Winter Honey Mead Fermentation
145 days agoMade another batch of mead the other day. This time I used the Song Shan Winter Honey bought from Sheng Siong supermarket. As I said, the honey was pretty neutral and I was right. The honey water must did taste extremely neutral. In fact, after fermenting for days, the airlock still smells very neutral. In my opinion, this could be a very good honey to use if a neutral tasting mead is desired. I also used the Premier Cuvee Yeast which is a champagne yeast and this will result in a very dry mead. About 1 kg of honey mixed with 2 litre of water but I suspect the Song Shan Winter Honey could be diluted somewhat. I was expecting a lot of sweetness from the honey (since this is one part honey and two parts water) but again, it was not something overwhelming. Well, maybe next time I will use a hydrometer to test the sample and get the original gravity to find the alcohol content. Since the Cuvee yeast will ferment most of the sugars away, we will know exactly how much sugars are there. Of course this is not a real test since the honey could be diluted with table sugar or other adjunct as well. Anyway, this first batch is just a test first.
Using the Berri Juice PET bottle. Check out the bung and airlock.
Bubbles bubbles everywhere.
Don’t worry, those are raisins! Not mold or whatever. They are there to add some body and a little flavour to the mead. Remember this is a very neutral tasting mead. Adding a little flavour should help the overall taste of the mead, I hope.
The raisins float means that it is still fermenting. The carbon dioxide will push the raisins up to the surface. Once the fermentation is over, they should fall back to the bottom. This photo is taken one week after the initially fermentation. I don’t know why but it seems that the Premier Cuvee yeast ferments rather slowly. There is no krausen whatsoever to speak of, even on the first few days. It looks exactly like this all the while. The airlock’s most vigorous activity was like 5 bubbles per minute or so and has slowed to about 3 bubbles per minute now. This is yet another reason why I suspect the Song Shan Winter Honey might be a diluted product. I did add additional yeast nutrients and the raisins will provide some more nutrients to the yeast. The temperature I am fermenting the mead is about 20-23 Degrees Celsius. There is no reason why the fermentation is so slow, unless that it how this Cuvee yeast behaves. I have no idea but the next batch, I will be paying more attention.
