basic mead questions

[franc1969]

I came into some nice German honey this fall, and decided to make small batches of mead to compare yeasts. I made 3+ liter batches, what should rack out to 3 liters now for aging. Alcohol level comes out to about 12%, depending on your calculator.
Essentially - do I treat these batches as I would wine? They are done fermentation and should get racked today. Do I just add sulfite and wait? This is the first mead I've tried. They smell utterly amazing, but have a slight scum on top. Wax and such, I assume.

 

[BernardSmith]

Mead is essentially a wine. I treat my mead as wine. You say the smell is "amazing". What about the taste. Some meads need a little back sweetening to bring out the flavors of the honey and if you have any of the honey that you used to make the mead that would be perfect - IF the mead needs sweetening.

 

[franc1969]

I haven't tasted yet, first rack will be today. I do have the same honey, for later sweetening.

 

[Kantzje]

Do most Mead made on the Dry Side Taste like a White wine ? I am a Honeybee Keeper haves buckets of honey from the summer Harvest here
in Northeast PA.
I am asking for I Love Dry Red's (Malbecs,Cabs,Merlot ) no so much the white wines ,I honestly will grab a Lager beer over a white

Respectfully
Jeffrey

 

[dmw_chef]

Most traditional meads? Arguably. Most meads? No.

 

[BernardSmith]

I don't know, dmw_chef. I would argue that meads taste a lot like... a mead. They certainly don't taste like red wine (tannins and esters and other flavor compounds are very different) but I don't know that they have the taste of a white wine (the acidity is different). Every honey tastes different dependent on the flowers to which the bees have access: Orange blossom honey mead tastes different from raspberry honey mead and heather honey mead tastes different from meadowfoam honey mead while mead made from Tupelo tastes... out of this world...

 

[cmason1957]

If you are a big fan of the dry reds, meads may not be your thing. I drink, maybe one white wine per quarter and am not a big fan of mead. Never had one that made me say, boy I just have to finish a full glass of this.

 

[dmw_chef]

There's a lot more to mead than just traditionals. I'd hazard a guess that the vast majority of meads made are not traditionals.

 

[David Violante]

It’s definitely not traditional if I’m making it... mine will probably be experimental for some time..! LOL actually the last ones I made was pretty good, thanks to the help of @dmw_chef, @BernardSmith and others.

If you’re looking for a big red, you’re not going to find it in a mead, or a white, or anything that’s not a big red though. They’re all different really. That being said, I could see a light summer mead having the same ‘feel’ of having a light summer white. @Kantzje where in PA are you and how did you fare with your bees this year? It sounds like they’re doing well!

 

[dmw_chef]

I have a triple berry no-water melomel that takes offense to the implication that no mead can stand up to a big red.

 

[David Violante]

Oh I’m quite sure it can stand up to a big red, my point was more so that if you’re looking for a CAB, that’s what you’re looking for. Certainly no offense to the triple berry~ I would say the same if they were switched. If I’m looking for a mead, a CAB isn’t it. I’m not slighting the CAB or the mead, they’re their own things.

 

[jgmann67]

Apologies if I’m hijacking this thread, but I saw the title “basic mead questions,” and well... I have some.

I see two schools of thought: do a straight mead then blend with flavors vs. ferment all together and backsweeten at the end. Which way do I go?

Does mead need to be degassed?

Clear before bottling?

One recipe said to bottle in 4 months and let it sit for a year, and it didn’t sound like degassing or clearing was even a consideration.

 

[David Violante]

I’m just beginning with mead but here’s my understanding... you could go either way with blending. Some flavors diffuse better in water (if used in your mead) ahead of fermentation when there is no alcohol, and some better in alcohol (afterwards). I imagine some of it is your preference for taste and some of it is also how you practice.

Back-sweetening is something different, although you can impart flavors and taste depending on what you use to back-sweeten. For example, I can use honey to bring up the sugar content of a wine prior to fermentation to get my SG up to 1.090. During fermentation, some of the flavors may not come through the other end based on type of yeast, temperature, nutrients, etc... so I will typically use sugar to bring up the SG in wine, and back-sweeten with honey to get the amazing flavors of the honey. Use potassium sorbate after fermentation and before sweetening or fermentation could start again just as you would with wine. Another way to keep it sweet is to have more sugar than your yeast can ferment (a higher SG) and so not all the sugar gets turned into CO2 and alcohol. I don't have experience with this method, however, so someone else will have to chime in.

In terms of degassing, just like in wine making, yeast will produce CO2 and alcohol and so it's quite similar to that regard. Same with clearing. I've used bentonite in all my ferments for clearing, and as I've read here to give the yeast a place to do their work. It has worked quite well for me in terms of clearing both wine and mead. I've been reading lately that it's not so important to degass so quickly as the CO2 helps to protect the wine / mead if you're cellaring it for a length of time. Plus, as I understand it, the CO2 helps maintain some acidity, which helps potassium metabisulfite protect better at lower levels, and it helps protect any head-space issues. If you're bottling sooner, it's best to degass.

I've heard that the longer mead sits the better it is. I'll say that for the first mead I made this is very true. @dmw_chef helped me with understanding nutrient addition and amount of honey to use up front and the second mead I made didn't last 6 months. @BernardSmith is also a meadist with a lot of experience and I believe @winemaker81 is as well.

I bulk age in carboys until I'm ready to bottle. I'm suspicious of bottling early, in that it seems like a ploy to make more. Unless the ploy is by my wife and not someone selling me something. LOL

 

[Rice_Guy]

I will second @David Violante with a special emphasis on age. Try to let it sit 18 months.

Honey contains proteins that act as a cloud agent, to back sweeten with honey is adding turbidity.

 

[dmw_chef]

Honey contains proteins that act as a cloud agent, to back sweeten with honey is adding turbidity.

Low dose of bentonite (3-4g/gal) after back sweetening helps take care of that.

One recipe said to bottle in 4 months and let it sit for a year, and it didn’t sound like degassing or clearing was even a consideration.

With modern best practices, there's no reason you can't have mead that's perfectly delicious at 4-6 months. The key there being 'modern best practices'. That's the rub - 95% of the information and recipes you're gonna find through google is going to be trash. Do yourself a favor and check this wiki out: index - mead

it's probably the best freely available repository of knowledge on the internet for modern meadmaking. There are also a ton of recipes that use modern practice.