Apple Cinnamon Mead

[sidthekid]

I modified a recipe that I found. Creates a 3 gal batch

3 gal apple cider
6# honey
1 oz nutmeg
3 sticks of cinnamon
0.5# brown sugar
0.5# corn sugar


The plan is to put the nutmeg in the primary and the cinnamon in the secondary. I'm pretty new to this and I just want to make sure that this would work well.
Is the brown sugar necessary in this, will it be too sweet?

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi sidthekid, Welcome. I don't use cinnamon or nutmeg so I am no expert but those quantities seem like a lot for 3 gallons... But if you have a tried and tested recipe I won't argue - though IMO, many recipes offered as "tried and true" are either not tried and if tried tend to be duds... But be that as it may...
Why the sugar? Mead (honey wine) or cyser (honey wine made using apple juice rather than water to dilute the honey to a fermentable level) don't need additional sugar.. An appropriate WINE yeast will ferment dry every last gram of sugar in the honey and the apple juice.. So any added sugar will affect the flavor - not the sweetness...
Now you should get a specific gravity of about 1.045 (or thereabouts) from the apple juice and about 1.040 from each pound of honey when dissolved in a gallon of water - so you are looking at the equivalent of about 3 lbs of fermentable sugar in each gallon (a gravity of about 1.120) WITHOUT any added brown sugar (the brown color comes from added molasses)... A gravity of about 1.120 has the potential to ferment out to about 15.5 % alcohol by volume... If it ferments completely...
I would look for some nutrient for this mead. There is a lot of sugar for the yeast to handle in the first hours and days of the fermentation...

You might need to sweeten this cyser before you bottle it - so check out how to stabilize wine with K-meta and k-sorbate. then add either some apple juice concentrate to sweeten or more of the same kind of honey...

Good luck!

 

[sidthekid]

I was under the impression that if I put enough sugar initially I would not need to sweeten it after fermentation.
I'm planning on using lalvin d47 with this and it has a tolerance of 14%. My understanding is if you put enough sugar to ferment say 18% abv and the yeast will die at 14% thus leaving the extra sugar left to flavor it.
I thought backsweetening was only used if it turns out dryer than you expected.
Or is it a good idea to stabilize the cyser regardless of whether I add extra sugar in?
Correct me if I'm wrong.

In regards to the sticks of cinnamon, I saw someone use 6 for a 6 gallon batch but I guess I can play around with the amounts and see what happens.
Thanks!