fusa
Senior Member
What is a good OG for a sweet mead? I am about to start a sweet mead, using 3 quarts of honey and 7 quarts of water using White Labs sweet mead yeast. If I am correct the OG should be around 1.125.
I think 9 lbs of honey in a 2.5 gallon batch is fine. Honey varies, but the OG will be around 1.129. Wine yeast should be fine with that. A wine yeast, such as D47, should get you in the the ballpark and leave some residual sweetness.
I made my first mead about six months ago, bottled it and drank some yesterday.
I didn't measure the gravity at all, can you guys help me in calculating an approximation of what the ABV is, or point me to some tool I could use to get the numbers?
I used 7.5 lbs of honey, fermented in my LBK holding 2.25 gallons, with Lalvin 71b-1122 yeast.
I'm gonna go home and take a FG reading. At first I didn't want to use a hydrometer but I remembered I have a refractometer (silly me!) and it isn't like wasting wort in a flask/hydrometer anyway, since I can just drink it up right away at a pretty good serving temp anyway.
Also, this was my first batch, all my carboys were full six months ago when I brewed it and I partly just wanted to use all my fermenting space, which had just enough volume left to fit an LBK. I know it isn't the best fermentor (possibly even the plastic walls are somewhat permeable to oxygen, so I've heard, but who really knows?) but it was just a quick, first, 'learning' batch so I wasn't too worried about it. Yes, I like it, so I'm happy.
Thanks for all the comments!
Thats a pretty high OG. Even if you stop it fermenting at 1.030, which is pretty heavy and sweet, it will still be about 12.5%abv. If you tone down the sweetness you can ferment to a lighter FG and your yeast will have a little less trouble starting as heavy as 1.125. If you start at say 1.08 and go to 1.015 you wont have the same abv but it will ferment faster.
Your og should be 1.126. Using 14% ABV tolerant yeast, fg should be 1.019. This will be sweet. 14%÷131=107 gravity points . Be aware. Your yeast may consume more than the prophesized gravity points. My latest melomel , using lalvin 71b-1122 has gone through 124 points in a week!What is a good OG for a sweet mead? I am about to start a sweet mead, using 3 quarts of honey and 7 quarts of water using White Labs sweet mead yeast. If I am correct the OG should be around 1.125.
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