Mead tastes like cough syrup?

JP Atsma · Dec 14, 2018

Hi all,

I'm a new member, so I haven't had a chance to read all the posts to date yet :-)

I've made a Mead a year ago and I was really looking forward to it. Unfortunately it tastes like cough syrup and has a very medicial flavour. I used 2kg honey to make 1 gallon of mead.
I'm not sure what mead actually tastes like, so perhaps it has an acquired taste?

Does anybody have any tips to lift the flavour to something more palatable, or is it a case of just drinking it when I'm not sober anymore?

Chippy_Tea · Dec 14, 2018

Have a look at this thread from our sister site - https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/...e-mead-stops-tasting-like-cough-syrup.364943/

.

JP Atsma · Dec 14, 2018

Excellent, thanks. I'm glad I'm not the only one.
I'll probably leave it for another year unless I get a sore throat, in which case I can use it as an a treatment with pleasant side effects :-)

Chippy_Tea · Dec 14, 2018

Sounds like a plan. :thumba:

Ajhutch · Dec 14, 2018

What’s the current gravity? That’s a pretty hefty amount of honey in a gallon, not off the scale but high. So it’s plausible that fermentation has finished/stopped with quite a lot of residual sugar giving you a sweet taste. This is particularly possible if you didn’t provide nutrients or oxygen for the yeast during the first few days.

simon12 · Dec 15, 2018

I find mead to taste medicinal if its dry as I find honey without the sweetness just tastes like nasty medicine other like it though so maybe you just have a similar taste to me.

Bernardsmit · Dec 20, 2018

Not an expert by any stretch of the imagination but cough syrupy tasting wine is usually associated with four possible factors (often) in combination and these are (to the best of my knowldge)
1. The alcohol content is relatively high and
2. The acid level is relatively low while
3. The water contained chlorine that bonded with the phenols produced by the yeast (chlorophenols being an active ingredient in most over the counter cough medicines) and
4. The wine is relatively sweet.

Typically, it is not easy to remove this fault although you might increase the TA and reduce the sweetness...

ScottE75 · Dec 20, 2018

I've made quite a few meads (and lots of mistakes) and my early meads tasted medicinal (I quite liked it, but I've been told I'm weird), but recently, with a lot of tweaking, they are turning out ok. I've just made mead and using a heat belt, so the fermentation temperature is quite high, so I'm interested to see how it turns out. Practice makes perfect, and in the case of homebrew, possibly a bad liver.

Poly Hive · Dec 22, 2018

With great respect to all no one has mentioned the critical factor in mead making which is.... the honey. Giving the honey no thought is the same as the distillery manager saying oh the water has no importance. Quality honey in equals quality mead out. And I hate to say it but very few supermarkets stock quality honey with the exception of ASDA who sell honey from Perthshire and have done for years now.
Find a local beekeeper and offer to buy in bulk.
PH (Beekeeper and mead maker for some 30 years)

MrRook · Jan 18, 2019

As strong as your mead is it may take another year, or two, of aging.

Mead tastes like cough syrup?

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