Hey guys, trying to make my first mead. I’ve made a couple home brew beers from kits only before. Then a friend of mine introduced me to mead and I was hooked so I started doing some research into home brewing mead ordered my equipment. My brother gave me the yeast he uses for his wine so I didn’t look into the yeast too much he said it goes up to 18% so I was excited to have a strong mead for my first try for home brewing. I’m currently one cider and one mead started them both on September 19 both in one gallon batches my mead OG was 1.155 but the mead has been really slow. I thought maybe it’s just a lag phase since that’s a lot of sugar to break down and I added some yeast nutrients and it was still going slower than I thought it should compared to the cider. So I did more research and came to find out the yeast is Redstar premiere classique wine yeast and is actually only good for up to 15% so now I’m slightly worried should I rack some off and dilute my must to a workable SG for the yeast or since it’s been a week and has been slow would it be better to repitch with new yeast or a combo of both or did I screw up my first mead?
You didn't screw it up, but you gave the yeast a huge task with that high of a starting gravity.
A huge downside of starting with a gravity that high is that you will generally have to wait longer for it to taste palatable. I would split this into two different meads.
If you were to rack off half a gallon and add 1.6Lb honey to it and then add water to 1 gallon you should end up with a SG of ~1.114 which will get you an ABV of 14.84%
Do that again for the other half and you now have two 1 gallon batches that will be targeting that 15% range of the yeast.
I completely understand that urge to go for the high ABV and my second mead came out at 16.8% ABV and it tastes great after 15 months; it was so horrible at first that I just shoved it to the side and forgot about after 6 months of periodic tastings. When I remembered it and tried it so much later it was a different beast.
My opinion is to shoot for that 10%-13% range and you can get some tasty meads without extended waiting times while still able to get a lot of different flavor profiles and you don't have a flabby mead or one that is just too hot that it needs to sit and wait it out.
Low ABV meads are ready so much sooner but they generally need to be carbonated to add some body and/or you need to have some tannin added to add structure to it.
Thank you so much for the advice. I think since it’s my first Mead I shot really hard for a high ABV like the mead my friend shared with me without fully doing all the research, especially about the yeast. I’ll have to pick up some more honey and do this. Maybe I’ll keep one batch a little lower SG to see the difference in how they turn out. Again thank you so much I was kinda worried that I might have killed my yeast and if I tried anything it would have an off taste.
Post time 2022-9-25 20:48:39
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