When I opened the fermenter the smell is very pleasant. The taste is still quite acidic and it was still possible to taste some sweetness.
The density was measured to 1.010 which was great - right on the initial target. But as put in an earlier post, I should probably go for a bit heavier mead, i.e. a target of 1.015 instead.
Then I measured pH to somewhere between 3 and 4 with pH strips, so lets just say 3.5.
There was plenty of yeast at the bottom of the fermenter, but the fermetation is going on so slowly that it had already started to clear. I tried the best I could to transfer the mead to a new fermenter without disturbing the yeast layer. Of cause the siphon slips so I had to stop a bit earlier than I wanted since the goal is get rid of old yeast. So now there was only a bit more than 18 L left of the batch
So now that the target had been passed I tried to back sweeten the mead to 1.015. Since I initially used 7200g honey and got a density of 1.120 this means than 100 g should increase the density by 0.0017. So adding 300 g should raise the density by 0.005 in a 20 L batch. So for an ~18,5 L batch (after honey addition) the increase in density should be about 0.0054.
I weighed out about 300 g of honey and mixed it with 0.5 L of the must and started stirring. Now, dissolving honey in hot water is no problem but in an almost finished mead at room temperature it takes much much longer, but with a bit of patience and a lot of stirring it finally dissolved. The solution was then added to the fermenter and the content was stirred well before measuring the denstity again: 1.015 - spot on.
I had purchased a yeast stop pre-mixed package, which I added to the mead. When it comes to stopping a fermentation two ingredients are used.
1) metabisulfite
2) sorbate
The package I used contained the food additives E223 which is sodium metabisulfite. This also exist as a potassium salt which would be the more ideal additive so that you don't have to add sodium. Metabisulfite is the yeast killer. For 100 ppm about 2 g of K-Meta should be added. When the same amount of Na-Meta is added, then 17% more Meta is actually added due to the difference in molecular weight
Some yeast cells will survive the use of metabisulfite at the relatively low levels added (max 300 ppm) to avoid the distinct taste of sulphur, so sorbate is added to prevent the cells from budding. In this manner no new yeast cells can be generated. This is the stabilization part. The package I used contained potassium sorbate which would be the ideal salt. I can only find a recommended volume/gallon to be added: ½TSP per gallon so 2.5 TSP for 19 L but without a clue to the density of the powder it does not say much.
Now why the hell does the package not state what the mixing ratio of the two components is? I called the shop where I bought the package and they would forward my request when the factory when it opened the 6th of January. The total content of the package is 7 g so my best guess is that I added 2 g of Na-Meta and 5 g of K-Sorbate
The density was measured to 1.010 which was great - right on the initial target. But as put in an earlier post, I should probably go for a bit heavier mead, i.e. a target of 1.015 instead.
Then I measured pH to somewhere between 3 and 4 with pH strips, so lets just say 3.5.
There was plenty of yeast at the bottom of the fermenter, but the fermetation is going on so slowly that it had already started to clear. I tried the best I could to transfer the mead to a new fermenter without disturbing the yeast layer. Of cause the siphon slips so I had to stop a bit earlier than I wanted since the goal is get rid of old yeast. So now there was only a bit more than 18 L left of the batch
So now that the target had been passed I tried to back sweeten the mead to 1.015. Since I initially used 7200g honey and got a density of 1.120 this means than 100 g should increase the density by 0.0017. So adding 300 g should raise the density by 0.005 in a 20 L batch. So for an ~18,5 L batch (after honey addition) the increase in density should be about 0.0054.
I weighed out about 300 g of honey and mixed it with 0.5 L of the must and started stirring. Now, dissolving honey in hot water is no problem but in an almost finished mead at room temperature it takes much much longer, but with a bit of patience and a lot of stirring it finally dissolved. The solution was then added to the fermenter and the content was stirred well before measuring the denstity again: 1.015 - spot on.
I had purchased a yeast stop pre-mixed package, which I added to the mead. When it comes to stopping a fermentation two ingredients are used.
1) metabisulfite
2) sorbate
The package I used contained the food additives E223 which is sodium metabisulfite. This also exist as a potassium salt which would be the more ideal additive so that you don't have to add sodium. Metabisulfite is the yeast killer. For 100 ppm about 2 g of K-Meta should be added. When the same amount of Na-Meta is added, then 17% more Meta is actually added due to the difference in molecular weight
Some yeast cells will survive the use of metabisulfite at the relatively low levels added (max 300 ppm) to avoid the distinct taste of sulphur, so sorbate is added to prevent the cells from budding. In this manner no new yeast cells can be generated. This is the stabilization part. The package I used contained potassium sorbate which would be the ideal salt. I can only find a recommended volume/gallon to be added: ½TSP per gallon so 2.5 TSP for 19 L but without a clue to the density of the powder it does not say much.
Now why the hell does the package not state what the mixing ratio of the two components is? I called the shop where I bought the package and they would forward my request when the factory when it opened the 6th of January. The total content of the package is 7 g so my best guess is that I added 2 g of Na-Meta and 5 g of K-Sorbate
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