4 replies to this topic

[japh]

Making a cherry vanilla mead, and I transferred the last night, and tasted. A very acidic (but not vinegary) taste to it.Recipe:1 lbs honey3 gallons water.5 gallons cherry juice71BThis was just before transferring on top of 8 lbs of cherries and 2 cut and scraped vanilla beans.I was thinking if any of you have had this, and if it will mellow out

[strangebrewer]

What was your FG? What kind of cherries? Do you have the ability to check the pH of your mead? While I haven't used cherries as much I have used raspberries quite a bit and I've found that if I let the mead dry out to much I get an acidic bite as a result of the acidity of the raspberries. I've found that even an FG of 1.020 doesn't come across as sweet when a lot of acidic fruit was also used.

[robsauce]

I had a similar issue with my cherry vanilla mead as well. My process was a bit different than yours but even after 1 month of primary fermentation (with fruit) and 2 months in secondary, it tasted extremely tart and sour. I let it bulk age/clarify for a year and it was still quite sour and acidic as a dry mead. I stabilized and backsweetened to around 1.015. The sweetness definitely helped balance the sour acidic flavour and I now have a delicious cherry vanilla melomel. It's been almost a year in the bottle now and it is awesome. Patience is your friend:smilielol:

[japh]

What was your FG? What kind of cherries? Do you have the ability to check the pH of your mead? While I haven't used cherries as much I have used raspberries quite a bit and I've found that if I let the mead dry out to much I get an acidic bite as a result of the acidity of the raspberries. I've found that even an FG of 1.020 doesn't come across as sweet when a lot of acidic fruit was also used.

They're a sweet cherry (Queen Anne). You'd think I'd be able to find my notes as to the FG around here somewhere, wouldn't you

If I read right, you just transferred onto cherries when you tasted it?

I tasted it right before transferring onto cherries.

I suggest waiting until you are ready to bottle before touching this, it might go away. One way to deal with it is to backsweeten to taste - as strangebrewer said, sweet balances out the sour. The other way is titrating your TA (hard to do in mead, because honey constantly converts acids and bases when you add your base titrating), and then adjusting your TA with potassium carbonate and cold crashing the acid out.

Between the two, I would much rather backsweeten, as it sounds a lot easier.

Edited by japhmi, 15 November 2010 - 11:20 PM.

[japh]

Well, all I can say is that waiting close to a year got rid of the acidic taste. I'll be bottling this soon, very good with a subtle cherry and vanilla that I was looking for.