Dry to sweet mead

[zachajaweeeah]

Ok. Ive had a batch of straight mead in the carboy (3gal) for almost 4 months. Racked about once a month. Its taste is decent, clarity is fantastic. Im about ready to bottle. BUT last racking I decided i want to turn it from a dry mead to a sweeter. At least a semi-sweet. Should i just boil up a cup of sugar and top it off with that? Ive heard corn syrup works. This is my first batch of mead, let alone trying something like this. Thanks a lot yall!

 

[Arpolis]

I always back sweeten my mead with more honey. The only issue with that is that it gets all cloudy again. It usually takes a few weeks to get all clear again. Feel free to sweeten with whatever you like. You could go as far as even using brown sugar or maple syrup. What ever tastes good to you.

Just make sure you either pasteurize or stabilize the mead before sweetening. Otherwise fermentation may pick back up and your bottles may explode. Stabilizing is the easiest way. That takes 1 crushed Camden tablet per gallon and 1/2ysp potassium sorbate per gallon. You wait a minimum 12 hours after adding and then sweeten with choice sweetener.

 

[MarshmallowBlue]

+1 to arpolis in all respects

And don't use sugar.

 

[biochemedic]

+2 Arpolis, +1 MarshmallowBlue!

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Home Brew mobile app

 

[zachajaweeeah]

Thank you! Now I assume i boil the syrup or brown sugar and dissolve, just like I did with the honey?

 

[Arpolis]

I use a no boil/no heat method with all meads. Honey has a lot of aeromatics that are volitile and are burned off if temps get too high. Just take like 1/2 gallon of your mead siphoned into a steril jug and mix in your sugar/syrup/honey into that and mix the heck out of it till it is 90% dissolved. Then slowly add that back to your main carboy and keep mixing that as you add the sweetened mead. A good long steril plastic or stainless mixing spoon helps a lot for those thin necked carboys.

 

[zachajaweeeah]

Awesome. Thanks again.