Reddit mentions of Fermax Yeast Nutrient, 1lb

Background

Based upon my initial question: Is it wine or meed?, I am working on my first Mead/Pyment. I've taken the original recipe I cobbled together from a variety of sources.

Is it mead? Well yes. According to the calculators in the sidebar concord juice is about 8.89% sugar. Honey is roughly 80%. I'm no math wiz, but I fussed with both Google and Wolframalpha and 8.89% of two gallons is roughly 45 Tablespoons or 0.23 pounds of sugars, 1 Gallon of Honey is roughly equivalent to 204 tablespoons of sugars or 7.9 pounds of sugars. yes I know Different types of sugars, etc. etc. But the mixture here is getting much more than 51% of the sugars from honey, so: 'tis a Wine -> Mead -> Melomel -> Pyment.


The following is an expansion of The GotMead format for recipes.

1. Ingredients
   
   • Star-San - not technically an ingredient, but it's for sterilization. I think of it as an anti-ingredient keeping the bad bugs out. (Sprayer use= 1/4 tsp to 650ml water & 60 second exposure)
     
   • 1.5 Gallons of boiled tap water (more or less to make things work out.) NOTE: I have well water, not city water - so no chlorine & plenty of minerals.
     
   • ~2 Gallons of homemade concord grape juice. (SG 1.060)
     Last year I pressed about about six gallons of grape juice from concords of my own. I was going to make jelly in the winter and froze it in the deep freeze.
     
   • 10lbs (now 15lbs) of Pure N Simple Honey.
     
   • ~3 tsp Fermax from Amazon.
     
   • Red Star Premier Blanc [Amazon] (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00434CB74)
     
     
2. Equipment
   
   • Large Stainless stock pot (for initial boil)
     
   • 5 Gallon food grade bucket & Lid sterilized.
     
   • 4 Gallon Sams club water bottle playing the role of carboy.
     
   • Hydrometer
     
   • Transfer hose
     
   • Water lock/ Bubbler
     
     
3. Preparation
   
   • Thaw the grape juice overnight in the fridge in a large container in case of leakage.
     
   • Sterilization/pasteurization.
     Thinking through the volume of Honey (~1 gallon) and aiming for a 4 gallon carboy; bring 1.5 gallon of water to a boil. Turn off heat, add the grape juice in order to pasteurize the juice without setting the pectin, stir in about 10-12 pounds of honey. (remove any scum that forms)
     
   • Sanitize the bucket and lid, and stirring spoon.
     
   • Stir vigorously as you add the ingredients.
     
   • add to the bucket, check the temperature and the SG - calculate remaining honey or water and add as needed. Stir till mixed, or your arm falls off - whichever comes first.
     
   • Check the temperature until it is at least down to about 80 degrees then add the yeast we're off to primary fermentation.
     
     
4. Primary fermentation.
   
   • 5 gallon sterilized bucket & lid with airlock.
     
   • Actual Original Specific Gravity (OG): 1.130 (I thought it was 1.122 but the must was still quite warm.)
     
   • I will plan on testing as fermentation tapers off and make a decision then on adding additional honey and warm water (carefully of course) in order to restart fermentation. (adjust to desired SG as needed).
     
   • Once fermentation has stopped transfer it to the secondary.
     
     
5. Secondary.
   
   • 4 gallon sams club water jug (plastic) with airlock.
     
   • Saved my honey jugs just in case I had any left over that wouldn't fit in the carboy.
     
   • Time. Lots of time.
     
     Notes:
     
     9/13/16 Initial. Retested SG, it was at 1.130.
     
     9/15/16 Sterilized a large spoon and vigerously stirred to aerate. SG at 1.074, fermentation is fast and furious.
     
     9/16/16 Aerated/degassed. 3tsp fermax. SG 1.050
     
     9/16/16 Aerated/degassed. SG 1.026
     
     9/21/16 Racking Day. SG 0.998 (ABV 18%?). Upon racking there was not quite enough in the carboy. After staring at it for twenty minutes I decided to gamble and added one gallon of water, and 5LBS of honey to bring it up to just below the base of the neck. Retesting the SG was 1.030. It is currently sitting inside a 5 gallon bucket in my bathroom, I'll transfer it to the closet as soon as I'm reasonably certain it won't go Mt. St. Helens on my wardrobe.
     
     

Basic chemical nutrient mixes are fairly cheap, but you can also use things like tomato paste or fruit purees. Some people use raisins, but everything I've read says that they make really mediocre nutrients. Probably still better than nothing.

Distillation isn't practical for me, so I haven't experimented with turbo yeast/high ABV hooch, but if you're determined to hit maximum ABV you might need some equipment to aerate your brew. This page has some info about the science behind aeration from a beer brewing perspective.

Whatever you decide to try, take before and after readings with your hygrometer and let us know how it comes out!

Mead is VERY forgiving, far more so than beer or wine. As has been suggested, JAOM is a great "toss it in and walk away" recipe, but almost any recipe will work for a beginner, even if it's done a bit off.

Things to remember:

Don't use bleach to sanitize, it's fucking hard to get completely out, and can render a batch unusable. I prefer IO Star to Star San as it doesn't foam up when you scrub the shit out of stuff with it, and it's easier to completely rinse.

Mead needs separate nutrient, it is quite cheap on Amazon you should also add Energizer perodically (once every other day for the first week and once a week for the next month) to prevent things from getting stuck along the way. A good guide on how/when to add fruit and how to perform step feeding, which produces the tastiest results, can be found HERE.

Wine Tannin can help to make your flavors "pop" and come out more brightly, add around 3 grams to a 5 gallon batch in primary.

Also, don't let things ferment in too warm a space, the place I ferment in is a steady 69 degrees, if you let it go too warm, you might end up with weird alcohols getting created, and your brew providing a headache along with a buzz.


Lastly, if you've decide you're going to get into brewing, don't go the carboy/bucket route. For a little bit more money (like $40 more than everything else combined), you can get a MUCH better/easier and compact solution. A conical eliminates the need to rack from one container into another (has a bottom drain to suck out yeast cake) it has a side drain to bottle from (I plug this into my filter pump and bottle right from there) is MUCH more compact then separate bucket/carboy & racking canes, and is a lot easier to clean because the hole in the top is like 6 inches across, plenty big enough for a hand and a scrubby sponge as opposed to the tiny 2" opening in a carboy (which are a bitch to clean).

Also, the supplier in this link (highgravitybrew.com) doesn't charge for shipping for these conicals, it seems like everyone else who sells them does even though they're all drop shipped from the factory regardless from whom you get it.

I purchased this stuff. I didn't know too much about nutrients (I'm just beginning to learn all about fermenting) so I just went with the one that had the best reviews. I read a bunch of the amazon reviews and it seemed good.

I'll be using EC-1118 just like the guy in the thread you linked. I currently have a batch fermenting (for about a week now) in a gallon of strawberry juice that I added 2 cups of sugar and 1 teaspoon of nutrients to. I plan to do the following:

Use 1 campden tablet to get rid of chloramines in the water then mix 12lbs of sugar, 2 tablespoons of nutrients, and pour 1 cup of the fermenting strawberry juice in there for the yeast. I then plan to use ph strips and citric acid to get the entire 5 gallons down to a ph of 4.0'ish.

I figured I'd go with EC-1118 since I also planned to use the yeast in fruit juices I wanted to drink straight up. I heard it was one of the better yeasts for that purpose. Since it also can get up to high'ish ABV, it seemed like a good yeast for both my purposes.

I'm curious to taste the sugar wash once it's done too. I heard some bad stuff about how washes taste, but I'm assuming mine will be more like a "sugar wine"? If it doesn't taste too bad, I might run batches of it just to drink straight up with flavorings (like coolaid powder, ice tea powder, etc).

Would love to hear any thoughts or suggestions you may have? Always nice to get advice from someone experienced.

Well if you're using the same yeast nutrient I use you should have pitched about 2.5 tbs. My instructions said 1-1.5 teaspoons per gallon, and you started out with 3 teaspoons in five gallons (1.5 tsp up front, 1.5 tsp later, right?), so by my math you're still significantly lacking nutrients.

If you add more later do it slow and careful. Last time I tried to pitch additional nutrients was five days into the ferment and had a dissapointing crop of farts going on. I realized I'd done exactly what you did, only pitched 1.5 tsp of nutrients, popped the top and frantically dumped in an additional tablespoon. GUSH!