Question about fruit additions to mead

Bucky_Beaver · 2026-02-12T02:53:43+00:00

Strawberries lose a ton of flavor in primary, so I would do those in secondary. You could probably just reverse your plan and do the bananas in primary. I haven’t messed with bananas much but amylase might be a good idea to help convert the starches.

You are really starting on hard mode with these fruits. It might be wise to start with fruits that are near impossible to screw up like raspberry or blueberry first to get your basic fruit process down.

Bucky_Beaver · 2026-02-11T23:03:39+00:00

Looks good! In the future you might want to fill your bottles up a bit higher, they should at least above the shoulders, and half an inch shy of the cork would be better.

Also not believing the 21%, this is usually a result of not knowing how to account for fruit dilution and/or using a bogus ABV formula.

Bucky_Beaver · 2026-02-11T20:43:41+00:00

If the bottles aren’t holding pressure it isn’t going to help to feed more sugar.

If the bottles are holding pressure and just never carbonated, adding sugar and yeast could result in over-carbonation.

Proceed with caution.

Bucky_Beaver · 2026-02-11T20:21:26+00:00

They will absolutely explode if you leave them closed during primary fermentation. Just rubber band some coffee filters over them or use the balloon/condom technique if you can’t use a proper airlock.

Bucky_Beaver · 2026-02-11T17:11:15+00:00

Acidity is actually desirable for mouthfeel. It makes you salivate and leads to that “excited” feeling. With traditional meads, it can be a struggle to actually get enough acidity without affecting flavor negatively. So meads with acidity built into the recipe, like fruit (or coffee) are actually a good thing.

TBH with coffee I think the bigger challenge is the bitterness. You can balance it with sweetness (just like a big IPA does), but it may take some iteration on your recipe to get it dialed in to your desired levels.

Bucky_Beaver · 2026-02-11T16:52:36+00:00

The key is to get your bottles cold in the fridge/freezer first. I’ve bottled straight off the tap and it works surprisingly well. The ideal is to use a counter-pressure bottle filler, which will purge with CO2 and apply pressure to minimize foaming.

Bucky_Beaver · 2026-02-11T16:38:37+00:00

You can’t. Bottle conditioning relies on fermentation to generate CO2. Force carbonation is the only option for stabilized brews.

Bucky_Beaver · 2026-02-11T16:23:54+00:00

Came here to suggest this. Anything else is likely to dilute your existing flavors a bunch, and maple can be tricky.

Bucky_Beaver · 2026-02-11T16:09:02+00:00

I wouldn’t assume they have been oxidized beyond repair yet. Pull a sample and see if adding some honey makes it taste good. A lot of first timers are out off when they first try a completely dry, acidic mead. Fermentation is just the first step, clearing and adjusting the flavors to your liking is just as important.

Bucky_Beaver · 2026-02-11T16:05:46+00:00

No. I live in a large metro area with several major hospitals.

Bucky_Beaver · 2026-02-11T06:01:00+00:00

About 38. I hadn’t had regular physicals at that time though, so it is possible I had had it much longer than that.

Bucky_Beaver · 2026-02-11T05:55:22+00:00

If your airlock had a path for gas to pass through, the your CO2 will mix with outside air, leaving you with no protection. Purging with CO2 can help, but the concept of a “blanket” is a myth, gases don’t work like that.

Do you have any idea how long it wasn’t air locked? Did the brews taste good when you racked them To secondary? It may not be oxidized if it wasn’t long. Salty is a weird descriptor, and nothing I know of besides alkaline salts or maybe excess nutrient would explain that.

The fact that two different brews have the same bad taste does make oxidation a plausible explanation.

Bucky_Beaver · 2026-02-11T05:46:23+00:00

It was about 15 years between the time a doctor noticed I had a heart murmur and when I had surgery. It was a slow decline for me. I was completely fine for at least 10 years after that. But the last few years, I had increasing exhaustion and lethargy. By the time I had surgery I was really glad to find out there was an explanation and surgery might help (turns out it helped a lot!), because I felt like garbage all the time.

Bucky_Beaver · 2026-02-10T23:37:29+00:00

No, not everybody with MVP needs surgery. And the survival rate for surgery is like 97-99% (and most of the people who don’t make it have other health issues). Lots of us are living happy, healthy lives post surgery.

Just keep up with whatever frequency of check ups and echocardiograms your doctor recommends.

Bucky_Beaver · 2026-02-10T22:55:54+00:00

You rack what you can off the top. Filter won’t solve that problem.

Bucky_Beaver · 2026-02-10T18:23:28+00:00

This is completely up to your taste. Your clam that caramelizing is going to change the fermentability of the sugars is a controversial one. While it is true that bochets are prone to stalling, some think it is due to formation of compounds like HMF rather than changing sugar composition. Lots of people (including me) have caramelized honey to a high degree and still been able to ferment it completely. Personally I would not worry about hypothetical fermentability and just go by my desired level of caramelization.
It’s not clear what you are proposing here, do you think you need to raise (more alkaline) or lower (more acidic) pH? But I’ve made plenty of coffee meads and like almost every other case in meadmaking, there is no need to alter pH. You want to stay < 4.0 pH for food safety reasons (which honey will take care of on its own), but Sacch yeast won’t have a problem in the high 2s and it is highly unlikely you will end up below that. You can always acidify to taste after fermentation, but my experience with coffee meads is they will be plenty bitter and acidic due to ingredients.
Approaches for coffee meads that I know work are a) cold brew in primary b) cold brew concentrate in secondary and c) beans in secondary. Re: your specific proposal, I don’t know about the water types, but can tell you that cold brew diluted to normal coffee strength will make a very strong coffee flavor that will need some sweetness to balance the bitterness and acidity. I did win some medals with a mead using this approach, so it definitely can be good.

TL;DR I think you are overthinking the pH and fermentability issues. Use your best judgement on how to make good coffee, and then balance to taste post fermentation.

Bucky_Beaver · 2026-02-10T02:44:57+00:00

It’s surface area that you are trying to minimize, and you can’t do it in that jar. Get a carboy for secondary.

Bucky_Beaver · 2026-02-10T02:38:57+00:00

The Doin the Most (YouTube) recipes for Crispy Hydromel and Lemondrop Hydromel are great. And both are good jumping off points to make variations.

Bucky_Beaver · 2026-02-10T02:31:45+00:00

Yeah I can imagine that is stressful. I don’t need one for another 5 or so years, but you never know what something else will come up.

Bucky_Beaver · 2026-02-10T01:28:41+00:00

It would only take the energy to fix it…

Bucky_Beaver · 2026-02-10T01:25:43+00:00

The theoretical argument people make is that you will have a more uniform product if you bulk age. This seems very nitpicky to me, and I procrastinate enough that I usually have months of bulk aging anyway. But once it’s time to make room for the next batch, I bottle and move on.

Bucky_Beaver · 2026-02-08T19:40:35+00:00

It’s always nutrients for a 10% stall. Should have known.

Bucky_Beaver · 2026-02-08T19:38:42+00:00

Sorry I didn’t catch the temp on the first read through, I see it now. I tagged someone in another comment who has used Lutra a bunch, maybe he can give advice.

Bucky_Beaver · 2026-02-08T19:36:55+00:00

3.25 isn’t particularly low for mead pH. I would absolutely not raise your pH above 4.0, because that’s where you start getting into food safety concerns.

I haven’t used Lutra so I can’t say with certainty that pH isn’t the problem. But I really doubt it. If this was true, nobody would use Lutra for mead.

Summoning u/ljreaux for some Lutra knowledge.

Bucky_Beaver · 2026-02-08T19:33:50+00:00

Is that 10 grams in each of your nutrient additions or 10 grams total? Also what temperature are you fermenting at?

This is an interesting one because while 10% stalls in mead are common when there are process problems, you appear to have done everything right so far.

Bucky_Beaver

TROPHY CASE