Gravity Reading from Fruit.

[Nazwa]

Hello, I have a quick question that I hope can be answered.

I'm still in the deciding phase of what to do.
I plan on a Mead with fruit in Primary.

I don't want to back sweeten if I do not have to. Would prefer yeast to kick out on their own rather they catch it at my desired FG.
I plan on choosing a yeast with a tolerance of 12-14% example being
Cote des Blancs.

So I would like a initial Gravity somewhere just about 1.110.

I can speculate rather well that lets say 15 pounds Honey using water to 5 gallons would be about right.

But, I plan on using a fruit in this batch, fruit which obviously contains sugar.
My question at last: How after adding my Honey, water and fruit do I get a proper Starting Gravity reading assuming the fruit sugar hasn't had time to travel to the Must ?
I don't want to use too less honey nor do I want to use too much. I afraid that SG will be way off. Thanks for your help , I hope I wasn't confusing.

 

[fatbloke]

Simple.......if you're looking to be anal with the numbers, nothing you can really do at home will give you water tight accuracy.

For that, you'd have to test......

There are various tables kicking around the net that will give you a guide number, the issue there is that of, how to apply the guide ? Would the calc just be from using a pure juice number plus the honey ? Or what about the effect of using X amount of juice that might have a gravity of Y and that gravity drop when added to Z amount of water ?

Hence its easy to chose a fruit source thats easily measured, like juice.
Mix the honey and water to whatever gravity, then add juice to the required level........with a hydrometer.

Though if it was my batch, I would just find a country wine recipe for that fruit, then mix the honey and water to the desired gravity. The weight of fruit in country wine recipes is usually for flavouring and not sweetness etc (that's done with table sugar), so id just put 1/3rd of the fruit in primary and 2/3rds in secondary.

As long as you achieve the desired gravity drop you'll have you 12 to 14 % ABV and its up to you how it tastes afterward.....

 

[Nazwa]

Thanks Fatbloke, I do seem to be preoccupied with numbers.

Where you stated "The weight of fruit...is usually flavouring..." Set me at ease.

My Hydrometer gave me a reading of 1.100 so I went ahead and added a portion of the fruit. I needed to add a bit of table sugar to get me up to where I'm at. Though I don't think I can call this a Mead anymore.

Again, Thanks for the information. I don't plan on touching this for a couple months, so I'll post again with updates. If anything maybe this post can be useful to someone with limited experience like myself.

 

[fatbloke]

Thanks Fatbloke, I do seem to be preoccupied with numbers.

Where you stated "The weight of fruit...is usually flavouring..." Set me at ease.

Good. If you think about it, most of the sugars in a honey based brew will naturally be from the honey. Of course, there's gonna be some fruit sugars, but unless it's pure juice, those are hard to measure, you just have to presume that they'll add something to the SG, even though they're not readily "liberated" from the fruit to be tested/measured.

My Hydrometer gave me a reading of 1.100 so I went ahead and added a portion of the fruit. I needed to add a bit of table sugar to get me up to where I'm at. Though I don't think I can call this a Mead anymore.

Table sugar ? no no my friend. If it's mead, then just add a bit more honey. Yes, honey is less sweet than pure sugar i.e. it's about 80% sugar, there's still the missing 20%, so something like 8 grammes of sugar having the same sweetness as 10 grammes of honey. But in my book, never add table sugar when you can add more honey, or fruit for that matter, if you know how much fruit sugars are in the fruit (it's why grapes, apples etc i.e. fruit where the juice can be used for fermentation, it checked for it's sugar content with a refractometer before harvest. So you know if the fruit is ripe enough or not.....)

Table sugar just increases the final alcohol level with no other discernible benefits.....

Again, Thanks for the information. I don't plan on touching this for a couple months, so I'll post again with updates. If anything maybe this post can be useful to someone with limited experience like myself.

Hell, I'm no expert, I'm just a bloke who's made a fair amount of mead (of different sorts) and done a sh1tload of searching for answers......

good luck with the batch, just don't expect miracles once the ferment is complete. Young meads can taste bloody horrible until they've done some ageing.....

 

[Nazwa]

Hi Bloke. I did I added some table sugar to raise my Gravity to 1.100. It was a mistake on my part I was short a couple pounds of honey and used sugar. I only added 6 pints of Blueberries to Primary after reading your post.

Two and a half days later, today , I checked my gravity, it is at 1.095- ish. I'm hoping for something Medium Dry/sweet in the 1.001-1.008 range. I realize with the addition of sugar I can't call it a Mead at this point.

Though I plan on using fruit in my secondary for a more pronounced fruit flavor. It won't go to secondary until it stabilizes at its FG. Then will Bulk age for ~8-10 months.

You said above that country wines use table sugar, so do you see a big problem that I used 4 cups of sugar and the rest was Honey? I'm not concerned if its called a "Mead' at this point. I'm more concerned that I will have something drinkable in the future.

 

[fatbloke]

Nah. If you don't tell anyone, then they're unlikely to guess, especially if the majority of the fermentables are from honey.

Just treat it as a straight melomel.

A lot of my batches are imperial gallon ones so its easier for me. I can just get a couple of kilos of honey and then mix it to whatever target gravity I want, whereas if you're buying by the gallon then 2 gallons of honey is rather more than 1......

 

[Nazwa]

Thanks you made me feel a lot better about all this.
Slightly off topic and I haven't done this but in theory can this be possible?

I have a 7 gallon Primary and a 6.5 gallon secondary. Can I raise my already 5 gallons that I have going on right now another gallon, gallon and a half using juice and honey after fermentation started in this current batch?

Or put the money in my pocket and go have a beer and forget about it?