I learned my lesson the hard way with my first batch of mead. It was tasting so good too, but I wound up dumping over half of it out because it became so tainted it was sickening. What's the lesson? Never leave your mead in plastic bottles!
My hunch is that the alcohol was eating away at the plastic and it finally reached a point where it leeched so much that it turned the mead. It was nasty. I'll do the initial ferment in plastic bottles as others have proven it works well, but for batch #2, I'll actually rack it into glass bottles (as soon as I can find some cheaply).
Luckily it wasn't all lost and some of the mead is still good. It's my "plain" mead that still good. It was still in a plastic bottle, but a different type of bottle than the others. I'll be transferring it out into something glass soon to ensure it doesn't go bad. It's been 9 months so far and I love it.
Coming up next will be 2 more gallon sized batches and I'm going to be getting a little more creative this time. One bottle will contain a Cherry Mead (Black Cherry if I can find them) and the other will be Blackberry. I've got all the ingredients I need except for the fruit. As soon as I pick it up, I'll mix up the next batch and post again.
