hi all,
i just put some 20 gallon fermenter(plastic) to ferment but i wasnt able to dissolve all the honey so, i now there are some honey on the bottom of the fermenter, will those hungry yeasties will be able to eat that honey?
I would guess that the action of fermentation will mix it
I have added raw honey to 85F wort. My guess is it dissolves even before the fermentation starts. I gently stirred with a sanitized spoon.
I suppose it could. I think it would depend on how much is at the bottom. If it was my batch, I would definitely get a spoon or something else to give that a few to stirs and try to make sure it’s dissolved.
Midnight Meadery (or something like that) said a Homebrewcon about 10 years ago that much of its honey was not dissolved before starting fermentation. So yeah, not dissolving the honey is OK.
That’s interesting. I might have to set up an experiment.
If all the honey does ultimately get dissolved anyway, I wonder if there would be an advantage to the method. Especially for high gravity batches. The initial environment would have a lot less sugar in suspension, and theoretically be easier for the yeast to handle.
The yeast will eat it. The only issue is your original gravity can not be measured at time of yeast pitch as all the sugar not mixed.
We sponsored a homebrew comp a few year back and the one mead maker simply dumped the honey in a jug,filled with water and then pitched in some yeast. It did fermented. i do not know how completely as did not have OG/FG info.
I imagine that the meadery had a good handle on the sugar content of its honey, which occasional meadmakers probably don’t have.
Actually anyone can do this pretty easily to see what the gravity points of the honey they are using. Take a pound of the honey you are using and mix in a gallon of water to and measure SG. Based on target OG, you then adjust how much water and/or honey based on that measured SG. Allows for staggered honey additions and/or dump and no mix.