20 pounds of honey

Well, I whipped up a batch of mead...my first. A blueberry mead. I found a new hbs closer to me than the one I was using...the lady gave me 20 pounds of honey and a can of puree. Looking around online at mead recipes, I cannot find one with that much honey...15 at the most, 10-12 seems common. What do you think? Will my 20lb. mead be way too sweet, or way to alcoholic? Used a wine yeast. Took a hydro reading and it was off the chart. Meter goes to 1.060 I think, well my reading was about 1.080.

Some meads are over 1.1 OG. Is it a 5 gallon batch? If so, that's a beast of a mead! I hope you used champagne yeast.

I bet champagne yeast will ferment it dry. That stuff is like Ahnuld at the end of Terminator 1. It just never stops.

That mead is gonna take a while to finish for sure. I love the color of blueberry meads.

And, what do you mean by too much alcohol?

thats a good one Janx. Yea thats alot of honey but no worries just kick back and let it ride. However you might want to make sure you have the next day off after you drink it.

Yes, the color is wonderful...do they lighten as they ferment? I think I may have meant 1.80 for a reading...I just remember being suprised. But, whatever...it's fermenting nicely. It wasn't a champagne yeast; some wine dry yeast. She didn't have any whitelabs mead yeast. (They do make one, right? Yes, I'm sure I saw one in a catalog.)

rightwingnut said:

Yes, the color is wonderful...do they lighten as they ferment? I think I may have meant 1.80 for a reading...I just remember being suprised. But, whatever...it's fermenting nicely. It wasn't a champagne yeast; some wine dry yeast. She didn't have any whitelabs mead yeast. (They do make one, right? Yes, I'm sure I saw one in a catalog.)

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How'd this turn out? Have you tasted it yet?

Heres a great article about mead. It is from my beer club website. They used 30lbs of honey for a 10 gallon batch. Three 10 gallon batches were made, split into 6 carboys. Then 6 different yeasts were used in the experiment. Interesting stuff. I will be attending this years 05' Mead Day event. I can't wait!

Here is the link to the article. It is in PDF format. ----->
2002 GREAT MEAD EXPERIMENT

Well, I tried it a couple months ago and it tasted like fermented sweet. Blech! I'm counting on aging helping out, but I dunno...I think the yeast was crap, although it's definately alcohol. I'll try it again soon.

I used honey in my cherry to get up to 1.095 on the hydrometer,
then after racking into secondary, i added another 10 lbs of cherryies, and 1/4 gallon wildflower honey.

It has been in secondary for almost 3 months now - will be racking it again this week sometime. Dont expect it to be "drinkable" for 2 years atleast.

Kilroy

rightwingnut said:

Well, I tried it a couple months ago and it tasted like fermented sweet. Blech! I'm counting on aging helping out, but I dunno...I think the yeast was crap, although it's definately alcohol. I'll try it again soon.

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Try letting it age for another six months to a year and then see how it tastes.