Why does my mead taste horrible?

[RocketBee]

I made a traditional mead last year, and I'm happy with how it turned out. I used d47 yeast as well, and is quite light in alcohol for a mead, just under 12% and fermented dry. It has citric notes (lemon mostly) & flowers. The finish is decently long.

I didn't use much nutrients, actually none at first which resulted in a stalled fermentation but that didn't seem to harm it. My basement crawl space is quite cool, ~65F, which is where is finished fermentation and bulk aged for about 10 months. The honey was sourced from a small farm where the bees had their primary forage from wild blossoms, was harvested in the fall and was unfiltered & unpasteurized.

That's all I can recall about if from the top of my head, let me know if any other details would help

I've done a bit more research on the subject. That research and your comment about your fermentation temperature leads me to believe that my fermentation temp was just plain too high. Thanks for the reply.

 

[Mead Maker]

I’ve never tasted a commercial mead that was worth drinking, and I’ve tried a lot of them.

When I hold my mead making class — usually at local beekeeping clubs — I always end with a tasting. The first half dozen bottles are commercial meads. After 10 years of classes I’ve only had one person that liked the way any of them tasted. Usually there are a lot of funny faces when they taste some of the worse dreck they’ve ever put in their mouths.

Then they taste my meads and it’s smiles all around. That’s why people started asking me to hold classes.

Mead is a very time sensitive wine. It’s not something you’ll be drinking 3 months down the road. Mead competitions typically will only take entries that are a year old or older. Some only take 2 or 3 year old entries.

Before making my first ever batch of mead I checked the internet for mead recipes. I‘ve been making “country wines” since I was 10 years old will pretty much try turning anything sweet into wine. When I saw the internet recipes I thought why the heck are they adding things like oranges and cinnamon to a wine? I decided to make my mead like I would any other wine.

Even after a year it tasted and smelled terrible. I put the 9 gallon batch out of the way in my wine room and forgot about it. At 2 years it was still awful — but a little better. At 4 years it was drinkable but not great.

At 5 years old it became nectar of the gods. It was outstanding and I took home 3 blue ribbons at the Delaware Beekeepers competition. The original batch was sweet mead, several gallons were fermented to dryness and a higher ABV, and the original was blended with a ruby sherry for my “augmented mead.”

It seems that time is a critical factor in mead production.

A few years ago I worked with a yeast PhD from a local university who wanted to be able to produce a drinkable mead in 30 days. That goal was unreasonable, but I was able to make a blue ribbon mead in 366 days. I swept the competition.

The honey you use makes a difference. Tasty honey makes tasty wine.

The mead recipe from WMT member Sven calls for boiling the must. IMHO you should NEVER boil your honey — it just removes the delicate flavors that distinguishes the various varieties of honey in the finished mead.

Others call for adding meta bisulfites to the must. There is no need because honey is a natural antiseptic. I have never used bisulfites in any of my meads and have never had a problem.

In general I think the members of the WMT add sulfites to their wines way too much and too often. Wines are living entities and I have no desire to kill them. I add sulfites right after crushing and pressing — and never again. You may feel your wine is perfect at a particular moment and want to keep it there, but you miss the complex flavors that come with age.

I make a cranberry wine that is very tasty at 90 days, and makes a great addition to Thanksgiving dinner. I recently found a 2013 batch lost in my wine room. It’s so much better than what I was bottling at 90 days. The flavor and aroma of the cranberries is more distinct. I look forward to entering it in competition.

A final word on an old thread on “Brochet,” or burnt mead. Like a Cajun roux, you never want to burn your honey. That burned flavor will be there forever — and that’s not good. You want to brown or caramelize the honey to bring out the flavor.

 

[RocketBee]

@Mead Maker thank you for the thoughtful reply and you make a compelling case. First of all, I know nothing...really. But I am curious...a little slow sometimes, but not dumb. You seem to be a bit at odds with those who claim to make drinkable...and even high-quality meads in much shorter time frames using modern methods of staggered nutrient addition, oxygenation and prepping the yeast for the long trip through the nutrient desert of mead must. I'm hearing that when the yeast isn't happy then they produce all sorts of fusels and off-flavors. And folks who don't do this are making poorer quality mead which is why they say it takes time for a good mead to develop. What do you say about these methods and claims?

 

[Rice_Guy]

* I agree with @BernardSmith, doing plain is a harder test/ skill level, ,, for me if I can do a good dandelion my mechanical process is down. To @jgmillr1 comments, , oxidation is our biggest risk when we stray away from red grape. There are several layers of antioxidants that are missing in fruit wine,,,, so what do you/ I have to add to get as good as red grape?
By design I put most fermentations at a pH of 3.25 and use metabisulphite.
* in judging I would say there are three I have really liked. A blood orange mead that was best of class, a brouchet, and a crab apple cyser. Most of the mead in the Vinters club or at contest feels blah,,, not very hedonic. Wonder what @Mead Maker tasted? the contest brouchet I had had Carmel notes.
* what I learned in the vinters club is: meads have better honey notes at 18 months than at 9, so hide some in the back of the shelf, meads take a long time to clear unless you boil/ denature the proteins in it
* we hear the term “balance“ when it comes to wines. Balance is a tool which we use to hide problems. With the cyser last fall I added Roughly 50% crab apple to insert tannic/bitter flavors since straight meads missed this and it is in red grape. My opinion is 50% crab was too high since to finish it,, the bitterness was balanced by back sweetening to 1.020 with organic apple concentrate. Yes this had acid blend in the recipe.

Good luck on the next batch.
(two cents worth ,,, my point of view is a food industry person who could call flavor houses for “flavor tools” to play with,,, and most things off the lab bench don’t last over a year)

 

[Mead Maker]

"RocketBee" thank you for the thoughtful reply and you make a compelling case. First of all, I know nothing...really. But I am curious...a little slow sometimes, but not dumb. You seem to be a bit at odds with those who claim to make drinkable...and even high-quality meads in much shorter time frames using modern methods of staggered nutrient addition, oxygenation and prepping the yeast for the long trip through the nutrient desert of mead must. I'm hearing that when the yeast isn't happy then they produce all sorts of fusels and off-flavors. And folks who don't do this are making poorer quality mead which is why they say it takes time for a good mead to develop. What do you say about these methods and claims?

======

Bernard Smith casually mentioned that he won a first at the Mazer Cup in 2016 for his spiced mead. That’s like saying, “by the way, I won a gold medal at the last Olympics.”

Hail to thee, Bernard. I stand in the shadow of your greatness.

In general, I’ve always thought spiced wines were invented thousands of years ago to hide flaws in the wine, just as marinades were invented to cover the taste of meat gone bad. That said, I’d be interested in tasting a spiced mead done right.

Rocket Bee is right. The yeast professor is really big on “pushing the fermentation,” as he calls it. Following his technique, I have used more yeast nutrients with one batch than I have used in total for years with my usual meads.

In addition to the usual yeast nutrients I use diastatic malt powder, a product used primarily by bread bakers. It really gives fermentation a big kick in the butt. I recommend it highly.

Basically, you add more nutrients and honey whenever your primary fermentation slows down.

With a large fermentation vessel, like a 10 gallon bucket or vat, it’s often difficult to judge fermentation vigor by sight. I fill a 750 ml “test bottle” halfway with my must and top it with a balloon. When the balloon starts to deflate it’s time to add more nutrient. I pour my test bottle into the vat, add my nutrients and some honey, give it a good stir, and refill my test bottle. Repeat every time the balloon deflates until you reach the alcohol tolerance of the yeast you’re using. This should take from 10 to 21 days, but let your balloon be your guide

And stir your must twice a day.

Once primary fermentation has stopped, it’s time to let the mead sit and age. It will clear in abut 30 days, but in my experience, this stage takes about a year for a good tasting wine.

The big commercial meadery in my area bottles after 30 days, or less using osmotic filtering. IMHO, their product is horrible.

I filled a bottle with my 1 year mead to test next March, and will compare it with the mead aging in the vat. There shouldn’t be much difference between the two, but my feeling is that the vat-aged mead will taste better. Only time will tell.

 

[hounddawg]

i spent a few years trying to make traditional meads and quite a few melomels, not my cup of tea either, i got a couple cases of a blackberry flora melomel 2014, used organic wildflower raw honey, blackberries and some floral tasting hops from Australia, opened a bottle last week, my opinion hasn't changed, but my reckoning is it is most likely it is my lack of talent, but after reading this thread, i might try a pineapple reaper pepper but if i do i'll have to ponder on the type honey, i knew better then read these threads dang it anyway,,,
Dawg

 

[Yooper🍷]

Been beekeeping for 6 years. In 2015 I made this batch of carbonated in the bottle Lemon Mead. Just cracked a bottle. Still fizzes and clear and tastes great so it can be done keep trying. I could post recipe if you want. Monty

 

[RocketBee]

I could post recipe if you want.

Please?

 

[Yooper🍷]

Dug up my notes from May of 2015 - made a little over 4 gal - 16 16oz swing tops and 24 12 oz beer bottles w/caps
5/18/15
2 3/4 gal of water to 170 degrees
3 lb honey
3 cans Natural Minute Maid Premium Lemonade Frozen Concentrate (12 oz cans)
2 1/2 Tsp Yeast Nutrient
1 Lb corn sugar
mix all till dissolved and cool
spg 1.071
Add rehydrated EC1118
5/19/15
1 lb corn sugar in 1 pint water and boil for 3 min - cool
8 oz honey
5/26/15
1 lb corn sugar in 1 pint water and boil for 3 min - cool
8 oz honey
sg 1.085
When sg got to 1.022
added 8 oz corn sugar in 1/2 pint water and boil for 3 min - cool
1 lb honey
rehydrated pkg of Champaign yeast
sg 1.04
8/05/15
Racked in new carboy
9/06/15
5 0z plain sugar in 8 - 10 oz water and boil for 3 min - cool
rack into bottling bucket
stir and bottle

Thats what I did - made it couple of times since then. Was always good

 

[winemaker81]

I don't recall anyone mentioning ABV. In my experience, beer strength mead (5%-8%) appears to age much quicker than wine strength (11%-14%). This makes sense -- I've read articles regarding wines that age for decades which mention a number of contributing factors, including higher alcohol content. Consider that normal red wines can take years to develop, so there's no reason to believe that mead might not require the same.

@RocketBee -- Put your mead away for another year then test it. It costs nothing to do that, and you might be pleasantly surprised.

 

[1d10t]

I just added some glycerine and xylitol to some mead that is about 6 months old. This mellowed out a bitter aftertaste. Still some rocket fuel going on but pretty good otherwise. I'll probably bottle it today after another taste and sit on it for awhile.

 

[Yooper🍷]

Did a 3 gal. Batch of carbonated lemon mead in 2015. Have a few bottles left and it still tastes great.

 

[RocketBee]

So, I made another batch of traditional mead with my own honey, which is a very sweet, but a light-tasting honey. I didn't use D47 like the last time and I fermented in the basement which was quite a bit cooler so the fermentation temp was cooler as well. The mead that has been produced doesn't taste like crap this time. No off-flavors...but nothing incredible. I don't think my light-tasting honey is suited for a traditional mead...it probably would be a good base for spiced mead or a melomel. But, the good news is that I followed @BernardSmith and his suggestion to make a good traditional before jumping in to a fruit melomel just to cover up the imperfections. I also should say that I got some help from a new friend who was a runner up in the Mazer cup to guide me. That certainly helped!

All that to say this: I paid up for some meadowfoam honey and I want to make a traditional mead with it. Any suggestions for a yeast and a solid recipe...traditional or otherwise? I've seen a couple recipes online using either D47 or QA-23 yeast. I'm not opposed to using D47, but still a bit gun-shy as I believe I would need some method of keeping the fermentation cool.

 

[Yooper🍷]

It has to be the recipe. I have a few bottles of sparkling lemon mead from 2015. That still tastes great. Don’t give up. Find a new recipe.

 

[BernardSmith]

Meadowfoam honey has a taste of marshmallows and that honey can hold center stage in a one man show. The thing is that wildflower and clover honeys are delightful honeys but they really cannot hold the spotlight.

Not so much a suggestion but I tend to use 71B.
Robert Ratliff who is a friend of Gotmead and who has had two books of mead recipes published by Gotmead suggests K1V-1116 for traditionals.. You might also check out Premier Blanc. And I have used DV10 which produces delightful mouthfeel qualities but that yeast is not one that my LHBS tends to stock (MoreBeer may have this in manageable quantities)

 

[dmw_chef]

@RocketBee I'm a big fan of QA-23 for trads; it's a big glycerol producer that really helps with mouthfeel. If it runs warm, it throws some pleasant tropical esters instead of vomit like D47. I posted my usual go-to recipe for a trad here. I've been kinda curious how that worked out for @David Violante.

There are a couple things I'd add if you really want to up your game:

• 150ppm FT Blanc Soft (about .6g/gal) at pitch.
• 1.25g/gal opti-white at pitch
• 1.25g/gal booster blanc (can be at pitch, I prefer somewhere around the 1/2-2/3 sugar break)

I think people sorta miss the point on the 'master traditionals' advice; everyone always focuses on the flaws, but it's really all about the balance. Using good yeast selection, modern practice and nutrition, it should be fairly easy for even a beginner to produce meads without major flaws. In traditionals, however, getting a clean ferment is only part of the story. I would posit that achieving good acid/tannin/sugar balance is **more** important in traditional meads (especially dry) than in possibly any other style of wine. If you want to *master* the traditional, you're going to need to also learn how to use oak, powdered tannins, and acids to balance your mead in secondary.

My process once primary is finished usually comes down to:

1. Rack onto .38g/gal k-meta, optionally stabilize with k-sorb and back sweeten
2. Add .5 oz/gal oak **cubes** for 4 months
3. Bench trial acid and powdered tannin additions
4. Bottle at least 8 weeks after any powdered tannin additions

I outline my process for bench trials (evaluating how a particular powdered tannin or acid addition will impact the mead) here.

 

[RocketBee]

Wow! Thanks for the post @dmw_chef ...amazing stuff for slobs like me. And, my Mazer cup friend who helped me encouraged me to use the finish tannins as well as the opti-white and oak cubes AND the use of acid additions/back sweetening to get the proper balance. So all that seems to be a good practice for success. Also, I'm curious about your trad recipe's use of Fermaid-K in addition to Fermaid-O. Usually I just see the O and not the K.

And finally, "pleasant tropical esters" sounds a bit more to my liking than "D47 vomit."

 

[RocketBee]

Meadowfoam honey has a taste of marshmallows and that honey can hold center stage in a one man show. The thing is that wildflower and clover honeys are delightful honeys but they really cannot hold the spotlight.

Not so much a suggestion but I tend to use 71B.
Robert Ratliff who is a friend of Gotmead and who has had two books of mead recipes published by Gotmead suggests K1V-1116 for traditionals.. You might also check out Premier Blanc. And I have used DV10 which produces delightful mouthfeel qualities but that yeast is not one that my LHBS tends to stock (MoreBeer may have this in manageable quantities)

@BernardSmith thanks again for your reply. I wanted to use DV10 for my last trad, but the LHBS guy looked at me like I had two heads growing out of my neck when I asked for it. So I opted for D21 instead.

 

[dmw_chef]

Also, I'm curious about your trad recipe's use of Fermaid-K in addition to Fermaid-O. Usually I just see the O and not the K.

It has been my experience (augmented by experiences of many trusted friends) that when you start pushing into higher ABVs (>14-15%), especially when you're trying to push past the ABV tolerance of your yeast, a combination of organic and inorganic YAN is more reliable than organic nutrition on its own. When I calculate nutrition, I fill YAN first up to Scott Lab's recommended limit from O, then up to the TTB limit from K, then up to the TTB limit from DAP, then fill the remainder of the YAN supplementation with O.

Here is a good read if you'd like to understand yeast nutrition a bit better.

 

[David Violante]

@RocketBee I'm a big fan of QA-23 for trads; it's a big glycerol producer that really helps with mouthfeel. If it runs warm, it throws some pleasant tropical esters instead of vomit like D47. I posted my usual go-to recipe for a trad here. I've been kinda curious how that worked out for @David Violante.

There are a couple things I'd add if you really want to up your game:

• 150ppm FT Blanc Soft (about .6g/gal) at pitch.
• 1.25g/gal opti-white at pitch
• 1.25g/gal booster blanc (can be at pitch, I prefer somewhere around the 1/2-2/3 sugar break)

I think people sorta miss the point on the 'master traditionals' advice; everyone always focuses on the flaws, but it's really all about the balance. Using good yeast selection, modern practice and nutrition, it should be fairly easy for even a beginner to produce meads without major flaws. In traditionals, however, getting a clean ferment is only part of the story. I would posit that achieving good acid/tannin/sugar balance is **more** important in traditional meads (especially dry) than in possibly any other style of wine. If you want to *master* the traditional, you're going to need to also learn how to use oak, powdered tannins, and acids to balance your mead in secondary.

My process once primary is finished usually comes down to:

1. Rack onto .38g/gal k-meta, optionally stabilize with k-sorb and back sweeten
2. Add .5 oz/gal oak **cubes** for 4 months
3. Bench trial acid and powdered tannin additions
4. Bottle at least 8 weeks after any powdered tannin additions

I outline my process for bench trials (evaluating how a particular powdered tannin or acid addition will impact the mead) here.

Apologies for being late to the conversation here... I've had good outcomes with QA23 for mead, a bochet (caramelized honey before fermentation), a mango wine, and an earl grey wine as well.

I definitely suggest the advice of others here and follow a routine with nutrition including a yeast starter. I also follow many of the suggestions for balancing to taste in the secondary. I've used all those components mentioned above in varying amounts and they've really improved the mead at least in the short term. Bench test each component to see what you like. And wait. That's the hardest for me.

And if you like mead, superb... enjoy it and make it and tweak it and learn from each thing you do. Journal it as well. If you don't like mead, that's superb too. We all like a variety of things on here and approach what we do in our own ways as crafters based on what we like.

There's a lot of great resources here for anything you're interested in, and much of it criss-crosses. There are some very basic processes and premises, but then again some of those have been challenged by folks here as well with varying and interesting results. That's one of the great things about this forum. Everyone is sharing their own experiences and lending their particular expertise as well.

I bee keep too and have had some great honey, and some marginal, bizarro, 'what have you been up to' honey. What you put into your mead is what you get out of it. Keep at it. Make smaller batches to start so that you become more comfortable with what you're doing and don't have huge losses if you really don't like something. Also, a shout out to the folks posting here who've shared their experiences. Much thanks ~

@RocketBee can't wait to hear how you make out ~