Mead Making Short Pour - From the Northern Brewer blog

It will be a week on Sunday. I got the yeast from my local beer place and used it two days later.

I suspect your yeast is toast. Can you get another pack soon? I would recommend ec-1118 at this point. You’ll get a dry mead, but it will ferment for sure.

Id also recommend a starter - take a little of your must, add some water to dilute, and sprinkle in your fresh yeast. There should be activity within a few hours. Once it’s going nicely, add the whole thing back to the whole batch.

It just so happens that I have some 1118 downstairs.

I do not know what you mean by the second part (puts on flame suit).

A starter’s just a way to get your yeast acclimated to the high sugar environment so they aren’t stressed when they get rehydrated. You can actually kill the yeast by rehydrating it when there’s too much sugar dissolved in the liquid.

To keep things simple, sterilize a drinking glass, add some lukewarm water, and maybe a pinch of sugar. Sprinkle the yeast on top, and cover it with some sanitized aluminum foil. Don’t stir, just let it dissolve and rehydrate on its own. Wait a half hour, you’ll probably see the start of fermentation. Dump it into your mead. Should be good to go!

Thank you for your help, PC. I will attempt this tomorrow. Would a hydrometer reading tell me anything before I restart it?

Always a good idea. Although it’s unlikely that you missed active fermentation, it’s worth a check to make sure it didn’t ferment out.

Here is what it reads tonight -

lots to ferment there… Add yer new yeast as PC suggests? Sneezles61

I did last night - do I feed for 4 days again?

Are you using DAP for feeding? I don’t think I’d want to add more than necessary. At this point id just ferment it out with ec-1118 and let it age. It will dry out with 1118, so if you’re looking for a sweet or off-dry mead, you’ll want to look into back sweetening.

I do not know if I have tried a dry mead, so I may just let it do its thing. How long does it need? 6 months?

In my experience, just until it clears. Some people age it for a year or more to take care of the “hot” alcohol flavors, i.e., fusels. Keep temperature around 70F, add yeast nutrient (like you already did), and pitch enough yeast, and you’ll be fine. But bottle it when you like the flavor.

Dry mead to me tastes a lot like dry sake. A bit of an acquired taste, but well worth acquiring.

It is bubbling like crazy for days! Will report back when it clears!

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Doesn’t look like anyone has hit this post in years, but here’s hoping someone is still out there paying attention. I’d really like to nail down the process of mead making, but I’m getting information overload from all the posts to the point I don’t even know where to start and I don’t want to lose interest before I even get started.

Don’t laugh, but I ended up here because I bought the Elder Scrolls Cookbook and it covers making three different styles of mead so I thought I’d give it a go. I followed the process and they’ve been sitting for a couple weeks now, but after I started reading up on it I realize there is SO much more to this than the book talked about that I’m guessing it’ll be a total stroke of luck if any of them turn out.

The instructions where super high level and didn’t go into any real details about the how and when to do a lot of the things I’ve read about. I have no idea what next steps should be with what I’ve done so far. The books states the version with berries is best after two weeks, but they could all sit for three months. Seems like there’s a lot of things I should be monitoring and processes I should be doing to ensure a good result.

HALP!

Making mead is relatively simple. One thing ive learned is the longer you let it sit. And the person that told you 2 weeks is steering you wrong. I only make 1 gallon batches and experiment with flavors. That will give yo 5 wine bottles. I sometimes have 2 or 3 going at once. I leave them in the fermenter until they clear, racking with nutrient whenever the sediments build up which takes a couple months. Then bottle and age. I always save at least 1 bottle for long term aging. If you want a fast turnaround beer would be the way to go. Im not saying you can’t drink young mead but it is one thing that i can say for certain gets better as it ages

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I suspected that there was more to it than the book let on. It was a little confusing to read “up to three months” of fermentation, then read in the next paragraph that one of the three types was best sample while young at two weeks. I was like…so which is it? I ran with the directions and got the three different types working away. It’s been two weeks as of yesterday and I’ve not touched them. I’m in no rush, just want to make sure I treat them properly so they at least turn out average for the first time.

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There is how you’ll find out which will be yer preferred Mead… Learning from X-beermenting is a very fun side show to these hobbies!
Do keep us in the loop… Perhaps some of us may give mead a try…
Sneezles61

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I had a mead period in my brewing and was very dissatisfied initially. Then I sat one some bottles for a couple years and those bottles were amazing.

Check out BOMM on the NB forum. I followed that program and had good mead at a couple months. Had some of that batch that was a couple years old and ohhhhh mmmmmaaannnnn…,

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@JohnSpartan117 welcome to the forum. Don’t be afraid to ask any question, no matter if you think it’s ‘stupid.’ We all got a start at this hobby one way or another. I fell into it after my wife sat on a wine kit for a couple years.

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