FAILED FERMENTATION

[BULLSEYE BILL]

A few months ago I was cleaning out my cuboards of all the old gift honeys from the years past that never got ate. There was everything under the sun, even some with fruit.

Seeing as I am somewhat spoiled and have all the fresh honey I can use, I still did not want that old honey go to waste. So I did the obvious and started a batch of mead. It started out like all the other batches although it took off a bit slower. After I racked it the first time it started to ferment again, after a few weeks I noticed that it had quit so I tested the AL level and it was only 4% :( and not very tasty.

Again not wanting to waste it I removed a gallon of the liquid and replaced it with another gallon of honey and another packet of yeast started in warm water.

Well it still does not want to really get going. It holds the air lock up but I haven't seen it bubble. There are some bubbles around the ring at the top of the neck, but still, it is not going like it should.

I suspect that the fruited honey may have had some preseritives in it. My question is would that keep it from fermenting and if so, should I add a third packet of yeast? Perhaps I should just pitch the whole thing down the drain?

A while back I had a batch turn out gwad awful dry and tart, I would rather drink vinegar, definatly not to my liking. I reused it to start two more batches that turned out at 19 and 21% sweet like honey, nectar of the gods! Amazing what 33 pounds of honey will do in one batch ;) So playing around with precieved failures can turn out good, but this preserative thing has me wondering if I am wasting my time.

[Anthony]

Hey Bill,

Whats the recipe you used?

lb's honey?
gallons water?
yeast food?
yeast pitched?

If it started then stopped sounds like a stuck fermentation rather then fail.

Lalvin EC-1118 (Prise de Mousse) & K1-V1116 (Montpellier), are commonly used to restart a stuck fermentation.

I bottled a batch of Avocado Blossom mead this weekend that finished at 25%. Started it off with 16 lb honey & pitched EC-1118. Fed it 2 lb of honey every other week for eight weeks, it fermented dry each time. I ran out of that honey so I let it clear.

Anthony

[BULLSEYE BILL]

>Whats the recipe you used?

22 pounds honey
6 gallons water
1 packet of Premier Couvee

[Ben Brewcat]

Hey BB,

Is that six total gallons of mead or six gallons of water, PLUS @ two gallons of honey for an eight-gallon batch? If it's a six-gallon mead, that's a fairly high initial gravity (around 1.132 by my guesstimate). It's possible that the high osmotic pressure of that many sugars, plus a lack of nutrients, caused the yeast to give up prematurely (as a ferment progresses, the must drops in pH. With a stressed yeast, that can be all it takes). Anthony's technique, starting a little more modestly and then feeding it as the yeast consume sugars, can help those high-octane meads get where they're going.

What now? If sorbates are the culprit, the only thing is to dilute the mead until they drop below the threshold of where they're stumping yeast... that could turn out to be a serious dilution and usually isn't practical. I would doubt that if just the fruit was sorbated and then added to some of the honey that it would be a problem.

I'd recommend hydrating up some of that K1-V and pitching that, and perhaps some nutrient and/or energizer (gasp!). What're the original and current specific gravities?

[BULLSEYE BILL]

>Is that six total gallons of mead or six gallons of water, PLUS @ two gallons of honey for an eight-gallon batch?

22 pounds of honey and topped off to the six gallon level including the yeast started in warm water.

It was racked into a five gallon carboy, don't remember where the excess went. I may have mis-stated above, I put that five gallons of mead (for a lack of a better term) in a six gallon carboy with about one gallon of honey. I was going to pour off a gallon until I realised that I had a six gallon carboy available. That was about a week and a half ago and now the air lock is down. No fermenting going on.

>What're the original and current specific gravities?

Beats me.

>I'd recommend hydrating up some of that K1-V and pitching that, and perhaps some nutrient and/or energizer (gasp!).

I'll go and get some K1-V tomorrow and toss it in and see if anything happens. It now has at least thirty pounds of honey in six gallons of fluid. Adding any more than yeast is leading me away from my intentions of being a purist.
Thanks.

[BULLSEYE BILL]

>>What're the original and current specific gravities?

OK, before I added the second gallon of honey the AL content was 4% SG of 1.030 now the AL content is 5% and the SG is 1.038. The % sugar is about 10% (before I stired it).

I had been thinking that I should stir the batch, so while I was checking the SG I did. There may be some changes overnight as I noticed that the honey had not disolved but was sitting on the bottom of the carboy :rolleyes: maybe...

[Aspera]

Ben is right on the money....I also think it is an osmotic issue, and a nice warm fermentation with KV1 is a good solution (may even make your carboy into old faithful). As an aside, yeast hulls, yeast extract and boiled yeast often work well if you want some "natural" nutrients. For mead that is both sweet and alcoholic, adding honey during the fermentation is a *great* idea, but may produce something that tastes a lot like kerosene if aged under one year. A small amount of grape juice (1-3 gal/5 gal batch) will also kickstart even the most sluggish mead, and requires less aging.

[Ben Brewcat]

BB, based on your SG readings and reported alcohol contents, I think you may be mis-reading the hydrometer. The hydrometer measures density as sugars dissolved in a solution. The potential alcohol scale on a hydrometer roughly corresponds to what the current sugars it's "feeling", if they all fermented, would become in alcohol content. But the important thing to realize is that a hydrometer does NOT (and cannot) measure current alcohol content. Six gallons with thirty pounds in it now at 1.030 would be around 20% alcohol (ignoring the undissolved honey for a moment)... it's the change in the potential alcohol reading that gives you alcohol content (potential reading with all the sugars before fermentation, minus the reading when it's done (unfermented sugars), = the alcohol generated from those missing sugars).

That being the case, you may very well have a mead that stealthily fermented quite a bit, and now it tastes like a young, very alcoholic mead which can be downright scary :eek: . Really. Unless it tastes a lot like cough syrup (really, that's about a 1:1 dilution of honey:water recipe. You could whip up a glass for comparison just for larks, or if you;re as geeky as I), you could have something more mead than must! If that's the case, forget where it is for 18 months and check how it's tasting smile.gif .

OTOH, if there are a few inches of honey on the bottom, that could be a significantly low gravity reading, which means ignore everything I just said. See how I waited until after you had to read it to tell you that?

[BULLSEYE BILL]

>BB, based on your SG readings and reported alcohol contents, I think you may be mis-reading the hydrometer.

After reading your post three times and reading the (limited) instructions that came with the hydrometer, twice, yes, you are right. Since I did not take a reading when I threw it all together there is no way of telling what the AL content is.

After stiring up the honey from the bottom of the carboy last night there are some bubbles around the neck and some pressure in the air lock. The SG is now at 1.080. The coresponding number in the balling scale is 20, does that mean 20% sugar? Or am I still not reading this right?

Since adding the honey it is more paletable to my taste and has a nice AL bite. Copped a small buzz from sampling :D

Too bad there is no way to check AL content at this point.

[Ben Brewcat]

Since I did not take a reading when I threw it all together there is no way of telling what the AL content is. Well, there sort of is. The full scoop is in the Intro (http://www.bee-l.com/bulletinboard/meadintro.htm), but a pound of honey yields a (sort of) predictable amount of sugars. 22 pounds to start, plus 12 pounds fed later, times 36 gravity points per pound, gives 1224 gravity points. Divide that by six gallons for an impressive "effective gravity" of 1.204! That's way off my potential alcohol scale, but extrapolating a bit ballparks a potential of 27.2 % alcohol. (This method of using gravity points, discussed by Ray Daniels' excellent tome on beer recipe design and summarized in the intro, allows we progressive feeders, fermentable additive users and blenders alike to determine approximate alcohol content. It's a neat tool and accessible even to the math-challenged non-metriculous masses like me).

Looking over on the hydrometer's parallel scales, your current 1.080 is a potential alcohol reading of 10.5% or so's worth of sugars that didn't ferment. Ergo, 27.2 minus 10.5 equals 16.7% currently. Now that's a lot of educated guesswork, plus this scale is not totally accurate for a number of not terribly important reasons, but it's actually pretty close. That K1-V should, given a chance, be able to add a few points to that alcohol total and reduce the sugars a bit, but this one might be a seriously sweet mead. Enjoy over sundaes, or blend it with a bone-dry one later, or use small glasses with good friends who won't tell stories!



Too bad there is no way to check AL content at this point. And, again, there is but it takes some work, more than anyone but a stoned chemistry student would ever care to undertake ;) . Note that for dry meads (no or very little residual sugar) there is a neat doodad called a vinometer, about seven bucks, that'll approximate pretty accurately the alcohol content using surface tension in a capillary tube. Ah, the toys.

And yep, Balling, Brix and percent sugar (by weight) are largely interchangeable.

So let it age: "Not to worry! For aesthetic appreciation, always a little time..."

-Maude, in "Harold and Maude"

Well Bill, there's a ton more information than you wanted to know about gravity and alcohol content! Though using a hydrometer correctly is handy (and, as you can tell, usually pretty poorly explained). And as they say, your mead will taste the same whether you do the math or not. Forgive the pedantic ranting and enjoy your mead :cool: .

[BULLSEYE BILL]

Thanks Ben! That's a big bone to chew on. I appreciate yours, Aspera, and Anthony's replies.

I think I will set back and let it do whatever it's going to do for now. I didn't get to the brew shop for the K1-V, but after tasting, reading your posts, and refelecting on the situation I am begining to think it was done, I just didn't like the taste, probably because I used inferior honey to start with. Your 16.7% coincides with what the Premere Couvee is supposed to do, stop at around 18%.

I will let it set for a couple of months and break it out for Crown Tournament in November and see what the expert drinkers think. There is more than a few of us who like it really sweet. ;)

[Aspera]

>refelecting on the situation I am begining to think it was done, I just didn't like the taste<

Unfortunately, I've dumped/mixed almost as much mead as I've drunk......it happens to every brewer with more than one recipe.

[Anthony]

I've had that "Kerosene Tastes" in one mead, it didn't start out as a high gravity must & I didn't feed that one to bring the A.B.V. up. It finished around 15.5% a.b.v.

What did happen, it got into the upper 80's that week and fermentation finished in 8 days. This caused is the formation of higher alcohols, more then likely Fusel Alcohols.

These alcohols can give mead, wine or beer a harsh "Moonshine" or "Kerosene" taste.

Anthony

[nursebee]

Good advice above. My input is: time, champagne yeast, nutrient, oxygen.

[BULLSEYE BILL]

>My input is: time, champagne yeast, nutrient, oxygen.

Oh no, you don't get off that easy! Tell us what you would do. What type, and how much, how would you do it? Please smile.gif

[nursebee]

Add a little bit of everything in the brew drawer. Sprinkle 2 packs of champagne yeast on top. Use the autosiphon to pump a bunch of air through it (unless you have the real thing for oxygen) and then stick it in the back of the coat closet to forget about it. And I guess I would transfer to a new carboy. SO farm this has worked for me, but then again, I have 6 carboys in the back of the coat closet...

[Gregory_Naff]

Bullseye,

I have gotten a few meads in the same condition. I would rack it to another carboy and try to insure a good mix. I would pitch a champagne yeast on top and I would add some Servomyces from white labs. I have been using this stuff for a while and it really helps. I used to have to get it from a pro brewer friend, but white labs recently released it for the home use. It comes in a capsule that will dissolve when boiled, but you can open it up and dump it with no obvious side effects. I would not probably pump regular air through it, but that’s just me. If you have an O2 setup w/stone available I would probably do that, however, if you just have O2 (say from a torch), you can high pressure hit the must and get enough oxygen. Spray it hard enough to create foam and then shake your carboy. That will help.

A lot of time the “kerosene” effect will age out. Give it time and see where it goes.

Good luck and happy brewing.

[BULLSEYE BILL]

Thanks guys. More to think about, hhmmm. All of you make sence and have given me a lot to work with.
Well I need to go to the brew shop anyway, I love STUFF. Let's see, more carboys, need more bottles, vinometer, servomyces, etc. This is great! I am thinking that I can add O2 by racking and letting it splash from the top of the bottle.
BTW, I didn't have the 'Kerosene' taste mentioned above, but still good info.

[Ben Brewcat]

I might add a note of caution on aggressively aerating at this point... aerating unfermented must is a good thing, but aerating finished mead risks oxidizing it, with the resultant wet cardboardy flavor. Yeast can bring in their own oxygen though, so if you made a little starter and aerated that, they'll be healthy enough for a restart at least.

[BULLSEYE BILL]

>aerating unfermented must is a good thing, but aerating finished mead risks oxidizing it,

If it was finished, and I added honey and more yeast, what is the mixture called? Fermented must? Remust, x-must, mustake? smile.gif

[Ben Brewcat]

Nah. Fermenting mead'd be my diagnosis :D .

[Aspera]

A Double Mead? So We Mead Again? Mead and Remead......OK I got that out of my system and can stop now smile.gif

[BULLSEYE BILL]

OK, it's been three weeks since I added the honey and yeast. The airlock has been down for a while so I decided to rack it again.

It tastes WONDERFUL! :D Can't tell what the flavor is and could never repeat it, but it is nice.

I'll let it clear up for a while and bottle when I can't wait any longer.