One Mother Four Children Mead

[seth8530]

I am back at making session mead again. The plan is to have one 26 gallon batch of mead and split it into 4 six gallon sub batches. ABV will be kept low to encourage a faster turn around and also to deliver a fresh and refreshing taste. The last batch I tried to make I ended up using too much fermaidO in it since I did not account for the YAN efficiency multiplier associated with using fermaidO. So lets see if take two ends up any better.

So here is the general plan for the mother mead. She will have four children.

ABV = 5.5%

SG = 1.042

Volume = 99 Liters

Yeast Choice = Lalvin 71B-1122

Fermentation Temperature = 60F

Yeast Pitch = 25 grams

Go Ferm Protect Mass = 31 grams

Must Volume = 99 Liters

YAN Requirement = 87 mg/L

GoFerm Contribution = 30 grams => 9 mg/L Upfront

FermaidK Contribution = 25 grams => 25 mg/L At end of lag phase

FermaidO Contribution = 43 grams =>53 mg/L Assuming its YAN is 3X as good as DAP YAN. Half up front half at 1/3 sugar break

Honey Required = 32lbs or 2.65 gallons.

Lets talk about the kids.

Dry Session Mead

Semi Sweet Session Mead

MintJulep/G&T Themed Session Mead

Peach Session Mead

I will expand on the kids once I think them all the way trough.

 

[seth8530]

Got this guy going with a buddy tonight. Thus far we are following the plan pretty well except it took around 2.9 gallons of honey to hit our target of 32 lbs of honey. Volume should be pretty close to 26 gallons. Original gravity is measured at 1.056 via refractomater. We should have measured honey by volume instead of mass. my scale sucks. Looks like we can have an ABV of up to 7.3% now. 1/3rd sugar break will now be around 1.037

 

[meadmaker1]

Folks say that a quart jar holds 3 lbs of honey
But that is *********.
I try every year and make a huge mess.
2lbs 14oz is as full as im willing to go. Leagally im supposed to list weight in ozs and grams but no one else selling farm direct does so quart it is.
But for getting close enough to be close to target sg i use this info then adjust. And i have two digital scales and another in my service van

 

[seth8530]

Folks say that a quart jar holds 3 lbs of honey
But that is *********.
I try every year and make a huge mess.
2lbs 14oz is as full as im willing to go. Leagally im supposed to list weight in ozs and grams but no one else selling farm direct does so quart it is.
But for getting close enough to be close to target sg i use this info then adjust. And i have two digital scales and another in my service van

2lbs 14 oz is pretty darn close by my reckoning. But I feel your pain. I would not of had this problem if i was not using a silly digital bathroom scale. To me I figured eh 5.5 percent 7 percent. Both would make me happy so I went with it. If I was really confident about my volume I could have adjusted.

Looks like we are out of lag phase so I just added the fermaidK in. Gravity is around 1.052 turned on the chiller to keep us at 60F.

 

[Stressbaby]

turned on the chiller to keep us at 60F

FWIW, I think the lower temp ranges cited for yeast are really suspect.
I like QA23 for example. I set my chiller system at 59F for a previous batch, expecting to slow it down at least a little. Nope, powered through in about 6 days.
I have a batch of pear wine right now in the chiller, using QA23, this time set at 55F; the wine temp is around 57 because my insulation is not that good, but it's churning along, dropping 0.010 per day.

 

[seth8530]

Gravity is now at 1.040. Going to go ahead and add the rest of the nutrient in.

 

[seth8530]

Racked to secondary. Gravity was around 1.008 so it still has a bit to go. Here is a picture of the strawberry mead with around 12 lbs of berries.

 

[Deezil]

Hey Seth,

Glad to see you're back at it!
I'll try to keep up with the goings'ons, but still drowning in University studies over here

Hope all is well with you
Cant wait to see how this turns out

 

[seth8530]

Hey Seth,

Glad to see you're back at it!
I'll try to keep up with the goings'ons, but still drowning in University studies over here

Hope all is well with you
Cant wait to see how this turns out

Its great to be back at it again. I feel ya. I finished school a couple of years ago and things got a lot better after that.

 

[seth8530]

Whew! After a couple hours of work I manged to get three of these guys into kegs.

The dry mead finished at 0.998, which means these guys are likely right around 7.5% ABV.

I back sweetened one of them to 1.020 for a semi-sweet to sweet mead and I backsweetened the strawberry mead up to 1.030 in order to have a sweet mead for guest. I will be back with tasting notes once we got bubbles. I am shooting for around 3.8 volumes of CO2.