This time I wanted to set a sweeter batch of mead. I followed the PGW mead receipt but bumped up the honey from 1.25Kg to 1.5Kg. I will updated this post with more information during the timeline of fermentation and aging.
Above is an graph of measured burps per minute (bpm) over time of this brew log, showing the fermentation process.
Day 0 - 2017-04-17
I blended 1.5 kg honey with 2 litre of warm water. Poured over to carboy and added 2 litre cold water. Took a measure of 1.096 OG. Prepared the yeast boiling some water and then poured over 1dl into a cup. Added 3g Fermaid-L and let it cool to 25 celcius and then added 2.5g Lavlin D47 yeast. Wait 10 minutes and stirred the rehydrated yeast and set it for rest for another 10 minutes. Shaked the carboyed hard to aeritate the must. And added the yeast to the must and sat it aside for fermantation.
Something seems off with the OG measurement. If I select 1.5Kg honey with 4 litre target using the mead calculator from gotmead.com, it will give me an OG of 1.113 which isn’t near what my readings says. Maybe it is due to the fact I first stir the honey with 2 litre water which will give me a volume more than 2 litre and then adds 2 litre. Eg. the final volume is unknown.
If I change the target volume in the mead calculator to 4.7 litre it will calculated a OG of 1.096 for me. This hints that the 1.5Kg added honey to 4 litre water would increase the volume with 7 dl which seems a little too much, maybe 5 dl is more on spot.
Next time I will fill 4 litre of water in the carboy and make an mark and then stir honey with 2 litre water, add it to the carboy and then fill up with water to the marking to get exactly 4 litre must.
Day 1 - 2017-04-18
Checked the bpm 6:00 and measured 3 burps per minute. Came home and did another reading of 68 bpm @ 20:00. Today we are going to feed 1.5g Fermaid-K and then stir some to release the oxygen. I’ll warn you, do this very carefully beacuse it will foam out of the carboy. Did this procedure @ 21:00 and let it settle for a while. Did another reading of 82 bpm @ 21:15.
Day 2 - 2017-04-19
Today it is time for a stir to release oxygen / co2. I started with a reading of 92 bpm @ 08:00 and 64 bpm @ 18:30. Did the stirring at 20:15 and let it settle a bit before another reading of 46.26 bpm.
Day 3 - 2017-04-20
Today it is time to feed the yeast some nutrients and then let the mead stand to fermentation ends. I took three reading this day, first one 53 bpm @ 16:30, second one of 63.57 bpm @ 20:50. The third one was taken after Fermaid-K nutrients was added to the mead with 109.12 bpm @ 21:13.
The nutrients are added without stirring the mead, just trying to spread it out throwing it into the carboy opening. Here is how it looks after a few seconds when added, it does dissovle pretty good.
Day 8 - 2017-04-25
I have checked the mead over the days and taken bpm readings for the fermentation graph. The active fermentation is definitly rolling off and I plan to rack the mead off its sediment on sunday this week, eg. day 13 of the fermentation.
Day 16 - 2017-05-03
I racked this mead today. Took a SG reading of almost exactly 0.0 which indicates that this is not that sweet as I wanted it to be, near 0.010.
Day 25 - 2017-05-12
I checked in to this mead, no signs of burps in air lock. I took a smell sample and heavy yeast and alcohol smell hit my nose. There is no sign of sediment gathering up on the bottom of the carboy. Lets rack this batch 2017-06-03 to bottles and take a SG reading.