First flavored mead any tips welcomed.

I live in Alaska so honey is expensive. I managed to get cheap walmart honey (used it on my first mead ferments good). I don't boild my honey, but use hot water to help it dissolve into the liquid. I have a one year old (kept in the fridge) packet of Lavin D-47. Now I have habiscus about 2 lbs worth. do i boil and make a strong concentrated tea from it and add it while its brewing? Or ferment 4.5 gallons of mead then add .5 gallons of the habiscus tea?

I have
18lb of honey
Four packets of year old Lavin D-47
2lbs of Habiscus (not sure if i'll need more to turn it a nice rich red with a tart to it)
Anything else that would compliment to the mead, such as hops which type and how much..any spices? Should i make 6 gallons instead of 5, since i have alot of honey..I don't want a sweet mead..like i said any tips would be great. Sorry if i seem to be rambling on i'm just very excited about my 2nd batch that will be flavored!

tenchu_11 said:

I live in Alaska so honey is expensive. I managed to get cheap walmart honey (used it on my first mead ferments good). I don't boild my honey, but use hot water to help it dissolve into the liquid. I have a one year old (kept in the fridge) packet of Lavin D-47. Now I have habiscus about 2 lbs worth. do i boil and make a strong concentrated tea from it and add it while its brewing? Or ferment 4.5 gallons of mead then add .5 gallons of the habiscus tea?

I have
18lb of honey
Four packets of year old Lavin D-47
2lbs of Habiscus (not sure if i'll need more to turn it a nice rich red with a tart to it)
Anything else that would compliment to the mead, such as hops which type and how much..any spices? Should i make 6 gallons instead of 5, since i have alot of honey..I don't want a sweet mead..like i said any tips would be great. Sorry if i seem to be rambling on i'm just very excited about my 2nd batch that will be flavored!

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You can either brew a tea with the hibiscus and use that water to bring the honey to volume, or you could at the hibiscus after the honey is almost completely fermented, it's up to you. There are proponents for both, some may even split the hibiscus up and add at both primary and secondary, you'll just have to decide for yourself what you wanna try.

You could either do 6 gallons with all the honey, or you could do 5 gallons and make a more experimental 1 gallon batch; the latter is my preferred method.

I would start with using just 14# of the honey (for a 5 gallon initial batch size)... That should get it to ferment out dry with D47 (14% ABV tolerance rating)... Aim for an OG of 1.100...

For the habiscus, you could add some during fermentation, but I would wait until the majority of the fermentation was complete before adding it. That way you should get more of the flavor to come through in the mead. I would also add a little at a time, so that it's not too strong. You can always add more, but it takes a good amount of time to get flavors to mellow/age...

If the mead does ferment down to ~.990, then you can add a bit of the reserved honey to get it closer to where you want it...

As long as the D47 is still within it's date stamp/viable time frame, I would just hydrate a packet and pitch it in as normal... Having more packets on hand just means you're ready when you happen upon something else to ferment. :rockin: I make it a point to have at least a couple of packets of Lalvin yeast in the fridge at all times.