hi
on monday i made a 4 gallon must with 5 lbs of frozen preservative free blueberries (dunked lightly in iodophor wash and allowed to drain) and a first addition of 10 lbs of honey. in another month it gets 5 lbs more blueberries and 5 lbs more honey.
i have the fruit added to the fermenter in a 5 gal fine mesh sack to keep them from covering the top thickly and to make extraction later easier.
i rehydrated 2 x 5g sachets of lalvin 76b-1122 yeast and pitched at 72f… temperature differential neglible.
it is going on day 3 with no foam, no airlock activity. temp in the 6 gal bucket shows 69.6f.
now i may be nuts but when i stick my ear on the lid i can hear a faint fizzing.
do you think i absolutely need to add fermaid or some such nutrient? is it too late? how would you add it and how much?
is this yeast a slow starter or does the general rule of airlock activity not being an indicator of fermentation at work here?
does the whole fruit have enough nutrients for yeast?
thanks for any input. im new to mead. i usually do beer but wanted to see what i could make.
[quote=“gonavy1066”]
i rehydrated 2 x 5g sachets of lalvin 76b-1122 yeast and pitched at 72f… temperature differential neglible.
it is going on day 3 with no foam, no airlock activity. temp in the 6 gal bucket shows 69.6f.
do you think i absolutely need to add fermaid or some such nutrient? is it too late? how would you add it and how much?
does the whole fruit have enough nutrients for yeast?
thanks for any input. im new to mead. i usually do beer but wanted to see what i could make.[/quote]
You’ll get very little foam in mead compared to beer. Take a gravity reading to see if the yeast is working.
I’ve never added any nutrients when adding fruit to a mead.
thanks for the reply. it’s good to know that the lack of violent activity that i get with beer is normal. earlier (before reading this) i sanitized the lid and popped it off the fermenter. i figured its only day 3 so it shouldnt hurt.
the ‘fizzing’ … i’ve never seen yeast ferment like this. it’s like pop rocks dropped in water! so i punched down the bag with the berries. just to be nice to the yeast because i was worried about the lack of nutrient, i pitched a smallish feeder of boiled yeast and a crushed centrum vitamin.
hours later i was hearing burps coming from the inside of the bucket. i shown a light from the lid down and every 20 seconds or so there is a water spout that shoots up about 2 inches. co2 works its way around the mesh sack and BURP!
i didnt take an OG reading. i’ll be adding more honey and fruit in a month so i figured i wouldnt bother.
it’s so weird that different strains of yeast behave so differently. anyway, thanks again for the reply.
