First mead. Three kilos of honey in five litres, a sachet of wine yeast, no nutrients because none of the recipes I read mentioned any. Fermented in the airing cupboard because I thought warm was good, which in hindsight may be the sentence that explains everything.
It finished weeks ago, cleared nicely, and it tastes hot and solvent-like. Nail polish remover is the closest thing. Is this salvageable or have I made five litres of a lesson?
For the next one, the temperature fix is the cheapest and it does the most. Ferment at the low end of whatever range your yeast packet gives rather than the middle, keep the fermenter away from anything warm, and stand it in a water bath so the swings get buffered.
I brew in a flat with no cool room and a bucket of water around the fermenter was the difference between harsh and fine. Costs nothing.
Rehydrate the yeast the way the packet says and pitch enough of it. Underpitching is its own kind of stress.
Two other things worth having on the shelf before batch two. Nutrients added in stages over the first few days rather than all at the start, which most mead makers work from a schedule for. And gentle degassing in the early days, which a lot of people find takes some pressure off the yeast.
On the safety question, since people ask: a hot harsh mead is a quality fault rather than spoilage. It is unpleasant, not unsafe. Back-sweetening after stabilising or blending it into a smoother batch are the other two routes if aging only gets it halfway.
@nutrient_schedule · 3d ago · 3 replies
You have diagnosed it yourself in the second paragraph. That taste is fusel alcohols, which yeast makes more of when it is stressed, and you stressed it in three ways at once.
The airing cupboard is the biggest. Fermentation generates its own heat, so the liquid runs several degrees above the room, and a warm room plus that means you were well above where the yeast wanted to be. No nutrients is the second, because honey is poor in what yeast needs. And three kilos in five litres is a strong must, which is strain on its own.
Reply
Report
@hot_first_batch · 3d ago
Is there anything I can do with the five litres now, or is it just aging and hoping?
Reply
Report
@aged_it_a_year · 2d ago
Aging genuinely helps and it is not nothing: young strong meads often mellow a lot over months in a cool stable place. Put it somewhere out of the way and forget it until spring. Some fusel-heavy batches never come good, but plenty improve past drinkable.
Reply
Report