First Mead...sorta fail

[corney]

Just tasted my first ever made mead. It has a really dry flavor, smells sort of like sake. Didn't use a particularly dry yeast. What could be the cause.

Fermented in primary for 2 1/2 weeks, racked to secondary. Left in secondary for about 3 1/2 months, kinda forgot about it for a while. Could I have fermented for too long?

[ziggy]

Dry means there was not a lot of residual sugar left over so you have a couple options. You can kill the yeast with some sorbistat K then add some honey back. The sorbistat K will keep the yeast from refermenting the honey.

Next time you start making mead you can up the initial gravity with more honey that way the yeast will die out on it's own before it finishes fermenting or you can kill the ferm with sorbistat K before the ferm finishes.

[NHBrewer]

Ziggy has it right on. My guess would be that you added too much water to the batch originally for the amount of honey you had. If you want it sweeter without having to halt fermentation or back sweetening you need to add enough honey up front so that your yeast will stop itself because of the alcohol. Fermentation time should have no effect on terminal gravity, assuming you have given the yeast time to finish.

Chris Killinger
Fermentation Specialist
Moonlight Meadery
603-216-2162