Not sure why you're heating the must. You don't need to. The only reason to warm the honey is to get it to pour out of the container easier.
And if you get a refractometer you can measure gravity without having to put something into the must or take a big sample out. Just an eye dropper.
Brew store guy said to heat must. Some people say this is necessary. Others don't do it.
Purpose is to pestureize
Yeah you don't need to pasteurize honey.
If you pitch a healthy enough dose of yeast, it will overpower anything in there. Yeast starter + nutrient.
I've never heated mead 🤷
Seems like a complicating step that can cause the yeast to get stressed if you don't cool it low enough. Maybe I screwed it up. We'll see what the airlock says tomorrow.
You can always dump more yeast in
I did that. Now it's bubbling. Yesterday, I threw together same recipe except didn't heat must. How vigorously should it be bubbling in a couple days?
Nah don't worry about vigor. It's started. You're good.
And I would normally degas the mead daily + add nutrients every other day for the first week.
Degassing is stirring to break out some of the CO2 to raise the pH of the mead and keep your yeast happy. Also prevents foaming to do it before adding nutrients + adds some oxygen.
After that week, it should have fermented out quite a bit.
https://beersmith.com/blog/2021/02/16/mead-making-fundamentals-part-2/
When you stir it to degas for the first week, what is your sanitization process? Do you mix a no-rinse each time and dunk/spray the agitating tool (spoon, spatula, whatever)?
I used a long steel spoon. Wash in the sink with PBW and hot water. Get a spray bottle to keep starsan solution in so you don't have to keep mixing some. Just spray some on the spoon before stirring.
Then you can also spray around the lid before putting it back on.
That makes sense and close to what I've done for bucketing the primary. That is for the sanity check.
Shit! I forgot to tell you to gjærkauk when you pitched the yeast!
Remember to do that next time!
I'd rather be slowly and pointedly critical of the yeast over its lifetime. Just point out that I could really use the closet space for things other than hosting its stalled progress.
Okay, but is this actually a thing? Seems like you'd just be spraying your mouth bacteria straight into a carefully sanitized environment.
Yeah some people do it. Sanitized isn't sterile. There's always going to be other microbes in there from the air, not perfect cleaning, your ingredients, etc. That's why it's important to pitch a healthy and active batch of yeast so the yeast gets all the sugar before anything else.
If you plan on brewing regularly, I'd recommend getting the equipment to make yeast starters.
https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/how-to-brew/make-yeast-starter/
*Okay*. I have two 1 gallon primaries going now.
The first was a messy Saturday attempt that involved needlessly heating the must.
The second skipped the heating and was conscious of the must temperature before pitching the yeast, and I also got a decent gravity reading. I used an LD Carlson nutrient booster straight up mixed into the must before pitching.
This weekend, I will try another gallon with propery rehydrated yeast with something like Go-Ferm.
And one more gallon will include a schedule of meted out Fermaid nutrient feedings throughout the week.
This is mostly for practice and to understand how these practices result in differences of time, gravity, and taste across the various experiments.
You likely won't have huge differences between those batches except some may ferment out more or less sugar and the speed at which they do.
I always did a starter, staggered nutrient and degassing in order to have a pretty decent mead in a month.
Once you have a solid process down, start making more interesting meads. Different honeys. Fruit/juice additions.
One of my favorite meads was a bochet. I heated honey in my insta pot until it was dark molasses brown, then fermented.
Or if you can find gravenstein apple cider, that makes an excellent cyser.
* thanks for the sanity check
Also found hydrometer tube in kit. Starting gravity 1.090.
must:
