hbhudy
Well-Known Member
Has anyone made a mead with Saison Yeast? I just saw a recipe that used Saison yeast for a lower gravity mead and wanted to know if anyone here has tried this?
I often use Belle Saison yeast to make a mead when I want to highlight peppery notes. That said, "attenuation" is a brewer's issue and not a wine maker's. If a wine yeast cannot ferment simple sugars to ethanol then there is something wrong with the must or the yeast. For wine makers there is no yeast whose "attenuation" rate is not 100%. Of course, you can have a must whose total sugar content results in a wine (or mead) with so much alcohol that it exceeds the yeast's tolerance for alcohol but that is not the same thing as attenuation. For all intents and purposes you are dealing with fructose, sucrose, glucose and maltose and all other things being equal if a yeast cannot ferment through 3 lbs of honey/gallon to drop the gravity to below .999 then the mead maker needs to check his or her protocol.
Five pounds of honey in how much volume?
If in one gallon, that is an SG of 1.175 and that ain't low gravity on any place on this planet. If you are thinking about 5 gallons then 2 lbs of cherries in that volume is akin to showing the mead the fruit and asking it to remember what those cherries looked like...Hard to imagine that 2 lbs will leave much of any impression on 5 gallons. Bottom line: IMO, your recipe seems a bit hard to comprehend but you don't really give us very much clear information.
Groennfell meadery in Vermont makes a cranberry mead with their wild house strain. They posted a clone recipe (they post clones of all their recipes) and I don't see why one couldn't substitute tart cherries (or juice, as their recipe calls for) in place of cranberries. Here is the link.
https://www.groennfell.com/recipes/nordic-farmhouse
I often use Belle Saison yeast to make a mead when I want to highlight peppery notes. That said, "attenuation" is a brewer's issue and not a wine maker's. If a wine yeast cannot ferment simple sugars to ethanol then there is something wrong with the must or the yeast. For wine makers there is no yeast whose "attenuation" rate is not 100%. Of course, you can have a must whose total sugar content results in a wine (or mead) with so much alcohol that it exceeds the yeast's tolerance for alcohol but that is not the same thing as attenuation. For all intents and purposes you are dealing with fructose, sucrose, glucose and maltose and all other things being equal if a yeast cannot ferment through 3 lbs of honey/gallon to drop the gravity to below .999 then the mead maker needs to check his or her protocol.
I notice that Wyeast 4184 Sweet Mead says "Leaves 2-3% residual sugar in most meads." http://www.wyeastlab.com/yeast-strain/sweet-mead By your account, though, it seems that such a thing wouldn't be true.
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