constructing a recipe... is there a cheat sheet?

[cadeus]

I hope that title isn't confusing. What I am looking for is a "cheat sheet" with some numbers on it I can use to calculate how sweet or dry my mead will be when it's finished, or at least something with all the equations written down for reference. When I start making my own recipes I would like to be able to calculate such things to produce a superior product with less guessing. for example, I have a recipe in mind, I want it semi-sweet, I know how much alcohol I want so I choose my yeast for tolerance and now I need to know how much sugar I need past tolerance to get the sweetness I want. (I know there is a calculator, but I like to do things myself, so I understand the math) If such a thing is in a book, I will gladly buy it.

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi cadeus, and welcome. What I am about to say may be quite different from what some others might suggest and that's fine. I've been making wine for about 20 years and have won a few state and national and international medals.

I suggest that you are trying to make a wine as if you were brewing a beer but the two drinks are quite different. First, different fruit have different amounts of acidity and if wine is all about balance (and it is) then you need to balance the acidity with perceived sweetness; Different fruits will produce different strengths of flavor and you need to balance the richness of the flavor against the amount of alcohol; different fruits and yeasts will provide you with different final viscosities (mouthfeel) and you want to produce a level of viscosity that sits well with the other elements... There are too many variables to create a cheat sheet that you tick off. The only way to make a wine that is good is to go by taste and the same fruit harvested from 10 different orchards will have 10 different characteristics . Fruit ain't grain and wine ain't beer.

All that said I would aim for a wine at about 12 -13% ABV. (so a starting gravity of about 1.090 - 1.100), with a TA of about 6 g/L . You really do not want to add more sugar than the yeast can ferment to alcohol because the tolerance of any strain of yeast is given as the expected minimum maximum tolerance and not the maximum maximum. In other words, you can be almost certain as dammit that the yeast will exceed the published tolerance. What experienced wine makers do is determine the precise amount of alcohol they want in their wine and then they stabilize the wine and if needed they back sweeten. But, for example, I am making a red wine and the final gravity is .992 and that wine needs no sweetening whatsoever. But if I make a country wine - say from pomegranates or from honey or elderflowers then those wines may need back sweetening to bring the flavor of the fruit or honey or flowers, forward. But 12 -13% ABV is just about the maximum amount of alcohol that fruit wine (wine - not brandy or liqueur) can handle.
Hope that this helps.

 

[cadeus]

Hi cadeus, and welcome. What I am about to say may be quite different from what some others might suggest and that's fine. I've been making wine for about 20 years and have won a few state and national and international medals.

I suggest that you are trying to make a wine as if you were brewing a beer but the two drinks are quite different. First, different fruit have different amounts of acidity and if wine is all about balance (and it is) then you need to balance the acidity with perceived sweetness; Different fruits will produce different strengths of flavor and you need to balance the richness of the flavor against the amount of alcohol; different fruits and yeasts will provide you with different final viscosities (mouthfeel) and you want to produce a level of viscosity that sits well with the other elements... There are too many variables to create a cheat sheet that you tick off. The only way to make a wine that is good is to go by taste and the same fruit harvested from 10 different orchards will have 10 different characteristics . Fruit ain't grain and wine ain't beer.

All that said I would aim for a wine at about 12 -13% ABV. (so a starting gravity of about 1.090 - 1.100), with a TA of about 6 g/L . You really do not want to add more sugar than the yeast can ferment to alcohol because the tolerance of any strain of yeast is given as the expected minimum maximum tolerance and not the maximum maximum. In other words, you can be almost certain as dammit that the yeast will exceed the published tolerance. What experienced wine makers do is determine the precise amount of alcohol they want in their wine and then they stabilize the wine and if needed they back sweeten. But, for example, I am making a red wine and the final gravity is .992 and that wine needs no sweetening whatsoever. But if I make a country wine - say from pomegranates or from honey or elderflowers then those wines may need back sweetening to bring the flavor of the fruit or honey or flowers, forward. But 12 -13% ABV is just about the maximum amount of alcohol that fruit wine (wine - not brandy or liqueur) can handle.
Hope that this helps.

It does help, very much. So figuring out what my target mead looks like on paper is going to be trial and error, and lots of good notes to keep track of what I like and don't like. The process is apparently more complex than I imagined, but I am more excited about it now. Thank-you.

 

[Biehl Brewery]

The math to get the starting SG is a weighted average. Honey is about 12 lbs/gal (not sure if clover honey is different) or a SG of about 1.442. Water is 1.000. So if you're make a 4-gal batch with 3 lbs of honey per gallon, then you're added 12 lbs or 1 gallon of honey and three gallons of water, which is a starting SG of about 1.111. You can do this if you want to add other ingredients too. My Excel spreadsheet I use I have a total gallon batch and the target alc %, then adjust my sugars to get the final SG I want (based on dry, semi-dry, etc.). See picture (the blueberry is a puree). With this method, just be cautious about going too much higher than a starting SG 1.125 (for sweet wines) because the yeast seems to struggle to produce from my limited experience. You could stagger the additions of sugar and still be able to use the starting and the actual measured final SGs to get alc % or shoot for a higher alc % then back sweeten as @bernardsmith mentioned.

There are websites that have calculators for just traditional mead and the first one below actually tells you how much yeast and nutrients to add (if you use Go-Ferm and Fermaid O/K). They don't work if you want to add fruits, etc. which is why I did my own spreadsheet.

https://www.meadmakr.com/batch-buildr/https://gotmead.com/blog/the-mead-calculator/

 

[bernardsmith]

My rule of thumb is that 1 lb of honey dissolved in water to make 1 US gallon will have a SG of 1.035 and so 2lbs will have a gravity of 1.070 and 3 lbs 1.105. It's a rule of thumb but you can just about bet the farm on this being close enough. A starting gravity of 1.105 has a potential ABV of about 14% ... So , 3 lbs of honey is to the high side if you accept the idea that you want the mead to contain about 12 - 13%... BUT if you ferment in a bucket and your total starting volume is a little more than a gallon for each gallon you want to bottle then when you come t9 rack as active fermentation is ending you never have any problem with excess headroom. You start with MORE than you intend to bottle because when you rack you ALWAYS have racked less than is in the primary fermenter .

 

[videojunkie1208]

This is the best calculator I have found for creating recipe's. It's not perfect, but it gives good estimates when developing a new recipe or new batch size. It includes estimates (or averages) of fruits and other additions and allows you to have as many as 4 sugar sources.

https://gotmead.com/blog/the-mead-calculator/