First Batch Ever 😳

[BillBagdaddy]

I just bottled my first batch of mead. It’s simply honey, water & yeast. I racked it at 3 & 6 months and bottled it at 2 years. I have no idea if this is how it’s supposed to taste. It’s like a dry wine. I haven’t tested the alcohol content. Looking for tasters bear me. Dry wine? Can that be right?

 

[CKuhns]

Congratulations! They look great! (At 2 Years should be very good, will only get better.)

Yep, certainly can be like a very dry white wine with a smooth honey note and aroma.

Check the SG my rule of thumb (There are varying charts and or Points of View) We all perceive sweet a little differently
For me a SG for Mead to be:
Dry <1.001
Semi Sweet 1.001 to 1.004 (I prefer a Semi Sweet or just off dry)
Sweet 1.005 - 1.008
Dessert > 1.008

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi BillBagdaddy - and welcome. Absolutely, yes. Yeast ferment sugars and honey has virtually no sugars that wine yeast cannot ferment (unlike barley malt which does have a great deal of sugars that are too complex for wine yeasts (beer yeasts belong to exactly the same family of yeast) to ferment. So, unless the amount of total sugar in solution meant that the amount of alcohol the yeast would produce would kill them (that is to say, their tolerance for alcohol was less than the amount of alcohol the sugar in solution could produce) then your mead is going to finish dry.
Now, if you prefer a sweeter drink you can stabilize the mead with the addition of sorbates and K-meta and then add honey to taste. The addition of both potassium metabisulfate and potassium sorbate will prevent any yeast still in solution from fermenting the added sugars in the honey.

 

[BillBagdaddy]

Hi BillBagdaddy - and welcome. Absolutely, yes. Yeast ferment sugars and honey has virtually no sugars that wine yeast cannot ferment (unlike barley malt which does have a great deal of sugars that are too complex for wine yeasts (beer yeasts belong to exactly the same family of yeast) to ferment. So, unless the amount of total sugar in solution meant that the amount of alcohol the yeast would produce would kill them (that is to say, their tolerance for alcohol was less than the amount of alcohol the sugar in solution could produce) then your mead is going to finish dry.
Now, if you prefer a sweeter drink you can stabilize the mead with the addition of sorbates and K-meta and then add honey to taste. The addition of both potassium metabisulfate and potassium sorbate will prevent any yeast still in solution from fermenting the added sugars in the honey.

If honey has no sugar, what produced the alcohol?

 

[bernardsmith]

I didn't say that honey has "no sugars". I wrote that "honey has virtually no sugars that wine yeast CANNOT ferment". That means that yeast can ferment 99.999% of all the sugar that makes up honey - fructose, sucrose, glucose and maltose.

 

[BillBagdaddy]

I didn't say that honey has "no sugars". I wrote that "honey has virtually no sugars that wine yeast CANNOT ferment". That means that yeast can ferment 99.999% of all the sugar that makes up honey - fructose, sucrose, glucose and maltose.

Ok

 

[bracconiere]

i have to add gluco-amylase to my beer to get it dry....otherwise it still has dextrins....but with honey or apple juice, grape juice...it goes 'dry'. no sweetness left....unless you believe @Vale71 and think ethanol is an artificial sweetner! then it'll be a trip to willy-wonka's factory!