nooooooo! bad mead!

[chapesh]

well i made a mead with some honey that i got from a friend i work with. he slaved his bees night and day for this honey. i made it 2 years ago. looked fine when i added it to the keg. tried it the other day and had to apologize to my buddy for screwing up. this was horrible stuff. i don't know if it was contaminated when i added it to the keg, or if the seals on the keg failed, or if it reacted with something in the keg. but it tasted like i added chocolate to it, and the color was dark and cloudy. anyone with feedback? the keg is holding co2 and i am waiting to see if maybe i stirred up the yeast from the bottom and that gave it the strange flavor. ahh well, just have to try again.

[Mad Scientist]

How long was it in the keg?

[chapesh]

2 years. the seals seem o.k.

[corkybstewart]

Sounds like oxidation, but I don't know how that would happen in a keg. I found an old bottle of pale ale that must be 6 or 8 years old in a Grolsch bottle. Still very nicely carbonated, it had darkened and was slightly cloudy. I was really pretty excited since visibly it just looked like typical effects of aging, but damn that stuff was nasty. It was very astringent with a solid wet cardboard backbone that lasted long into the finish-damn near couldn't get that taste out of my mouth.
Was the keg completely full? Was the mead completely fermented when kegged. Maybe there were some residual sugars in the honey that never fermented. Or maybe the bee's diet includes flowers that just don't make honey that's good for mead. Not all honey works well for mead, some are very strongly flavored.

[chapesh]

the mead was completely fermented, the honey should have been just a standard wildflower honey, his hives are in a rural area, here in mo. and yes the
flavor was difficult to get out of my mouth. had to drink quite a few beers to get rid of it, and quell my sorrow. the keg was not full to the top, however i did add co2 on it. enough to be sure it sealed and wasn't leaking. i am worried that maybe the rubber o-ring dried out a little and allowed air in, when i dump it i will inspect the rings. very sad though.

[chapesh]

the o-rings were fine. there was more head space than i realized, i did charge it with co2. i guess it just wasn't enough though. should have kept a better eye on it and hit it with co2 occasionally. i am going to start doing meads in gallon containers until i figure out what i am supposed to be doing with my meads. so many variables for this drink and i want to try them all. much cheaper to mess up a gallon than 5 gallons.