hi all, i have a couple of question about aging mead,
its been a week since the fermentation of my first mead finished, after finished i took the fermenter out of the fermentation chamber, taste it and for my surprise it really tasted nice, but yesterday i tasted it again before racking to a secondary to stabilize, and it tasted awful, like medicine, and smell like fussel alcohols, so, im wondering if i age this mead at my room temperature about 95F or 98F will continue to taste bad, i made a 4 gallon batch and i cant have on my only fermentation chamber for 6 months so, im not sure if this will improve over the months or continue to taste bad after 3 o 6 months
Fusel alcohol occurs when the fermentation is too warm but it seems like you had it in a fermentation chamber with temperature control.
Ageing in secondary is ok in warm temps although I have no experience with temps in the nineties. It usually does benefit from some cooler temperatures after a couple months though to get clear.
Mead doesn’t usually taste good to me at this stage so if your fermentation temps were not higher than very low 70s you should be fine.
i did ferment for two weeks at 68-66F on the chamber but its a small only one bucket size fermentation chamber, so i cant leave the mead too much since i do make beer for drinks with my friends, i have already stabilized(yesterday) and showing a lot more clear, im going to back sweet the next week and leave for 2 months then bottle cause im dont have any dark place to hide the bucket, so regular beer bottles will do the job with UV
You could let it sit at room temperature for a couple months then use your fermentation chamber to hold cold for a couple weeks before bottling. Also, since this will have little or no cold storage you could use a clarifying agent to help with clarity.
FYI, UV is much less of an issue with mead than beer because there are no hops. Many commercial examples are bottled in clear bottles and age just as well as wine.
thank you i didnt know that. btw this mead its just water and honey mead i did put some raisins but nothing more than the yeast nutrients on it, do i have to try Ph add tannins?
You can taste at bottling and add acid blend and tannin to taste. If you are back sweetening you probably will want to.
I usually add tannins, often simply in the form of black tea (not enough to taste) at the start. I feel tannins help with clarity.