So it’s been almost a year since I started my first few small batches, trying to come up with a good recipe to follow.
All of them left a little sediment at the bottom of the bottle, which I guess means I bottled too soon. I just pour off the top gently for now, but how long should I wait to bottle? Seemed like it had finished settling…
I had one batch with a medicine/chemical taste and smell. Read the post about that earlier, and they seemed to point to temp during fermentation, but I don’t think that was my issue. Did four batches at the same time, prob 60-65 degrees in the basement in Jan in CT
That batch had some Kiwi in it. Took longer to settle out.
Think it got oxidized? What does that taste/smell like?
Getting ready to make a full 5 gal batch with buckwheat, which came out nice last time except for sediment, but nervous about this unexplained chemical taste/smell I stumbled into…
I see a few possibillities. 71B at those temperatures is a very good yeast. The Staggered Feeding is also good for keeping yeast happy, but you are missing buffering the ph of your must. Next 5 gallon batch, add 3/4 Tablespoon of potassium bicarbonate (aka K2CO3 or potassium carbonate). This will add potassium, which is a limiting nutrient in honey, and Will also prevent the ph from dropping too low. Low ph will cause the yeast to be unhappy and make chemical flavors and will stall fermentation if it drops below a ph of 3.
Another possible source of chemical flavor is your fruit or honey. Any pesticide in your fruit or in the honey will show up in the mead. I had a batch of honey that I gave up on due to the bees pollinating a pesticide treated field! Try organic fruit or removing the peel and a different honey source. The Bee Folks are a reliable source as well as Northern Brewer.
If the chemical flavor is not pesticide, it will age out over time. A clean ferment supported by SNA and ph buffering will always produce less off flavors and require less aging.
By the way, oxidation tastes like wet cardboard. Oxidation is a non issue in mead. I’ve had bungs pop off for over a month with no oxidation flavor at all. It’s a problem in beer due to a chemical reaction with hops.
Sediment is normal in the bottle, but can be minimized by allowing the mead to clear completely before bottling. I mean crystal clear that you can read a newspaper through it. I have taking to using superkleer as of late, but it may strip some flavor from the mead. Your choice!
For more mead specific information, check out gotmead.com. Hope that helps!
[quote=“loveofrose”]I see a few possibillities. 71B at those temperatures is a very good yeast. The Staggered Feeding is also good for keeping yeast happy, but you are missing buffering the ph of your must. Next 5 gallon batch, add 3/4 Tablespoon of potassium bicarbonate (aka K2CO3 or potassium carbonate). This will add potassium, which is a limiting nutrient in honey, and Will also prevent the ph from dropping too low. Low ph will cause the yeast to be unhappy and make chemical flavors and will stall fermentation if it drops below a ph of 3.
Another possible source of chemical flavor is your fruit or honey. Any pesticide in your fruit or in the honey will show up in the mead. I had a batch of honey that I gave up on due to the bees pollinating a pesticide treated field! Try organic fruit or removing the peel and a different honey source. The Bee Folks are a reliable source as well as Northern Brewer.
If the chemical flavor is not pesticide, it will age out over time. A clean ferment supported by SNA and ph buffering will always produce less off flavors and require less aging.
By the way, oxidation tastes like wet cardboard. Oxidation is a non issue in mead. I’ve had bungs pop off for over a month with no oxidation flavor at all. It’s a problem in beer due to a chemical reaction with hops.[/quote]
Thanks!
Haven’t tried monitoring or correcting for PH.
Will def dd it to my workflow!
It’s a little late but the chemical/medicinal flavor often comes from chlorine in your water that you used for your must. When the yeast come in contact with chlorine, it causes some strange side effects in your mead and one of them is the smell and taste of medicine or chemicals. It’s recommended that you either boil your tap water to remove the chlorine or to use a carbon block filter. This will also remove the hard metals from your water while leaving other dissolved minerals such as calcium which is beneficial to the fermentation stage.
I learned the hard way that chlorine/chloramine can be hard to remove from your brewing water. Activated charcoal filters and boiling don’t seem to do the job. For years I wondered why my beers (and most of my homebrew friends’ beers) had a slightly funky taste. The strange thing was, most people thought the beers tasted fine. Did some research and discovered that chlorine can be removed pretty easily but chloramine can’t. Chloramine is used for that very reason. It will stay mixed in the water longer to keep doing its job. Great for the people tasked with keeping our water clean and safe, but not so great for a home brewer. And, from what I’ve read, certain people are much more sensitive to that off-flavor than others. Apparently I’m one of those people.
The only way I’ve found to eliminate these chemicals from my brewing water is by using campden tablets (sodium metabisulfite or potassium metabisulfite). And for me, it doesn’t help to treat the bulk of the water and then top off with tap water at the end. Even adding a gallon of untreated water is noticeable to me. So now I take the full amount of water I will need, run it through a charcoal filter and add (usually) half a campden tablet. Supposedly a full tablet is enough to treat 20 gallons of water and I never use nearly that much. Then I wait a little while before I use the water to give it time to work.
Sure I could use bottled water but who wants to carry gallons of it home every time they want to brew. Not to mention the added expense. Campden tablets are dirt cheap and easy to use.
Another thing to consider is that your mead needs to age. I do not like the taste of young mead. I’ve had young mead made by the very best mazers, and didn’t like it any better than my own. In fact last year I got to attend a seminar, at Anachrocon in Atlanta, by one of the guys who first developed the staggered yeast nutrient method. I owe him a huge debt for his work and how it’s impacted my mead making, but I didn’t like his young mead at all. My point here is that it can be a matter of taste. You may be doing everything perfectly, and simply need to age your mead longer to like it.
Up until I got to take that seminar and talk to that teacher I wasn’t sure if the problem was me or the mead. Now I know for sure I have been doing it right, it’s just a matter of taste. I got to see him do it, and I got to sample some of his mead ranging in age from recent to 6 years old. His stuff wasn’t noticeably better than what I’d made (following his instructions meticulously). I will say the stuff I made using his methods is much better than the stuff I made without his methods and want to pay proper respect to his work. It turns out that he and I just have very different taste. I thought for sure I was doing something terribly wrong and if I just figured out my mistake I’d like my mead as much as he likes his.
There is a strong flavor unique to mead that does age out. Some people like it, some people don’t. It could be described as chemically. Without tasting your mead I can’t tell if that is what you are referring to, or perhaps it’s some other flavor. Please consider that your only “problem” may be that you don’t like young mead. By all means look for ways to improve your process, check your water, and keep learning, but don’t rule out the possibility that you’ve made great mead that needs to age.
