After you’ve gotten your mead in to your fermenter, you’ll need to carefully watch for signs of fermentation. If after the first week you don’t see any signs of fermentation, you should troubleshoot and correct any issues.

Signs of fermentation may include bubbles rising up through the airlock or an increase in depth of the yeast cake at the bottom. Measuring the specific gravity is the only way to truly verify if fermentation is occurring. If your hydrometer reading doesn’t indicate a change in the specific gravity, then here are some suggestions to get fermentation going.

If you want a reminder on how to check your specific gravity, check out our post here.

Pitch New Yeast To Start Fermentation

Occasionally, the yeast you pitch into your must (unfermented honey water), might have been dead. Or, at least not strong enough to survive the climate in the must. If the dud yeast wasn’t viable, pitching a strong yeast should restart fermentation.

You should also consider making a starter for your yeast. Many mead brewers say that it’s not necessary. Making the starter prior to pitching it into your must ensures that it’s active before you use it.

Using high-quality yeast that has been stored and handled properly yields the best results. If you had previously used dry yeast, try switching to the liquid yeast.

Change Your Brewing Yeast

Review your mead recipe prior to brewing. Make sure that the yeast called for in the recipe will be successful. Different strains of yeast will have different alcohol tolerances. Pitching a yeast with a low alcohol tolerance into a must with high specific gravity will kill the yeast or stall it.

If you’re shooting for a high alcohol content, make sure that your yeast strain can handle it. If you pitched a yeast you weren’t sure about, research a new strain and repitch.

Relieve Gasses to Restart Fermentation

During fermentation the yeast will produce gases. The most common gas is carbon monoxide. Some of the gases will get dissolved into the liquid. When this happens, the yeast could stall.

Degassing the mead will allow the gasses to escape the mead and provide a more tenable environmental for the yeast to grow. You can easily degass your mead by stirring it until bubbles foam up and out the top of the fermenter.

Anything you use to stir the mead should be sterilized before you stick it in the fermenter. Be careful when stirring. Stirring too aggressively could cause overflow.

Give Your Yeast Some Nutrients

Sometimes your yeast just needs a little extra boost to get going. Homebrew supplies formulate different yeast nutrients. Think of these nutrients as fertilizers for your mead. Common nutrients include Fermaid K, Fermaid O, and DAP.

Fermaid K helps maintain alcohol tolerance in the yeast. As the alcohol content builds up, the yeast will struggle to survive. This nutrient helps it to stay strong. Adding this to the mead may cause the mead to degass rapidly.

Fermaid O, or FermO, helps promote the yeast health and alleviate stress. Stressed yeast tends to produce sulfer smells, and adding Fermo can help limit the odor.

DAP is a source of inorganic nitrogen. Ap also helps to reduce the production of sulfur as the yeast ferments.

Regulate the Temperature

Temperature control helps to maintain a adequate yeast environment. Yeast that is too hot can become stressed and stall, while yeast that is too cool will slow down.

Make sure that your mead is stored is a location that stays within the temperature range recommended for your yeast strain. If your storage location exceeds the recommended temperature, consider pitching a different yeast ahead of time. If you’ve already pitched your yeast, move your mead into a better temperature controlled space.

We’ll post a future blog post about how to create a temperature