Sour/musty tasting mead

Question

My son and I tried our hand at mead for the first time... I didn't notice a lot of bubbling I thought that it wasn't fermenting correctly but my son thought differently, he's 17. Lol

But when we went to bottle it after the normal 2-week. We tasted it and it tasted sour kind of musty It wasn't a good flavor.

Does anybody possibly know what we could have done wrong?

Thank you.

On a side note he decided to try to make ginger beer and I felt that the ginger beer had a similar taste to it not as strong as the mead but still it was there.

Could it be the tub that we're using?

Thanks ahead for the help

Answer 1

In my experience, there might be some yeast still floating around in it. Try sealing it for a while and letting it age. This has always helped mellow out the flavor and then rack out the yeast.

Answer 2

Thatguy is probably right- none of my meads, which use less honey, quick-fermenting beer yeasts, and nutrients to speed things up, have ever been ready in less than a month. You can try to rapidly settle out yeast by putting it in a fridge or a freezer.

All of the above is assuming you are taking gravity readings. Without checking, you won't know if the yeast even started fermenting anything. A batch isn't considered done until there has been no change in gravity for about a week- and sometimes it stalls for even longer than that- and there is no guarantee of visual activity even if it's still going.