Yeast nutrient? More like fermenter hyper-explosion.

Never used yeast nutrient before today, when I added 2.5 teaspoons to 5 gallons on the third day after yeast pitching. I had no idea what to expect, to put it lightly. Soon as I dumped the first teaspoon in the fermenter, it basically all dissolved immediately in a bubbling froth of insanity. 1.5 teaspoons later and I had a huge bubbling mess that threatened to breach the fermenter's top. Stupid me didn't realize what was going on, so I shut the fermenter only to have the airlock go INSANE, and threaten to shoot off like a bottle rocket. So, hastily, I reopened the fermented just to have a good pint or so of thick foam shoot out the side. Luckily I had the foresight to put a towel under the fermenter and move the bucket to the kitchen. After the bubbles quieted down I resealed the fermenter and gave it a couple nice good shakes, each time the airlock was notably more active, then subsided shortly after.

I'm sort of running in the dark here with this whole mead business, but we'll see how it turns out and make changes the next time after I've finished the full production of primary, secondary, and bottling. Thankfully, bottling is very easy, so there shouldn't be any problems or blips with that procedure, despite never bottling something without sealed bottle caps before.

Another interesting point to note - when I opened the fermented there was no krausen to be found. I thought this was odd, as the smell coming out of the airlock was notably fermention-ladeled, and the airlock was producing a "it's definitely fermenting" amount of air. With a quick google search I discovered that mead can run the range from no krausen to explosive krausen.

It's also more evidence and force toward every time in the future that I do not use a smack pack, I will be doing a starter. Cider with dry yeast and mead with dry yeast both have produced the same sort of ... slow, boring, and nondescript ... fermentation that hints to me that either I have too high gravity liquid (extremely not likely) or that I'm not treating my yeast with the respect it deserves. So in addition to building a water cooler mash tun, I will be obtaining materials (mostly just a flask) to construct a starter vessel.

I should also consider actually doing gravity readings....