Making a cider out of a mead?

[damiongrimm]

Alright guys, interesting question here.

I recently came upon about 5 gal of a mead that a friend made that died out at about 5%. Useless for a mead, but I am resourceful and optimistic. The biggest problem here is my friend lost his recipe for the mead and so I’m very much shooting in the dark with trying to set this up. I am planning on taking it, adding in some more honey and maybe some corn sugar, and turning it into a pear cider.

Now, that being said, I have yet dabble in the cider world. What I want my end result to be here is a high abv(10-14 maybe?) sweeter cider, almost a sparkling mead of sorts, more juice-like, rather than the dry and bitter of your general ciders.

My biggest decision to make right now is which yeast to use. Any suggestions? Obviously it would have to be able to withstand the high abv it’s going to get to, so my first thought is champagne yeast, but is there one that won’t make it so dry? Or should I just put extra sugar to account for what the yeast is going to eat? Any thoughts?

 

[GPP33]

Where does the "pear" come from? As far as I know a cider is made from juice, you can't turn a mead into a cider. There is a drink that's a mix of cider and mead, starts with an S, can't remember the name.

 

[damiongrimm]

I would be adding pear juice of some form to it, and making it carbonated with lower ABV than a traditional mead, thus making it essentially a “cider”. I use the word cider simply for relative term, I’m not trying to make an orthodox version of either of these. However with that said, all that a mead is loosely is honey, yeast, water, and desired flavoring, and I personally have had honey-based ciders before which were essentially the same ingredients. I would be very curious to see the mixture drink you’re talking about however.

 

[chickypad]

I think that would be melomel - i.e. fruit mead. Not that you probably care about competition or guidelines, but for clarification the BJCP guidelines clearly state that cider with honey added either needs to be in a specialty category or in the appropriate mead category. Strength doesn't really have anything to do with categorizing as cider vs. mead. Nor does carbonation, either could be still or sparkling.

 

[damiongrimm]

I definitely won’t be entering it in any competition, but nonetheless still great info to have!