What ratio of honey/other fermentables still qualifies as mead?

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strantor

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I started out with a 1 gallon mead recipe. A "kit" from my LHBS; I think it had ~2.5lbs of honey. About 2 weeks into fermentation, I thought it would be a good idea to add some cherries, so I added a 49 oz can of "sweet" cherry puree. The cherries didn't taste very sweet so I added 2lbs of brown sugar (which coincidentally is about what a 1 gallon cherry wine recipe calls for). This brought me up to ~2 gallons. Being tipsy, I decided that I had added WAAAY too much sugar so I put 3 more gallons of water in. 3 days later, talking to the guy at my LHBS he said that adding 10lbs of sugar *might* salvage it. I did so, and it seems to be almost done now. I'll be bottling in a few days.

Now obviously my abortion of a beverage cannot rightly be referred to as mead. Or wine, for that matter. But, I have heard of people adding fruits or other fermentables to their meads and still calling them meads. So is it 50/50? If your mead is only 50% honey is it still mead?
 
I started out with a 1 gallon mead recipe. A "kit" from my LHBS; I think it had ~2.5lbs of honey. About 2 weeks into fermentation, I thought it would be a good idea to add some cherries, so I added a 49 oz can of "sweet" cherry puree. The cherries didn't taste very sweet so I added 2lbs of brown sugar (which coincidentally is about what a 1 gallon cherry wine recipe calls for). This brought me up to ~2 gallons. Being tipsy, I decided that I had added WAAAY too much sugar so I put 3 more gallons of water in. 3 days later, talking to the guy at my LHBS he said that adding 10lbs of sugar *might* salvage it. I did so, and it seems to be almost done now. I'll be bottling in a few days.

Now obviously my abortion of a beverage cannot rightly be referred to as mead. Or wine, for that matter. But, I have heard of people adding fruits or other fermentables to their meads and still calling them meads. So is it 50/50? If your mead is only 50% honey is it still mead?
When the fermentable sugars from honey are more than 50% IMO.

Just that there's no real standards, unless there's some competition standards that could be applied.......yet the only one I've heard of is that of "show mead", which is honey, water and yeast.

There are some government regulated mead standards in Poland, but that seems to be to do with using one of the naming standards which states X honey to Y water. But that's the only national standard I'm aware of.
 
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