Adding hardness to water for meadmaking

Greetings!
I am getting ready to make a batch of orange blossom mead. I have been reading the "What I Learned at NHC" sticky and find the Meadmaker of the Year handout to be extremely helpful. I do have one question though.
The handout says that the water should have 250-500ppm as carbonate. I always use RO water when brewing beer and intend to do the same with this batch of mead. Can someone please explain to me how to add 250-500ppm of carbonate to my water? John Palmer says not to use Calcium Carbonate because it will not fully dissolve. What would you recommend? I really appreciate your assistance. Thanks!

hokenfloken said:

Greetings!
I am getting ready to make a batch of orange blossom mead. I have been reading the "What I Learned at NHC" sticky and find the Meadmaker of the Year handout to be extremely helpful. I do have one question though.
The handout says that the water should have 250-500ppm as carbonate. I always use RO water when brewing beer and intend to do the same with this batch of mead. Can someone please explain to me how to add 250-500ppm of carbonate to my water? John Palmer says not to use Calcium Carbonate because it will not fully dissolve. What would you recommend? I really appreciate your assistance. Thanks!

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Potassium bicarbonate is what you want to use for mead. It adds that PH buffer since honey is naturally acidic but also adds potassium which is an important nutrient for yeast health and honey is devoid of it.

I have never really set down and figured up the parts per million but according to the BOMM recipe (Brey's One Month Mead) a common amount to add is 3/4tsp per gallon. But it does not specify RO water, spring or filtered tap. I use bottled water from the Primo 5 gallon jugs and it works fine for me. I actually have an orange blossom traditional and a orange blossom Bochet both in primary about 3 weeks old with the above additions and everything looks good there.