Making Mead: What Yeast Do I Use? 

Thanks for taking the time to watch the video!

Thank you so much!

Buddy Mc You’re absolutely right. 2 packets of yeast is a great amount for 3 - 5 gallons. Wild yeast are the worst!

Any benefit to making a yeast starter like a lot of the beer brewers do?

Absolutely. Best to make a starter with Fermaid Go Protect to really get the yeast off to a good start. Do everything you can to keep the yeast from stressing and releasing off compounds, causing bad aroma and harsh tastes. Can make the mead taste like really harsh mouthwash. Same can be done with beer brewing. Look into the TOSNA 2.0 yeast feeding.

Chad Ashton Definitely! Anything you can do to give your yeast the best chance possible. It won’t alter flavors or anything, but it will help the yeast in general!

I’m happy to help! Let me know how your mead goes!

How has the mead came out what are some tips and tricks you have learned from the experience

Temperature control is so important like you said. It's funny how often people don't even think about it yet it can literally make or break a mead.

D47 is incredible, thanks for watching! Let me know how those turn out!

Lance Spitzner The Lalvin K1-V1116 and EC1118 will get you till about 18% so I would recommend either. I would one of the other two since they go to 14%. Get your gravity up to about 1.14-1.15 and you’ll have a pretty good sweet mead!

@@ManMadeMead I think SG of 1.15 is the maximum value you can take in order to start fermentation. Anything higher wont ferment at steady pace and risk stalling in between.

I've hear about that! I should definitely put that on my list and give it a shot!

David Dalton I’ll have to try that at some point!

It's a great yeast! I highly recommend trying the apple cinnamon mead!

I plan to start a batch this summer to have at Christmas. I imagine its delicious.

I’m doing an apple pie right now going to rack out of primary this week end.

@@darthepirate3033 I plan on putting 4 lbs of red apples and 2 cinnamon sticks in the secondary, backsweeten of course and hopefully I end up with Christmas in a jug. As soon as my allspice mead and my strawberry/BlackBerry mead are finished I'll start it

Bread yeast works! I would give it a shot!

@@ManMadeMead just now I strained grape pulp from primary (spiced pyment) after 21 days. How long should I wait to clear the liquid in secondary? I have used 15-20% water with the grapes roughly pulsed in mixer grinder. Is it ok? The resultant liquid is little sweet now. Would the mead be almost dry on finish? I'm using bread yeast and around 2Kg of sugar in 8 litre must by step feeding. First 1Kg honey and then twice 500gm step feed.

@@Dave_en should take hydrometer readings to figure dryness. Where are you that it's not very legal to make wine? Just curious. Sorry I can't help with your questions, I don't brew like that.

@@goodcitizen3780 I'm from india. Here posession of more than 20litres of wine is viewed seriously. The wine should be only for self consumption and not for sale. Unless you pay huge licence fee, you can't brew more than 20 litres or five gallon wine. The price you need to pay is same as keeping two watchmen on payrole. This is especially for our local area.

I did this for so long, fixed my mistakes now but unfortunately they’re immortalized!

Bob Bruchsaler The D47 works fast but is a great yeast if you can control the fermentation temperature well. I would first give it a taste and see what you think, it might not be as sweet as you think. Do that before you change anything. If it is too sweet you might try starting a 1 gallon batch with the same or similar honey, only use like 1 gallon of water and 1 pound of honey and the D47 yeast. once that has gone through a portion of its fermentation add it to you 3 gallon. This will bring down the sweetness level without watering down your mead heavily and it will keep the ABV from dropping a ton. I hope this has helped!

CAHMicroFarms Yeah! I understand that completely, it definitely ferments things to be pretty hot

Thats the yeast im using. How long do you have to wait?

Mouth feel from tanins...either a cup of STRONG english tea, or a bit of oak spiral for 2-3 weeks.

joseph purdy It’s probably used all the sugars from your ingredients so you’ll have a dryer mead. If you back sweeten with honey you’ll get more of that flavor and then add some cherries into the mead again to impart more flavor

ᚹᛚᚻᚪᛋᛏᚪᛚᛅᚪᛘ Most everything has natural yeast on it. Wild fermentation is a thing, you just have no idea what’s really growing. I would say try any fruit you want and see if any fermentation picks up without yeast.

@@ManMadeMead Cool! But is there not some natural mushroom or something you can put in so it is a more certain technique for fermentation? It would be sad to put all that expencive ecological honey in and see it rot :(

I haven't but it sounds interesting!

Hi Mark, I haven't ever made one! However, after looking it up and doing some research I think you would be safe with the Lavlin K1-V1116 yeast. I think it would pair well and cooperate with the peppers. Now this is just a speculation because I haven't done it before. But the K1-V1116 does well with most meads. Hope this helped!

Awesome, thanks for the reply! I'm relatively new to this, have a standard mead on the go at the minute, thing I'll go onto one with oak next. I really want to do a capsicumel one though! :)

It’s definitely in the plans to do an oak one some day. And now that you’ve mentioned the capsicumel I will definitely be adding it to my list as well!

Man Made Mead I'll eagerly await your videos on them. I was watching one when you replied. 😀

Wild yeast are a bit unpredictable! Every yeast puts off different flavors - so you can’t totally predict what you will get!

I would say that going with 1 tsp of DAP or 1/2 tsp of Fermaid O or Fermaid K would be fine!

I would consider that to be a lighter fruit. Try the K1V1116!

dickthebutcher Oh man! Can’t believe I missed this comment, put that stuff into a traditional mead and see what it’s like! I’d love to try it!

Dimond Wallace The d47 is a fast fermenter so I would go with that! It’s from the company Lalvin

I love the D47 so I would definitely try that first. I haven't done a Maple syrup based mead so let me know how it goes!

Thatguy Man I think it would work very well! Just make sure and get your proportions correct and you might want to back sweeten after all fermentation is done. Since it has such a high alcohol tolerance it will more than likely eat through all the honey and leave a dry mead. That is unless you start with a larger amount of honey initially, so to get that sweet mead either start with something like 4 pounds of honey per gallon or just keep the standard 2-3 pounds and then backsweeten later. But the QA23 is a great yeast and it ferments pretty fast when all the conditions are right!

Cerry Messimore I like the K1-V1116 yeast the best. It works well as a general yeast for all purposes. I would go with that, if you don’t have that or like it I would also suggest just using the EC-1118 yeast.

Yup you could!

I think that'll be okay! You'll need to backsweeten if you feel like your mead isn't sweet enough. That's really up to you because some people like a dryer mead.

I would definitely pitch a new yeast. Try the Lalvin D-47. It should do a great job of finishing out your mead. Aging won't bring down the sweetness unfortunately!

Man Made Mead thanks! I'll give it a try.

I’ve never used red star, but everyone I’ve talked to that’s used it says it’s great!

You could do it! It's the same thing, I would definitely look to amazon or something to try and get some yeast specifically for mead/wine making. The Lalvin K1-V1116 always works well for me.

Thrix The yeast and everything should be completely fine! Apples in the secondary works well. D47 is a fast fermenter, so you’re doing the right thing by putting them into the secondary to avoid blowing off any flavors.

@@ManMadeMead thanks!

I haven’t used either of those!

Nazguloid Oh gosh! Yes I mean US Gallon, I should have included that in the video but I totally forgot!

@@ManMadeMead Since I had a question twice, here's the second one... What would be better: Adding Mint leaves and fresh chopped ginger to the must (either primary or secondary) or making a tea out of the same thing and adding it (room temp. of course) to the initial must? Both ginger and mint have some anti-bacterial properties, hence should be pretty safe. Not sure if the 'anti' part goes for yeast as well.

Nazguloid since those are more flavoring adding tastes I would do them in the secondary. I feel like it’s easier to control adding extra flavors when you do them in the secondary. However, I think it’s worth a shot to run a test of sorts and see what you think! I’d be curious to hear what your results are.

@@ManMadeMead agree with you. I had added just one cardamom pod in 750ml mead in secondary and the flavour was unbearable. You are right, flavour addition should be done in the secondary especially for fruit mead.

Hmm... did you try rehydrating it or are you just sprinkling it in? It could be that they died in transit!

@@ManMadeMead Yes, I tried everything i could to start them up. Uppon closer examination I found that they had died during the shipment. I tested the other packs of yeast, all to the same result. This Texas heat is what most likely killed them. It was around 104° when I got them.

@@dragonraider1108 Oh man! That definitely sounds like they just kicked the bucket on you. Do you have a local brewshop around you?

@@ManMadeMead Im not sure. There is a winery near me though. Maybe they can help me find one.

Yeast nutrient is essentially just dead yeast, so technically that would work. But I would just buy some yeast nutrient!

That can work! It’s just not as controllable or predictable as wine yeast. Wine yeast is intended to keep certain flavors in a brew.

Only if the yeast are stressed. Going slightly over their temperature range won’t cause them to freak out too much!

@@ManMadeMead cool, thanks!

You can use any yeast. Even the wild ones. But you'll have more control with these. And you'll be able to get a higher ABV.

Yes you can! In fact it’s encouraged because like Anthony said, you can control them easier.

@@PeacefulPeteable I think wild yeast or bread yeast are unpredictable after achieving 8% ABV. Though I have managed to get 12+% ABV using bread yeast but still it depends on luck. That said Lalvin EC-1118 has natural Alcohol tolerance of 18% ABV. So even if something goes wrong, still we can achieve 14-15% ABV which is more than enough for long term storage.

I think you’ll be fine with it fermenting above 68. There are quite a few people I’ve found that use it and ferment above 68 with good results!

I love them!

Preach!