Citric Acid Overdone

First recommendation is that there is a meadmaking group. Your question is very valid for the wine making group as mead is just a type of wine but you might get some specific help on the mead site. -- rec.crafts.meadmaking

Now to your questions. IF you have too much acid, after it is finished (and you may not) you could try reducing the acid with calcium carbonate. This would not be my suggestion but it is something you could do. The second thing you could do is to use it to blend with other meads.

Honey is a very good buffer. That means that you cannot determine before hand using common titrations for acid, what the final acidity will be as you would with a regular wine. I generally make my mead with the least acid I think it may need and then add acid to taste at the end. Even when I add the acid called for in most recipes, I generally find that I need to add more at the end. I would never follow this procedure with my regular wines.

What I would recommend in your case is that you let the mead finish. You might find that it is not too bad. If acidity is it's major fault, then I would just put it back to bulk age and save it for the next batch of mead I made and use it to blend with to bring the new meads acidity up.

Ray

Not sure if cold stabilization reduces citric acid or just tartaric, but if it does in fact reduce citric this could be an option.

Nope, just tartaric which precipitates out (if you added potassium) as cream of tartar. i am pretty sureit is goignto taste pretty tart. If you plan on making more batches of mead with similar character I would jsut blend it. Or you could let it age for about 10 years.

Thanks Ray, I'll suck it and see, also thanks for the mead group

Charlie