

If the first mead tastes sweet, why are you cold stabilizing it? Fermentation is not complete and it may (or may not) complete when the mead warms up.

What did you add besides the honey? Honey won't taste like grapefruit you must have something else in there. What type of acid did you add?

For the second mead, there's no problem adding more honey. You already know what you need to do to get it dissolved.

 

[Old_timer]

Welcome to WMT!

If the first mead tastes sweet, why are you cold stabilizing it? Fermentation is not complete and it may (or may not) complete when the mead warms up.

What did you add besides the honey? Honey won't taste like grapefruit you must have something else in there. What type of acid did you add?

For the second mead, there's no problem adding more honey. You already know what you need to do to get it dissolved.

That one is about 2 months old sorry for leaving that information out. It's 2 separate brews

 

[Old_timer]

That one is about 2 months old sorry for leaving that information out. It's 2 separate brews

No acids was added which is my concern. I used a wildflower honey that was very high in tulip poplar. It's sweet because I did back sweeten it. I think I should have let it dig ass longer and I thought the honey might smooth it out with it. Aging but the grapefruit flavor is very outputting. Until

Thanks. I will add honey to the second one.

 

[winemaker81]

I have a Vidal (French-American hybrid) that has a grapefruit taste, but that's due to high acid and the grape varietal. I have no idea what's causing it in your mead, other than the honey itself.

 

[Rice_Guy]

Welcome to Wine Making Talk
* I would not cold stabilize a mead. I use that term for the action of chilling and precipitating bitartrate off of grape wine. Without adding too much tartaric acid you can’t get tartaric to crystallize.
* The honeys that I have looked at have a pH above 4.0,,, I add acid to my mead. A cyser (apple juice) can come in as high as 4.5 and as low as 2.9. I blend to get a pH between 3.5 and 3.2. Do you have a meter? or pH paper?
* grapefruit flavor? which is off putting. Ethyl alcohol which is oxidized (acetaldehyde) has sharp flavor notes. At low level a little over 100ppm I would describe it as dried apricot like. At high levels I would describe it as a burn in th back of the throat when swallowing. Really low levels are like apple. What was your head space/ oxygen control ,,, My guess is this could be something in the honey. Honey is a magical flavoring ingredient.
* mead is many animals. There are a lot of good meads which come in at 1.000 ,,, can you measure where your gravity is?
* Do you know anyone who can taste it or test it?
* Sweet? we like specific gravity numbers. A beverage like mead or wine or soda is a balance of acid flavor and sweet flavor. If it is too sweet we can fix it by adding acid. In a contest judges have a little acid blend so that we can add a pinch and then see if the flavor balance improves.

 

[Hazelemere]

Here are some ideas that may help you going forward:

1. I'm an old timer like you, just turned 74 2 days ago.

2. You have the ability to be an excellent winemaker because a) you pay attention to feedback from skilled winemakers on this forum b) you appear to be curious

3. If you are really serious about learning your craft then post your mead recipe and notes exactly the way you made it so when you make it a second time it is a much better version of what you made e.g. clear in the bottle unlike yours.

4. The best thing about what you did is that you like the flavour. I guarantee you that if this same recipe is clear the wine will taste better, possibly even a lot better.

5. I make meads all of the time and all of my meads are crystal clear without filtration within 3 months of fermentation.

6. This is a really good website with some really talented winemakers...You are in the right place.

7. Make your mead recipe a second time with your new skills.

8. Read every post on all links on this site which will teach you, if you can absorb it all while being discerning (suspending belief or disbelief), how to be a really good winemaker. Learning how to be a really good winemaker takes time. It took me 19 years to learn how to transcend shitty winemaking. I made some really bad wines in my first 19 years but I never gave up and finally got better, a lot better and am still learning having been a winemaker for 56 years and a grape grower for 47 years.

9. Winemaking isn't paint by numbers at the highest level. e.g. I'm a professional chemist with 55 years of lab experience and never use my pH meter because.............drumroll.......I trust the sides of my tongue. i.e the sides of your tongue are the ultimate pH meter with no need to quantify or calibrate. If you want to know acidity in a wine, get it in your mouth and taste it on the sides of your tongue ie. God's pH meter.

 

[Old_timer]

This is the first year I've made mead and I have a few questions. My first batch is still very young. I currently have it cold crashing but it almost tastes like sweetened grapefruit. Is this normal? My second question is I made a mistake making several batches at once and one of the batches. I only added about 2 lb of honey maybe less to my cyser and I forgot to take my SG I've worked 14 hours that day and was just tired and wasn't thinking. So my question is it's been going for about 4 days and I just caught it. Is it too late to pull some of the wine out and mix it with honey and add it back in to the mead?

This is the first year I've made mead and I have a few questions. My first batch is still very young. I currently have it cold crashing but it almost tastes like sweetened grapefruit. Is this normal? My second question is I made a mistake making several batches at once and one of the batches. I only added about 2 lb of honey maybe less to my cyser and I forgot to take my SG I've worked 14 hours that day and was just tired and wasn't thinking. So my question is it's been going for about 4 days and I just caught it. Is it too late to pull some of the wine out and mix it with honey and add it back in to the mead?

Ok I found multiple problems first my digital thermometer was not reading correctly when I pasteurized an back sweeten fermentation restarted and resulted in fermentation restarting and more CO2 building during the cold crash. The combination of CO2 and bitter honey notes resulted in grapefruit taste.

Pasteurizing method was 140f for 5 minutes.

I let it hit room temperature about a day and re pasteurized after racking. I then readjusted my back sweetening. The result has been great. I wanted to post to hopefully help future mead makers.

 

[Rice_Guy]

The target that I have seen was 140F for ten minutes. Note that if running something like cider one has a probe and does not start timing till the test bottle is at temp. I have said “wine is a multi-variable food preservation system” the required time/ temp can be reduced at a lower pH or should be increased if the yeast nutrition is optimal.

 

[BernardSmith]

Apologies, Old Timer. Only now getting to read your post. If you are making a cyser, then I would expect that the apple juice would provide about 50 points of gravity (1.050) - could be a little less, could be a little more. Two pounds of honey dissolved in water to make 1 US gallon will increase the gravity of that water by 70 points so if your total volume was 1 US gallon, then your gravity before pitching the yeast would have been 1.120 which is a potential ABV of about 16%. I would not want to add a drop more of money. Mead (and wine) is always all about balance and balancing a mead at 16% ABV is a challenge. Of course, if your total volume was more than 1 US gallon , (and you don't tell us that fact), then your starting gravity would be lower: the apple juice would be the same but you would need to divide the 70 points (.070) provided by the 2 lbs of honey by the TOTAL volume of this batch (if 2 gallons, then .035, if 3 gallons, then .023)