Questions about making sweeter meads

So I plan on making a simple Cyser. It calls for:

1 gallon of apple juice
2-4 lbs honey (I got 2.2 lbs)
1 packet of champagne yeast (I will probably get EC-1118 because its all over here locally)

It says in the text that this will produce a dry cyser. I was wondering how one would make a sweeter mead than this. I plan to list what I have learned below and was hoping you all could tell me where I am wrong and some other options I may have not heard about yet.

1. Start with more honey.
2. Use Sodium Bisulfite or Campden Tablets to stop fermentation so as to leave some sugars around.
3. Add Potassium Sorbate and sugar after fermentation is done to add sweetness back in (backsweeten).
4. Start with same amount of honey (not necessarily this recipe above) and use a yeast that produces less alcohol then a champagne yeast.

Am I missing any other methods or are these even correct?

Thanks.

#2 will not work. I recommend using a lower abv yeast and figuring out what gravity you need to start so the yeast will die out leaving some sweetness.

It sounds like you have all the info you need! Any of those methods will work. I think the best thing you could do would be to let it finish dry then when it's done sweeten it back to taste. Add your potassium sorbate then add a cup of honey and stir it in very well then sample it to see if it's where you want it. I don't recall if you're making a 5gal batch or not. If you're making less than 5gal then use less honey at a time to sweeten it back. Also, you could use a less powerful yeast. Something that doesn't have quite as high of an alcohol tolerance like D47 or something like that. You could use one of the lower tolerance yeasts and and put in more sugar to start with and it could finish sweet for ya. I just got done doing a batch of traditional sweet mead that way. Good luck and have fun!:rockin:

All but #2 will work, Campden kills bacteria.

Thanks guys. I planned on doing a one gallon batch with this. So these would be acceptable methods to achieve a sweeter mead then:

1. Start with more honey.
2. Add Potassium Sorbate and sugar after fermentation is done to add sweetness back in (backsweeten).
3. Start with same amount of honey (not necessarily this recipe above) and use a yeast that produces less alcohol then a champagne yeast.

I will make it as is so that I can see if I like it dry and if I don't I can backsweeten it from there.

You guys are very helpful. I have never been on a forum were theres been 4 people viewed a thread and 3 of them have responded.

Regardless of whether or not Campden (bisulfite, or others) will, or will not, effectively stop an in progress fermentation, I tend to follow Dr. Clayton Cone's (Lallemand fermentation scientist) opinion that forceably stopping an active fermentation is not a wise choice - the reasons are somewhere in my files. This knowledge was shared during an email while I was reverse engineering a pyment recipe for which the author kept no brew records.

While I may attempt to construct a recipe that finishes at a particular SG, if it does not then I simply back-sweeten at the end, and allow the result to clear before bottling.

Everyone here seems to be on the right track. #2 may or may not work, but it's highly likely it will not work as well as you want anyway.

I would ditch the champagne yeast and go with a wine or sweet mead yeast. The sweet mead yeast appears to crap out right around 11%.

If you do crap out at 11% with the sweet mead yeast, you'll be left at ~1.020 - which might be a touch too sweet, but probably very drinkable.

Like Thorson and Bubbachunk have said, but more emphatically: #1 Priority: do not use EC-1118. Find a yeast with a lower alcohol tolerance.

It may take some legwork, but mail order some 71B-1122 or a Riesling strain. Add another pound of honey to the recipe, and use a little nutrient. 3/4 tsp of Diammonium phosphate and 1/2 t Fermaid K. Aerate it well before you pitch, and you should be on the right track.

Happy New Year.

Ken

Thanks for the replies again.

I think for my second batch I will go for a lower alcohol tolerant yeast but for now I was thinking of using the EC-1118. My intention was to try and get the dry cyser like the article says will be produced and then sweeten it if I don’t like it. I don’t like dry wines so I imagine I will end up sweetening it. That way I will get to try one of the techiniques that I have read about and listed above so that I can learn from it.

My second batch I will try with lower alcohol tolerante yeast as has been suggested.

Hi Ken,

I have looked through your book before and will have to get it from the library again and read it. I just wanted to clarify some of the things you have mentioned. Is that a ½ tsp or ½ tbsp that you have listed for the Fermaid K?

I had read before that using the apple juice would help negate the use of nutrients. Do you think this recipe I have listed for the Simple Dry Cyser will work fine without them?

So my first recipe I will use is:

Simple Dry Cyser
1 gallon of apple juice
2.2 lbs honey
1 packet of EC-1118

and the second based off of recommendations here:

Sweet Cyser
1 gallon apple juice
3 lbs honey
1 packet 71B-1122 or a Riesling yeast or D-47
¾ tsp diammonium phosphate
½ (tsp or tbsp) Fermaid K

That's teaspoon, since it's only a one gallon batch.

I can't stop you from using the 1118, but I have yet to make a mead with 1118 that I really liked. It's just too aggressive. It will strip that must clean, and leave very little fruit or honey character for when you backsweeten. Apple juice should not negate nutrients. It will provide some nitrogen, but not as much as you'll need for a must of that gravity. Without nutrients, 1118 will definitely exaggerate its tendency to push higher alcohols. I'd wait the time it'll take to order a friendlier yeast and some nutrient, if I was making it. Meadmaking rewards patience, in more ways than one. But ya pays yer money and ya takes yer chances. It's always your call.

I know the best way to learn is by trial and error... That's more or less what I've done myself. Though, I wish I hadn't. I actually wasted quite a bit of money before I started following tried and true methods I learned from more experienced folks.

You can make a strong, drinkable mead with the 1118 yeast. I do believe after you do both of your batches one with the 1118 and one with a lower alcohol tolerance yeast, you'll probably prefer the latter. Keep in mind the delicate flavors and aromas honey has.
Also the fact that really high abv can cause off flavors.

Anyway, keep us posted and let us know which you prefer and let us know the steps you take along the way to get your end results. Good luck and have fun!!

I have a recipe that uses K1V-1116, which is a heavy hitter.

~18 lbs clover honey (enough to get it up to a SG of 1.132)
2 gallons unsweetened pomegranate juice (no preservatves)
1 gallon unsweetened apple juice (no preservatves)
water for about 5.5 gallons
2 pkgs Lalvin K1-V1116 yeast

I'd like to try it using DV10 one of these days.

You all have convinced me now. I will go with the Sweet Cyser.

Sweet Cyser
1 gallon apple juice
3 lbs honey
1 packet 71B-1122 or a Riesling yeast or D-47
¾ tsp diammonium phosphate
½ tsp Fermaid K

If one wanted to use water instead of apple juice, would the nutrients need to be increased? Is there any requirement for a yeast energizer here or would it be fine without it?

Thanks again everybody for being so helpful!

dacole said:

You all have convinced me now. I will go with the Sweet Cyser.

Sweet Cyser
1 gallon apple juice
3 lbs honey
1 packet 71B-1122 or a Riesling yeast or D-47
¾ tsp diammonium phosphate
½ tsp Fermaid K

If one wanted to use water instead of apple juice, would the nutrients need to be increased? Is there any requirement for a yeast energizer here or would it be fine without it?

Thanks again everybody for being so helpful!

Click to expand...

These yeasts are capable of 14% ABV. Your recipe has a starting gravity of around 1.074 which would ferment totally dry at about 10% ABV. In order to sweeten things, you'll need to raise the amount of honey (to about 8.5 lbs) or reduce the amount of juice (to about 1 gallon).

Had anyone had success using a lager yeast for mead? I used a champagne yeast on my last 2 meads and they both turned out too dry.

vulture1963 said:

These yeasts are capable of 14% ABV. Your recipe has a starting gravity of around 1.074 which would ferment totally dry at about 10% ABV. In order to sweeten things, you'll need to raise the amount of honey (to about 8.5 lbs) or reduce the amount of juice (to about 1 gallon).

Click to expand...

But the recipe you replied to already says one gallon of apple juice. Or did I miss part of the conversation?

Dave

slouch said:

Had anyone had success using a lager yeast for mead? I used a champagne yeast on my last 2 meads and they both turned out too dry.

Click to expand...

I use cotes de blanc, and it ferments fairly sweet for me, but for others I'm sure is a different story. If you want to keep the it sweet and the alcohol mild, the sweet mead yeast tends to die out around 11% - which means you just need to use hightest's calculator to figure out how much honey you need to overcome 11% and have the right level of sweetness you desire.

Hinermad said:

But the recipe you replied to already says one gallon of apple juice. Or did I miss part of the conversation?

Dave

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With that recipe - if you use juice TO 1 gallon (after you add honey you have about 3 quarts of juice to top up to an even gallon) - a 14% yeast will leave this thing ending up MIGHTY sweet at 1.038.

Switching that to water, 14% yeasyt should get you right around 1.007, which isn't all that sweet (at least to me...).

For both of you -- use hightests honey calculator in the FAQ. It is invaluable at calculating exactly how much honey, juice, water, etc makes to what percent final mead at a certain gravity. you can use that to tweak what the estimated final gravity would be for certain yeasts. It's never an exact science, but use it to get a good baseline about where you "should" be and troubleshoot it if it doesn't match the expected numbers.

Oh, and I'll say it again...use the calculator.

That is all.

Hinermad said:

But the recipe you replied to already says one gallon of apple juice. Or did I miss part of the conversation?

Dave

Click to expand...

I apologize. My brain took a short vacation. Your recipe looks sound.

Thanks for telling me about the spreadsheet. I will go buy a hydrometer tomorrow so I can measure the SG of my apple juice. Then I will run some numbers and see if you guys agree with me on them.

I was looking at the Lalvin 71B-1122 last night and noticed in the datasheet that its says to pitch 25-40g/hl. At 40g/hl that comes out to 1.5g/gallon. So that means I wouldn't need the whole pack then. Is there a conversion from weight to teaspoons?

dacole said:

I was looking at the Lalvin 71B-1122 last night and noticed in the datasheet that its says to pitch 25-40g/hl. At 40g/hl that comes out to 1.5g/gallon. So that means I wouldn't need the whole pack then. Is there a conversion from weight to teaspoons?

Click to expand...

Use the whole packet.

That was a quick reply. I shall do that then.

I just measured a 5 gram pack of Pasteur Champagne yeast (I had extra) and it looks like 3 grams is just a whisker more than a teaspoon, but not quite a heaping teaspoon. The whole packet, 5 grams, is about 1 2/3 teaspoons.

Since a packet is generally sized to make a 5 gallon batch of wine, you could just measure out what you have and use a third of it. Me, I just use half a pack for each gallon batch, but I'm not exactly an expert.

Dave

All right. I went and bought my gear today. I got Lalvin 71B-1122 for the yeast and picked up some nutrient and energizer made by ABC Cork. The store I went to does not have Fermaid K so that kind of sucked.

The yeast nutrient says to add 1 tsp per gallon and the energizer says to add 0.5 tsp per gallon. The energizer says to add it if the fermentation gets stuck. Would it hurt to add it along with the nutrient at the start?

I measured the SG of my apple juice to be 1.05. So I plan on using the following recipe. Not having any experience, but from using hightests spreadsheet, this should ferment to a medium sweet mead.

2.2 lbs honey
~1 gallon apple juice (spreadsheet says 0.81 gallons)
1/2 packet 71B-1122
¾ tsp nutrient
½ tsp energizer

Thank you all for your help. Unfortunately I won't be able to start this till next weekend. Tomorrow is my first day back to work in 8 months and my little ones keep me busy in the night.

I love that spreadsheet also, I use it for all my meads and ciders and I think I'm actually learning a lot from it.
It does kind of take the magic out of everything which in a twisted way I kind of miss, but I do prefer having everything broken down in simple numbers that I can see, and follow.