Has anyone ever used a staggered nutrient additions regiment? I just got some honey and was thinking of making a mead. Maybe add fruit and do a melomel. But, I wanted to use SNA on this next mead. Curious is others have done it and what their experience was with SNA.
Any good recipes for a melomel - fruit mead?
i have little experience, but ill give you what i have researched and learned.
lalvin 71b-1122 is the yeast to use...all pro and semi pro guys use it
ferment around 64-65 with tight fermentation control
use big 8-10 gal bucket for ease of use ...and bags for fruit so not a big mess
i have heated it to 140 for 22-25 min then cooled it (pasteurized) but i have heard you don't need to do that ....honey is some kind of wonder food and will not go bad....next time im going to try the no heat method with a smaller batch to see how it goes
sna schedule on second batch...did not take good notes on first
i split the nutrients into 4 ball jars with 1/2 cup boiling water each for sterilization and left them by the fermenter
i used 2 1/2 tsp yeast energizer
1 1/2 tsp wyeast wine yeast energizer
2 1/2 tsp yeast nutrient
(split all 4 ways) not sure this is the right combo still playing with this
brew day og .1125 hit with first nutrient jar and give lots of o2
2nd day g=.1120 hit with second shot...more o2
3rd day g=.095 more o2 3rd shot
4th day g=.075 more o2 4th shot
5th day g=.060 little o2 (punch fruit cap)
6th day g=.045 punch cap
7th g=.035
8th g=.025
9th g=.020
10th g=.015
12th g=.011 and she was done
recipes
triple berry
12p clover honey (northern brewer)
3 p orange blossom (brew and grow)
3 gal water filtered spring
4 4p mixed frozen berries (cost co)
put all fruit in primary with yeast
og 1.117 fg 1.00000
good but too dry
made march 1 drinkable after 3 months
awesome after 6 months its not gonna make a year
tart cherry
15p orange blossom (northern brewer)
3 gal water (filtered spring)
2 1 gal buckets of tart cherries (http://www.seedlingfruit.com/)
they are at all local farmers market...and still have cherries this
year but better hurry (they have deals on 4 gal buckets )
og .1125 fg .011
put half cherries in primary and half after yeast pooped out
heard good things on splitting fruit additions and wanted
a little more sweetness so i bumped up the gravity
we will see in december how it turns out (3 months)
Dan or anyone for that matter. Have you tried making a cyser? If so what is a good base recipe to go with?
no but im interisted.....i would not do a fruit cyser...i would stick to just grape juice and honey.
The next project im going to work on (after one more melomel) is just straight mead with different kinds of honey. So i can better understand the taste of each kind. I'm going to do one wildflower, orange blossom, and clover.
Cyser is apple juice and honey which is maybe what you meant.
My main concern with doing a cyser is what is the smallest amount of honey I can use that will still give it good honey flavor. I want this more on the mead side and less on the cider with added honey side. I currently have 6lbs of wisconisn honey and was planning on using that.
So I'm incredibly late to get to this thread but thought I'd throw out some info.
Regarding Staggered Nutrient Additions (SNA), it is, imo, imperative that they be used. There are a lot of different philosophies on how to approach them and I have done a few different techniques. To start, you need to rehydrate your yeast prior to pitching. If you can get your hands on Go-Ferm, it's a Lalvin product, to use as the rehydration medium, you'll be amazed at how rapidly fermentation will take off. In using this, along with either the Wyeast nutrient + DAP or FermAid K + DAP, you'll have a great fermentation. Doing three separate additions, over the first two days and then when you are at 30% of sugar depletion, you'll have a very clean mead that is ready to drink in ~3mths. Another important aspect to consider is degassing the mead. By degassing, you drive off poisonous CO2 that stresses the yeast and leads to flaws that take a long time to age out. Oxidation isn't a concern at this point. As to Cyser, I'm going to start a separate thread. Cheers!