Troubleshooting

It is not easy to know what the potential problems are, what they are due to, how to prevent or solve them.

There are books on wine and beer dealing with possible troubles but some of them are specific to these beverages. As far as mead is concerned, there can be no problem due to sulphating (bees are not allowed to sulphate honey), or to pathologies of malt or hops. So we can rejoice because mead may be less at risk than beer or wine. The other face of the coin being that there are few sources of information addressing problems that can happen during the making of mead. So beer and wine literature will have to do, we have to guess whether some pathology can hit mead or not.

When one thinks there is a problem, one should ask several questions:

• Is it normal? That is unexpected for sure but does it mean it is abnormal?
• Is it troublesome? If the symptom is not a problem in itself, one has to determine whether its cause is problematic or not. If the mead is cloudy because of proteins or yeasts, that is no big deal. On the other hand, if it is because of bacteria, action is to be taken right now. The symptom can sometimes be worse than the cause: if bottles explode, no need to wonder what it is due to, something has to be done anyway.
• Is there a solution to this problem? If so, are side effects more problematic than the problem itself? See criteria of judgment in Syntheses.

Different kinds of problems

• Stuck fermentation
  
  
• My mead looks funny
  • Oxidation
  • Explosion of bottles
  • Crystals
  • Cloudiness (non bacterial)
  • Cloudiness (bacterial)
  
  
• What's that smell?
  • Vinegar odor
  • Geranium odor
  • Musty odor
  • Sulfur odor
  • Yeast flavor
  
  

References

• appendix B in V9
• chapter 5 of B1
• Recht inV4 (chapter 13)
• Chapter 10 in V3
• chapters 15 and 16 from V3