Really Low SG?

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galexior

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So, i just racked my first mead into a second jug to remove sediment. i didnt get an exact reading fo the OG, but i did those calculations in the sticky and estimated the OG to be 1.090. I started with one gallon of water and 3# honey, but i dont know how much water i used exactly because the honey displaced it, so i estimated about 12 cups of water to 4 cups of honey.

Yesterday, i racked it over and the SG was .994. I was mildly startled it was that low, but i dont know what that means. my hypothesis is that becasue its so low, a large amount, if not all the sugar was eaten, so i guess i expect it to be really dry? am i right in this assumption?

Do any of these numbers seem outlandish? I used red star "Pasteur Champagne" yeast, if that means anything.
 
So, i just racked my first mead into a second jug to remove sediment. i didnt get an exact reading fo the OG, but i did those calculations in the sticky and estimated the OG to be 1.090. I started with one gallon of water and 3# honey, but i dont know how much water i used exactly because the honey displaced it, so i estimated about 12 cups of water to 4 cups of honey.

Yesterday, i racked it over and the SG was .994. I was mildly startled it was that low, but i dont know what that means. my hypothesis is that becasue its so low, a large amount, if not all the sugar was eaten, so i guess i expect it to be really dry? am i right in this assumption?

Do any of these numbers seem outlandish? I used red star "Pasteur Champagne" yeast, if that means anything.

Most wine yeast strains will take anything under 1.110 or so dry. That's what it's supposed to do. .994 sounds about right, but it could get as low as .990 by the time it's done.

If you want a sweeter mead, once it's completely clear and no longer throwing any lees, it can be racked onto some "stabilizers" and then sweetened to taste.
 
ok, awesome! that means i havent totally messed this up yet! yay!

also, what are lees? and what do stabilizers do?
 
ok, awesome! that means i havent totally messed this up yet! yay!

also, what are lees? and what do stabilizers do?

"Lees" is the name of the sediment that falls to the bottom in the fermenter.

After fermentation is complete, the stabilizers can be added before the wine or mead is sweetened to keep fermentation from restarting and fermenting out the newly added sugar. That only works once fermentation is finished, and the mead/wine is completely clear as the stabilizer only inhibits yeast reproduction and doesn't kill the yeast.
 
The stabilizers used...if plan on serving dry you use campden tabs or k-meta, if plan on backsweetening with a fermentable sugar you would use campden/k-meta plus sorbate as this will prevent refermentation from kicking in.
 
How does it taste? There is no harm in tasting the sample you pulled to get the sg (just don't put any back in the fermenter!). I always sacrifice the sample to taste testing :)
 
it tastes like a strong white wine actually, with alot of that "alcohol burn".
 
The burn can subside with time. You can also make another batch that's sweeter and mix them to make a mead closer to what you want
 
Hi, I added 1.67 pounds of clover honey to a 3 gallon batch of cider. Can anyone tell me what that honey addition added to my SG. I have read that a pound of clover honey adds .047 points to an SG measurement of one gallon of water. Can anyone confirm that? If that's the case, it looks like I added the equivelant of .02338 to my cider OG.
 
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