Perceived sweet taste with zero gravity

[Dland]

Just kegged my 2nd 5 gallon batch of mead. It worked down from 1.085 to .002 in about a month. Tastes like it might be pretty good once it ages. I made a similar mead 2 years ago, and it tastes pretty good now I guess. It had zero gravity when kegged. Batch 1 was just honey, water, yeast and yeast nutrients. Batch 2 was honey, a couple quarts of concentrated black cherry juice, water, yeast and nutrients.

The honey is from a 60# tub from Brazil I bought a ways back, if that makes a difference. The mead does moastly taste like honey.

I was just wondering why they both taste so sweet to me, given their gravity. At that low a gravity, I would expect them to taste dry. Admittedly I'm not a experiaced mead drinker, so I don't know what is normal or what a "dry" mead is supposed to taste like, but I could not imagine wanting it any sweeter.

Anyway, I'm almost exclusivly a beer brewer/drinker. Would like opinions from mead experts. Also, what is an example of a dry mead for sale I could compare mine to?

 

[DBhomebrew]

FWIW, I find my med-high wine strength meads to taste rather sweet even though I ferment to ~998 and don't backsweeten.

I think it's two things. At that strength, there's some nice body giving a full mouth feel. Second, ethanol is rather sweet. A well made mead that has no heat or rough alcohols allows that subtle sweetness to come through.

Just guesses.

 

[CKuhns]

Agree a full bodied well rounded mead does taste a bit sweeter to me as well.

Also, I have found that fruit (in this case fruit juice) kind of tricks your tongue into thinking its sweeter than it is. Im not entirely sure why but my melomels always taste a bit sweeter than my traditionals.

 

[jerrylotto]

Could be high chloride in the water.

 

[Dland]

Thanks for the replies. I guess it is probably the mouth feel, and the ethanol (oh sweet ethanol) I'm tasting. The two year old mead is made with only honey, but it is a rather dark flavorful honey. The one month old mead still has strong alcohol taste, but also has the fruit juice.

Not likely chloride, I'm on a well, and has never been an issue with my beers.

 

[Raptor99]

Honey includes a small amount of unfermentable sugars, so that might also contribute to the sweetness. They would affect the SG as well.

Most wines finish around SG 0.996 to 0.998. If your mead finished at 1.000, then that indicates the presence of a small amount of remaining sugar.

The SG of a water + ethanol mix is given here: https://www.handymath.com/cgi-bin/ethanolwater3.cgi
12% ethanol (by weight, not volume) = SG 0.979. We measure ABV by volume, not weight, so it would be a little different. But if the expected SG of 12% ethanol was 0.979, then any number higher than that would indicate the presence of dissolved solids, which could be sugar or something else.

So for a higher ABV wine or mead, we would expect the FG to be lower than for a lower ABV wine/mead.