It’s my first time brewing mead. My second time brewing anything. I have two mead batches I made last saturday that have been fermenting at about 68 degrees.
I have a cherry mead batch with Lavlin 71B I made last Saturday. It was going crazy less than 24 hours after I made it: Imgur: The magic of the Internet
I punched the fruit cap and degassed once a day for 3 days. After about 4 days, the fermentation appeared very sleepy. I was getting 1 bubble out of the airlock every 90 secs. Today I was finally able to take a hydrometer reading and it read 1.002. OG was 1.084. Is this done already??!
I have another batch from the same day, no cherries with WLP720 yeast. That is reading 1.008. This batch is smelling like a funky/sour wheat beer. That same funky smell that the cellar of a Winery has. Is that normal?
While your gravity reading suggests one may be ready it may still have a little bit more fermenting going on. I would wait another week at least. You run the risk of blowing off your airlock in secondary after agitating it during racking and waking up the fermentation. There is no risk in letting it sit.
You say you fermented at 68. Was that ambient or the temp of the liquid? If ambient that means your actual fermentation temp was more like 76-78 which is much too high. This is consistent with how fast it fermented. You want to keep actual fermentation in low sixties, mid sixties is acceptable. High fermentation temps for mead result in fusel alcohol production which makes it taste hot and gives nasty headaches.
As far as the aroma goes most mead fermentation smell funky, I wouldn’t worry about that.
Thanks. The ambient temp in the room was 63-65. I hit the outside of the carboy with a temperature gun and it showed 67-69 degrees - is that an accurate method? The WLP720 said optimum temp is 70-75 on their website.
That method should work quite well for reading temps. I used to have stick-on “fermometers” on the outside of my brew buckets (which essentially do the same thing), but now I just shoot the outside with an IR surface thermometer like you did. That reading should be within a degree of what’s going on inside the fermenter.
Your temps look good to me. Since your OG was 1.084, I’d generally expect to see an FG at or below 1.000. I’d say let them go for a few days to a week more and see if your FG remains stable before racking.
Neither batch is done yet. Seriously, leave them alone for another month yet. They should become clear, with zero airlock activity, with FG around 0.995 or thereabouts. Don’t worry about the smell, it’s still too early in the fermentation believe it or not.
Good question. I think this depends on how it tastes. If you have tasted a sample and it is tasting great, I think you could rack it off the cherries at any time. If it seems not cherry enough, then leave it longer. Punching the cap down every 3 days seems like a good idea, keep doing that for as long as you like. Personally I think it should be about done extracting most of the character within a week or two, but it’s really up to you.
I tasted a sample today and the cherry flavor was very faint. The overall flavor was very faint for that matter. Did not taste like ~9% alcohol or much like anything. I’ll try again in a couple weeks.
It hasn’t even been 3 weeks but I wanted to take a reading because there’s not much activity. It’s 10 days since my last reading. The cherry mead gravity is down by 0.005. However, the plain mead gravity hasn’t changed in 10 days. Previous reading was 1.002. Today’s was 1.003 (chalking it up to bad reading last time). Any action I should take?
I would take another reading in a few days on the cherry to see if it’s still going down. The traditional mead I would be comfortable either racking into secondary or letting sit another week or two.
Patience is the word with mead, always err on the side of waiting.
ok - I think I’ll take the cherries out this week so I can just leave it alone, stop worrying about mold on the cherries and not even think about it either one for a few weeks. Thanks guys