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Recipe
Recipe
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Primary
6 lbs clover honey
Water to 3.75 gal
Split into 3 batches @1.25 gal for testing different amounts of yeast at pitch
Gravity & ABV
Gravity & ABV
OG 1.054
Target FG 1.000
Projected ABV: 7.7%
Quick note on gravity - this came out higher than expected if you just put my recipe in the calculator; that was probably measuring errors on my part. But for the sake of the experiment I'm doing here it didn't really make a difference.
Nutrients (per 1.25 gallon batch)
Nutrients (per 1.25 gallon batch)
Fermaid O: 2.2g
Fermaid K: 2.5g
DAP: 1.3g
Notes
Notes
The goal here is to test how much yeast is too much! Each 1.25 gal batch received a different amount of yeast at pitch. My hypothesis was that it's technically possible to pitch too much and make it difficult for the brew to clear completely, but it requires so much yeast you'd pretty much have to do it on purpose.
A secondary hypothesis I may test as this finishes up: I believe sterile filtering should be able to fix the mead even if I do manage to overload it with yeast.
I'm using a single 500g brick of yeast so that all the yeast came out of the same packet, in the hopes of removing any variance between packages.
2.5g - half a dry yeast packet, which seems to be a common YouTube brew video recommendation for smaller batches like this.
25g - 10x the 2.5g, an amount I think is excessive but I don't think will actually ruin the mead.
~470g - the entire rest of the half-kilo brick of yeast. I spilled some while trying to stir it in and might've ended up with more like 450g, but either way it's still everything I could get in there.
Timeline Pitch to Bottle
Timeline Pitch to Bottle
03/26/2021 - pitched
I just dry pitched and it's a plain traditional so there's not a whole lot to say here! I did mix up the honey water must in a single batch before splitting it up to ensure the exact same must for all 3 batches. I probably should have added the nutrients in at this point, but I didn't think about it and had to measure those out individually as accurately as I could after splitting into 3 batches.
03/28/2021 - gravity measurements
I checked gravity in the morning, and I had pitched later in the afternoon, so this was probably about a day and a half later.
2.5g bucket: 1.044 SG
25g bucket: 1.033 SG
Overloaded bucket: 1.016 SG
04/01/2021 - gravity
2.5g bucket: 1.014
25g bucket: 1.001
Overload bucket: 1.011
04/03/2021 - gravity measurements
The "sane" buckets have gone dry... but the overloaded bucket might actually be stalled. And unfortunately, I'm not sure if we can fix it shy of maybe racking off some of this yeast cake? I can't imagine adding more organic nutrition could possibly help, but we're also past the 1/3 sugar break and I think you typically don't add DAP that late. I'm not even sure I want to if I can either, as that would be introducing a new variable. That said, leaving this stalled 10 points higher than the others is also an extra variable come tasting, so I'm not sure what to do here.
2.5g bucket: 1.000 SG
25g bucket: 1.000 SG
Overloaded bucket: 1.010 SG
The two more normal buckets might be bordering on like 0.998, it's a little hard to tell with the bubbles.
04/12/2021 - gravity & racking
The two more normal buckets are definitely at 0.998 now. I'm not entirely sure if they were already at 0.998 at the last measurement and I just missed it through the bubbles or if they fermented another 1-2 points, but it's been 9 days since the previous reading and there's clearly not much/if-any sugar left, so I think they're OK to rack. The overloaded bucket has officially stalled, with no decrease in SG after 9 days - partly because I'm not sure nutrients would help here and partly to keep the test conditions as consistent as possible across all 3 batches, I decided to rack it as well.
I would like to note that the airlock on the two smaller buckets, which were pretty clear-looking, both contained numerous fruit flies, so I changed out the airlock water after racking. The airlock on the overloaded bucket did not contain a single fruit fly.
2.5g bucket: 0.998 SG
25g bucket: 0.998 SG
Overloaded bucket: 1.010 SG
Retrospective
Retrospective
Process Improvement
Process Improvement
Probably best to put the nutrients in and mix the heck out of them before splitting the batch next time
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