Do you use acid blends in your mead?

[jaxn]

Charlie Papazian seems to be a fan of the acid blends in show meads, but Ken Schramm says in The Compleat Meadmaker to wait until fermentation has stopped before adding any, if at all.

I've got a handful of different show meads in primary right now. They all had relatively high pH... in the 4.5-4.8 range, so I'm thinking about what an acid blend could add.

I'm very tempted to go au naturale this time and then ad acid in future batches for a comparison. But I'd hate to miss out on something.

What are your thoughts? Dosage? Do you add to taste?

 

[jezter6]

Everything I've read says to do it to taste after fermentation is finished.

Why add it before you know what the final product is going to taste like?


That said, I haven't used any yet, but I just picked up a small bottle just in case one of my tea meads needs it.

 

[summersolstice]

I've used it in a couple of meads but 90% of them are fine without it.

 

[thorson138]

I used an acid blend once on a batch when I was still kinda doing everything blindly. I was not happy with it. First of all I did it wrong. My batch fermented dry so I wanted to back sweeten it. I talked with a wine maker and he suggested I use table sugar to back sweeten with. So that's what I did... I put in a cup of sugar and mixed it in, still too dry. I added another trying to get the sweetness I wanted. Somewhere along my quest for the perfect sweetness it got too sweet. hmhmhm. Then came the acid blend!!! I knew this would be the answer to all my problems, so I stirred in a tsp or two at a time.


To sum all this up, The end result was a "mead" that I would challenge anyone to drink of without puckering up and pulling back from like they just drank lemon juice concentrate or something similar. hmhmhm. If you do use it keep it very well in check as a little will go maybe farther than you think. Just stay calm about everything, and try to distinguish between flavors that need corrected vs. flavors that will age out. Just one guys opinion. Good luck!

 

[gratus fermentatio]

I've never had a reason to add acid(s) to any meads, melomels, or cysers I've made. Regards, GF.

 

[TheRabidKumquat]

I have a a dry vanilla mead that I left au naturale but probably would have been improved w/ a little addition of acid.

Adding to taste after fermentation is usually your best bet. Take a measured amount of mead, and acid blend, then slowly add the acid until you get to your desired level. Then just scale up.

One other option could be using citrus juice, instead of the acid blend. I've a banana foster mead that needed some acid, but the blend seemed to give it too much pucker power. I used the juice of two navel oranges, and the zest, and that seemed to put it right where I was aiming.

 

[malkore]

I've never used acid blend. I have added half a lemon's juice a few times...didn't really seem to make a difference.

I measured the acidity of my raspberry melomel and its fairly acidic, which is good because it finished fairly high gravity but still tastes pretty balanced IMO.