I'm planning to make my 1st mead next weekend. The homebrew shop near me doesn't have a great selection of yeasts, so I can't get most of the ones in the recipes on here. They do have Youngs dessert wine/high alcohol yeast, Youngs champagne yeast, and Lalvin EC-1118.
I read that the 1118 will ferment to 18%, so I'm trying to calculate what OG I need to ferment this mead to be sweet.
I'm using http://brew.stderr.net/mead_og_calc.html to calculate what OG I'll get when adding the honey.
I'm using http://www.angelfire.com/wi3/johnsons/abv1.html to calculate ABV.
I'm aiming to make 4.5L (about 1.2 gallons), so I've worked out that I need:
.75L water and 5lbs of honey.
That should leave me with 1.18 gallons with an OG of 1.151.
Will the EC-1118 ferment to 18% and leave me with an FG of around 1.1?
Also, I'm still trying to decide whether to make orange or vanilla, maybe 1 of each. Should I add the orange/vanilla at the start, or rack onto it later?
I'm fairly new to brewing in general (I've done a few batches of cider which turned out good), so I just want to make sure I'm not screwing up my amounts/making mistakes here.
Thanks.
I read that the 1118 will ferment to 18%, so I'm trying to calculate what OG I need to ferment this mead to be sweet.
I'm using http://brew.stderr.net/mead_og_calc.html to calculate what OG I'll get when adding the honey.
I'm using http://www.angelfire.com/wi3/johnsons/abv1.html to calculate ABV.
I'm aiming to make 4.5L (about 1.2 gallons), so I've worked out that I need:
.75L water and 5lbs of honey.
That should leave me with 1.18 gallons with an OG of 1.151.
Will the EC-1118 ferment to 18% and leave me with an FG of around 1.1?
Also, I'm still trying to decide whether to make orange or vanilla, maybe 1 of each. Should I add the orange/vanilla at the start, or rack onto it later?
I'm fairly new to brewing in general (I've done a few batches of cider which turned out good), so I just want to make sure I'm not screwing up my amounts/making mistakes here.
Thanks.