Adding vodka to fix mead

[giuzep89]

Hello friends,
I made a traditional mead some time ago but it ended up a little too sweet for me. It's at around 1.028. It's not crazy sweet to my taste but it can definitely use some adjustment, also in the viscosity department. My question is now how do you calculate how much alcohol you're adding to it? I'm not that well-versed in maths, not at all really.

Also, do you think that adding really cold vodka might help precipitate some extra cloudiness? I made it with bread yeast, so unsurprisingly it's quite cloudy. No biggie but just wondering!
Cheers

 

[BWRIGHT]

Dropping the final gravity down will help you with the viscosity issue you speak of. Doesn't have to be alcohol that you add though. There is a formula to calculate your final ABV when adding a secondary volume post fermentation. Don't have it handy buy you can find it here. Just plain water will bring it down but that will dilute the taste. Best bet might be to get another (similar) batch started, take that one all the down to .998 ish, and blend them.

Option 2: There might be ways to get that gravity down yet. Re-pitching, specifically. You can find plenty of info for that option here as well. Look up "stuck fermentation."

 

[Toxxyc]

I would just buy the highest proof grain alcohol I can find, add until I like the taste and then calculate the ABV from there. x% of mead at y Proof + z% of alcohol at i Proof shouldn't be the hardest calculation to do. Work out the total volume of alcohol in the solution and then work out the percentage on the total volume.

 

[madscientist451]

Perform some bench trials:
Take 5 measured samples and add different amounts of water to each one. If this doesn't help, you can try it again with Vodka, but I really don't think that's going to work for you. Everyone has different taste preferences so its worth trying.
Bread yeast has a somewhat low alcohol tolerance, you can try adding a wine yeast. However, pitching yeast into a high alcohol environment may lead to other problems you'll have to deal with.
If it was mine, I'd probably let it age and meanwhile make a low ABV mead and when that's done, use that for blending with the mead that's too sweet.

 

[giuzep89]

Well in the end I did add vodka! I asked for the most neutral tasting one at the store, and indeed after adding it the taste of the mead didn't change almost at all except it's a little "hotter" and not as thick and sweet. I'll let it age a bit more and taste again, but as far as I just saw, not a bad result at all. It definitely saves you a lot of headaches! Except for the correct type of headache hahah

 

[Ty520]

late to the party now, but for future reference:

(gallon size * 15%) + (X * spirits %) = (1+x) * desired final abv %


example:
(1 gallon * 15%) + (X * 40%) = (1+x) * 20%

.15 + .4X = .2 + .2X

.2X = .05

X = .25 gallons or 32 ounces of spirits to fortify your 15% mead to 20%