Mango Habanero Mead

This mead marks my first attempt at being super "professional" with my mead making. I'm going to try to use a many best practices as possible for this batch..

What that entailed was first rehydrating the yeast using a nutrient. Previously I either just rehydrated the yeast in water or pitched it dry into the must. This time around I heated up 4 c of water in my electric kettle for one minute which allowed it to attain temperature of about 113F. Then using calculations which said to use 1.25x of Fermax the grams of yeast you're using, mix the nutrient in 20x the amount of water heated to 107F.

Now the rehydrating process is actually for using Fermaid-O or -K (the Fermaid-O calculation is slight different), but I've read that Fermax can reliably be substituted for Fermaid-K, so I went with that.

Since I'm using 2g (1 tsp) of D47 yeast, that meant I needed to use 2.5g (1-1/4 tsp) of Fermax in 50 ml of water. When the temp of the Fermat-Infused water drops to 104F,  pitch the yeast into it and let it stand for 15-20 min. The Lallemand yeast website says the entire rehydration process should last no more than 45 min.

With the yeast rehydrating, 1 added 1 c of kettle water to the fermenter and added 1/2 tsp of Bentonite. I then shook vigorously to mix.

The honey had previously been placed in a saucepan with boiling water to liquefy and I now measured out 1-1/2 lbs of honey. I might have been justified in using only 1 lb because the mango juice I'm using also has sugar.

I took a hydrometer reading of just the juice and it read 1.050, which is where I was shooting for, and I knew I would be adding water as well, but I couldn't quite figure out how much honey would be needed. It was all a guessing game and as we'll see, I was a bit off.

I added the remainder of the hot water and shook vigorously to incorporate the honey. I then emptied two 33.8 oz. containers of mango nectar (from concentrate) into the fermenter. I also add 1 tsp of wine tannin. With the fermenter approaching full, I took some readings: the original gravity was 1.080, a little above what I was shooting for as it gives me a potential ABV of 10.5%. the pH was 3.82, which seemed okay and the must temp was 89F.

I checked the yeast slurry temp, which had been sitting for about 30+ minutes and it was 87F. That's good because you want the yeast and must to be within 10F of each other, but you also want to pitch the yeast when the must is between 75-80F. I hope it doesn't effect the yeast, but I pitched it nonetheless.

Last, I aerated the must with my whip and realized I really should have done it prior to pitching the yeast, but as I'll be aerating for the first 3 days perhaps it's not a big deal.

I'll also be adding nutrients in a staggered fashion over the next few days, but since it will amount to about 1/8 tsp each addition, who knows whether it will amount to anything significant. I'll also be degassing the mead until it hits the 1/3 sugar break (1.026), which should be within the first few days.

And airlock was added to the fermenter and it was placed in the fermentation freezer.

UPDATE (10/9/17): Little to no airlock activity for most of the day. Perhaps if I had more patience it would have been okay, as there was one bubble popping every minute, but I decided to pitch another teaspoon of yeast.

I rehydrated it in the typical manner (no nutrients, just water) and acclimated it to the lower must temp before pitching. A few hours later I went to check on it and it was clear there was significant activity: there was a lot of bubbly crud on top and some relatively clear must below. It looked like it was going to bubble up through the airlock,  so I added a blowoff tube to it: my siphon hose into a pitcher of StarSan.

Initially I had it sitting on top of the freezer in a Wal-Mart bag to keep the light out, but then remembering D47 yeast doesn't like warm ferments (over 70F) I moved it and the blowoff tube into the freezer. Using the Thermowell, it seems like the must temp was around 23C, which is north of 70F, so it looks like it was a good move. We'll see how it has progressed tomorrow when I make the second nutrient addition.