Checking my mead recipe

[Shouta]

I'm trying make a mead with high alcohol level so this my recipe, I'm don't know if it right so I'm taking all the help that i can get.

12 pound of honey
Pasteur Champagne Red Star
5 gallon of water

I'm thinking of taking a gallon of mead and making some cherry mead too. I'm thinking 1 pound of cherry to one gallon of mead.
Do you think this will work?

 

[MasterJeem]

you're probably going to need to bump up that honey at least 3 or 4 lbs to get a higher alcohol.

 

[roadymi]

Are you making 5 gallons or 6?

Your 12 lbs honey (1 gal) and 4 gallons of water will make a nice 5 gal batch with a decent abv.

 

[Shouta]

So one gallon of honey to 5 gallon of water?

 

[MasterJeem]

i usually use one gallon of honey (about 14 lbs) and water to 5 gallons to make a 5 gallon batch. considering fruit additions and depending on the density of the honey this usually comes out to about 14-16% i consider anything over 15% to be a high alcohol mead

 

[Arpolis]

That recipe will get to about 11.5 ABV. The yeast should be able to go up to 18%. if you want to hit that tolerance then you may want to up the honey to 18-20#s. Also to hit that you need to make sure there is an appropriate amount of nutrients fir the yeast to stay happy at the high ABV levels.

The 1# of fruit per gallon should be fine. Just freeze the fruit and the thaw it for better use of the mead must extracting the flavor.

 

[Shouta]

So i need 20 LBS of honey get 18%

 

[ExoticMeadMaker]

yes, roughly.... play around with the mead calculator over at gotmead, it will help you ball park your shopping lists..http://www.gotmead.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=745&Itemid=16

 

[fatbloke]

A gallon of honey is about 12lb, so that would be added to 4 gallons of water, not 5, if the intention is to make a 5 gallon batch.

To achieve 18% ABV, you will need a drop in gravity of about 132 or 133 points, so if you haven't got a starting gravity IRO about 1.130 or so, then you probably won't achieve 18%, hence you want to think about what type of mead you might want to make. If you're not familiar with meads, then I'd suggest you consider a medium one with a final gravity of about 1.010 to 1.015 - how you achieve that is up to you i.e. either fermenting to leave some residual sugars, or the much easier method of fermenting dry and then stabilising and back sweetening.....

As for the cherry mead idea, you'd likely need much more than 1lb to 1 gallon, something like 3lb to a gallon - and yes it would probably be better to make the mead as a traditional first, then add the fruit to secondary. The fruit is likely to have to be tart cherry, to achieve a good flavour, but you probably still need to think about back sweetening.

Also, there's no mention of nutrient, energiser, etc etc, so I suggest a good read of the Gotmead NewBee Guide first, to get a better grasp on nutrition for the yeasties.

Oh and I certainly wouldn't use a champagne yeast, as they're notorious for blowing a lot of the aromatics (and some of the more subtle flavouring elements) straight out the airlock.

Either way, your mead, your choice in how it's made, we can only give you ideas/suggestions etc...