Has anyone used this product in mead? I asked my girlfriend, who has been making mead for 20 years, why she doesn’t use yeast nutrient. She said she would rather wait a year or two for full fermentation than put all those chemicals in an otherwise natural product. I always thought yeast nutrient was a more or less natural product but it turns out to be a mixture of chemicals that I prefer not to use. Servomyces was developed for german brewers because it complies with the beer purity law. I was wondering if anyone has any experience with its effectiveness in mead.
Are you comfortable with using DAP? I honestly think the specific yeast nutrient in the staggered yeast nutrients isn’t critical, but the DAP is a requirement.
I don’t want to use DAP. We’re getting our honey either from our own bees or a guy we know locally whose bees are foraging in the quabbin reservoir watershed where no pesticides are used, we’re growing or foraging all the fruit and herbs we use in melomels and methlegins. Do we want to add some phosphoric acid combined with ammonia in a factory? Maybe its technically safe, but why bother making my own if I can’t make it safer and tastier than what I can buy? I think the servomyces might be a good alternative. We already make good mead, it just takes a long time.
I think the Servomyces will be a help even without the DAP. I’m not sure whether there’s an organic source of FAN, but it may be worth looking into.
A guy in our club was talking about Fermaid-O at the club picnic. It is from Yeats hulls, organic, and may be what you are after.
This looks good. And lallemande needs to get this more visible when you search “organic yeast nutrients”, I missed it. We’re having a good honey flow so I’m hoping to make a plain mead soon.
Thanks
According to the guy in the club the downside is that it is not cheap, and you use a lot of it.
Its not cheap, but worth it to me.
If you use it please let us know how it works for you. I’d love to find out on a side by side how this affects the mead fermentation, especially since you are having good results without it already.
Yes. In the fall when we do 20 gallon batches I’ll probably set aside a 5 gallon batch of a couple different meads without the nutrient and test gravity at different stages. It will be a lot longer before I can report on taste.