Back sweeten mead

[Elmo Peach]

Iwould like to back sweeten my mead but I am unsure of how much honey to use or what type of honey would be best

 

[Maylar]

What is the batch size, what honey did you use for it, what is the current specific gravity, and how sweet do you want it?
Typically I use the same honey that was used in the mead, but you can change that if you want.

 

[bernardsmith]

Elmo Peach, typically, a pound of honey will increase the gravity of 1 gallon of water (or mead) by about 35 points, so 1/4 lb will increase the gravity by a scant 9 points. How sweet a wine needs to be (for anyone) is how they like the balance between richness of flavor, alcohol, acidity, tannic bite, and mouthfeel. You may like 5 points of sugar (1.005) or 25 points (1.025) or even more. The best way to determine how sweet any mead or wine needs to be is to bench test. And by bench testing I simply mean to pour identical measures of your mead (to taste - NOT drink) to which you add known but differing amounts of sweetner. If you know the TOTAL volume of your mead and you know the sample size then you simply divide the total volume by the sample size and multiply that number by the amount of sweetener that hit the sweet spot for you. You may need to tweak the amount of honey several times if the first go around is too sweet or not sweet enough OR the "sweet spot" is between two different amounts of honey.

 

[JimRausch]

Trial and error. Start with knowing what level of sweetness you want. I like it around 1.010. Then what FG do you have? Typically less than 1.000. I do a bench trial, adding honey to a known quantity of the finished batch until it's where I want it, then do a little simple math to determine how much to add to the entire batch. This does tend to cloud it up again, so I leave it another week or two before bottling.

 

[Elmo Peach]

Elmo Peach, typically, a pound of honey will increase the gravity of 1 gallon of water (or mead) by about 35 points, so 1/4 lb will increase the gravity by a scant 9 points. How sweet a wine needs to be (for anyone) is how they like the balance between richness of flavor, alcohol, acidity, tannic bite, and mouthfeel. You may like 5 points of sugar (1.005) or 25 points (1.025) or even more. The best way to determine how sweet any mead or wine needs to be is to bench test. And by bench testing I simply mean to pour identical measures of your mead (to taste - NOT drink) to which you add known but differing amounts of sweetner. If you know the TOTAL volume of your mead and you know the sample size then you simply divide the total volume by the sample size and multiply that number by the amount of sweetener that hit the sweet spot for you. You may need to tweak the amount of honey several times if the first go around is too sweet or not sweet enough OR the "sweet spot" is between two different amounts of honey.

11 liters of mead 1.000 fg

 

[Elmo Peach]

What is the batch size, what honey did you use for it, what is the current specific gravity, and how sweet do you want it?
Typically I use the same honey that was used in the mead, but you can change that if you want.

i still have the honey Ithink it is wild flower

 

[Maylar]

OK, so 11 liter at 1.000 I would suggest 200 gm of honey for off-dry (1.005 sg) or twice that for semi-sweet.

 

[Miraculix]

I would go with 350-400, but that's obviously my own idea based on my own taste.

Best is really to check for yourself, as previously mentioned.

How are you going to stabilise it?

I recently did my first backsweetened mead by stove top pasteurization, till now no bottle bombs, looks like it worked

 

[RichardNDL]

Modern Meadmakers Facebook page has an Excel spreadsheet in the files section that helps calculate how much to backsweeten. I've found it valuable.