Apples or Applejuice?

[Blade52560]

Newbie when it comes to brewing but I have my first couple batches nearly through a month of fermentation. I’m beginning to think about what I want to do with each one after they’re done. I’m thinking I want to sweeten one with either apple slices or apple juice or something similar, but I don’t know anything about how much, when to add it, or how long to leave it in (in the case of apples). I do know I am looking more for sweetening than a secondary fermentation. I am sure there’s a thread on this already somewhere on here, but I would greatly appreciate some input.

 

[SKBugs]

Hey blade.
My advice is to use apple juice concentrate in secondary if you want to sweeten for an apple taste. If you just want to add an apple taste then slices would be ok I guess, but it would be difficult to control the flavor. At the end of the day you should decide the flavor of the mead based on how you want it to taste.
I would add a little and taste. If I like it I stop. That being said, you will probably start fermentation again unless you stabilize your mead first. Do search on google to find out how to.
Good luck, you’ll do fine

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi Blade52560 - and welcome. I more or less agree with SKBugs. You want to use either sugar to sweeten your cider or apple juice... but the problem is determining how much of whatever it is you choose to add you need to add to obtain the appropriate amount of sweetening. And this you do by bench testing.
Bench testing involves you taking three or four identical samples of the hard cider (let me call it wine) and to each sample you add a known but different quantity of sweetener. Let's say each sample is 20 ml and so you add say, 1 g of sweetener to the first, 2 g to the second, 3 g to the third and 4 g to the 4th. You taste each sample and let's say that sample 3 is not sweet enough but sample 4 is too sweet, so you take three or four more samples and to the first you add 3.2g, to the second 3.4 g, to the third 3.6 g and to the fourth 3.8g. You taste the samples and for you sample 3 is right on the money. OK so you know that the amount of the chosen sweetener is 3.6 g/ 20ml and you know that you have made say 5000 ml total, so you divide 5000 by 20 (= 250) and you multiply 3.6g by 250 and that tells you that you need to add 900 g of the sweetener. This is a made up example... but it shows you the method..