Spontaneous MLF

[chasemandingo]

So I started a blueberry melomel JAOM style on the 6th of October 2013. On December 6th the mead was still not clear. And is still not clear to this day. Since December it has been still producing bubbles in the wine. Not enough to bubble the airlock more than a bubble a minute or less but clearly not offgassing. I believe I have a spontaneous MLF going on since I popped off the airlock and there was no noticable acetic acid smell. I've been waiting since Dec. for this process to fizzle out and am getting impatient. The mead is gonna be way too sweet for my taste anyway but blending may not be an option since adding more malic back in could sustain the MLF longer or cause bottle bombs if i wait till this round of MLF is done. Anyway, is there a solid solution to my problem? I was thinking of doing a port out of this. Would the addition of kmeta and uping the overall ABV from 14% to 20% kill off the culprits?

 

[grapeman]

You could possibly add another thing in there to help. Try cooling it down to the low 40's, then add the k-meta and bring the alcohol up to 20. That should stop it and keep the bottles safe. I would still wait a week or so after treating to be safe.

 

[chasemandingo]

Thanks.....I guess I now have a plan lol.

 

[Deezil]

How sure are you, that its MLF?

Are you sure fermentation finished in the first place?

Did you degas it? You say its not clear.. Mead's can hold an unbelievable amount of CO2

I would be highly surprised if you had spontaneous MLF in a mead, especially since the dominant acid in blueberries, is Citric

 

[grapeman]

That was my first thought also deezil, but it is blueberry and blueberry is notoriously prone to spontaneous mlf.

 

[Deezil]

Really? Hmm..

I still wonder if it's just CO2 though..
Degassing that Apple-Pear Bochet with my vacuum pump, for an hour, left a lasting impression lol

 

[chasemandingo]

I did not degass as I do not want to rack without adding kmeta since I used bread yeast I was not able to add any sulfites before or during fermentation.

 

[chasemandingo]

I also do not own a vacuum pump lol

 

[BernardSmith]

But you can splash rack which is to say you rack from one carboy into another so that the mead flows down the inside walls of the target carboy. What that does is to increase the surface area and decrease the depth of the mead being siphoned. This encourages the CO2 to be expelled. If each time you rack you don't simply allow the mead to pour from the racking tube but you aim it at the wall then after a couple or three rackings much of the CO2 will have dissipated.
You may need to rig a device to the end of the siphon that aims the mead at the wall and that spreads out the flow of juice in a more horizontal rather than vertical manner.
And yes, it will expose the mead to a little more oxygen than simple racking but since there is so much CO2 in the mead that ought not to be a problem although I do see that you are saying that you have a reason for declining to use K-meta. Why would the fact that you are using bread yeast be a reason to avoid sulfating the mead? Is bread yeast too weak to withstand SO2?

 

[chasemandingo]

I was under the impression that sulfites kill wild yeast which are pretty much the same as bread yeast. I.e. they haven't been used specifically for wine which has led to evolutionary changes (sulfite tolerance) in certain strains. At this point I'm not worried about the yeast as they should have died off long ago. I'm worried about suppressing a mlf only to have it start back up in the bottles...

 

[BernardSmith]

I was under the impression that sulfites kill wild yeast which are pretty much the same as bread yeast. I.e. they haven't been used specifically for wine which has led to evolutionary changes (sulfite tolerance) in certain strains. At this point I'm not worried about the yeast as they should have died off long ago. I'm worried about suppressing a mlf only to have it start back up in the bottles...

Not sure that bread yeast is equivalent to wild yeast. Mind you I have never experimented with bread yeast and SO2 but I would suspect that if you inoculate your must with enough bread yeast there will be a large enough virile colony to neutralize the SO2.

But that said, JOAM is a technique and recipe supposedly created to result in a drinkable mead made by a new hand at mead (or indeed wine) making. The recipe, I think calls for slices of oranges and the idea is that the slices drop to the bottom of the carboy when enough of the CO2 has been expelled and can no longer support the weight of the fruit, but if you slice the oranges too large or too small methinks that that indicator would not really work well enough to use as a test for completion of fermentation...

The other thing is that I thought JOAM was a very limited technique but you say you added other fruit - blackberries - so I think perhaps that all bets may be off and the masters of JOAM may refuse to validate their "warranty".

 

[chasemandingo]

Well it is a JAOM variant and I used organic blueberry juice and a cinnamon stick. I also threw in the raisons for nutrients and as the indicator. They are all still floating on top. Anyway, We will see what happens. I may just have to keep this one in the fridge in the gallon jug and drink up quick lol....

 

[chasemandingo]

There are four possibilities for this phenomenon. Either MLF, or acetification, an active yeast fermentation or off gassing. I know there is plenty of malic acid in blueberries and MLF does produce CO2 as a by-product. Acetification occurs when bad bacteria eat the alcohol and produce acetic acid and CO2 so that is a possibilty as well. There is plenty of residual sugar left in the mead so a slow yeast fermentation is also a possibility. Also, as someone pointed out, the residual honey in mead can trap a lot of CO2 and it may just be off gassing. I can not smell any noticable vinegar smell so I think acetification is out the window. I have never had a JAOM variant trap gas like that and mine have all ended around 1.03 final gravity. I would have to check the actual S.G. but if it has reached that point then the bread yeast used would most likely have died from alcohol poisoning as they really can only handle around 14% give or take. So if I check S.G. and it is around there then MLF is the only culprit I can come up with.....

 

[Deezil]

You used blueberry juice?
I'd still think it'd be either a slow alcoholic fermentation, or just natural off-gassing..

MLF is pretty noticeable, once you've seen it. With off-gassing, you dont always see the bubbles rise through the carboy, but you will with MLF.. The bubbles will seem to have a 'generation point' - a point where they just seem to magically appear and start traveling upwards (with MLF), and there will generally be a small ring of bubbles around the neck of the carboy at the wine's surface.. Not always, but it's what I've noticed.

Off-gassing.. The airlock just seems to keep burping, and burping, and burping.

This is only a gallon-batch right? I'd leave the airlock on, and shake it vigorously - left to right, in a sort of rough swirl motion; not up and down..

Shake it, let it stop swirling; shake it again, let it stop again; rinse repeat.. Do this for 10-15 minutes, and then leave the batch alone for 6-12 hours and see if it starts clearing at all...

If it resumes bubbling like it has been, then there's something going on - whether its loaded with CO2 and still offgassing (has happened to me - i shook it, and about an hour later it was bubbling like i never touched it), alcoholic fermentation or maybe it really is MLF..

I'm still leaning towards CO2, from this perspective

 

[chasemandingo]

Well there are noticeable bubbles and their generation point is right above where the carboy starts to taper toward the neck. Tiny bubbles and yes it is a one gallon batch. So there are bubbles being generated in the carboy which are visible. With this in mind would you lean toward MLF Deezil?

 

[Deezil]

Yeah, that definitely takes my certainty out of it

Have you tasted it or tested the acidity, to see if it's moved?
Can be kind of hard, with a young, aging wine, taste-wise..

Sometimes helps while tasting, to take the 'sample' and shake the CO2 out of it, as that will give a sort of acidic-bite that will throw off your senses when trying to gauge something so fine

Were it me, I'd probably let it finish - for the sake of the stability of the wine - and then adjust the acidity later on, with Tartaric Acid..

It will stop 'generating' visible bubbles at some point, but the wine itself will still be loaded with CO2.. That's when I'd rack off any lees/sediment.. Could be done more accurately/scientific using a chromatography kit, but that works for a 'rough gauge'

 

[chasemandingo]

I guess it is a waiting game then. However I was thinking of making a port style out of this. I would take a quart of pure blueberry juice and cook it down to a pint. I would add that as well as two bottles of wine -maybe a merlot and cab- to the mead and then a bottle of brandy. That would mean more malic acid and the possibility of more MLF. Would a drop in temp and the rise in ABV really be enough to rid me of this potential problem?

 

[grapeman]

If you get the S02 to about 50-60 ppm along with the higher ABV there won't be any worry about mlf. The low temps will stun the bacteria, the higher S02 and high alcohol will keep it from multiplying. I'm not sure about the quart of heat reduced blueberry, but it sounds interesting. Check the S02 after it is blended.

 

[chasemandingo]

Well I have no way of testing the SO2 level. Not that advanced yet lol. However, I can add enough SO2 for two gallons to my one gallon and hope that will do it....

 

[grapeman]

Careful you don't overdo it. If you have added some by now you should not need more than one campden per gallon if that is what you use.