My mead is almost eleven months old. 12 lbs of honey and 10 lbs of blackberries. I am going to bottle it this weekend. I bought 3 lbs of honey to sweeten it. It's a 5 gallon batch that is probably 4 1/2 gallons now due to "tasting" the mead periodically. Currently the mead is dry and a little tart. Should I add all 3 lbs of honey? Any recommendations? I would prefer it on the sweet side, but not too sweet.
How much honey to sweeten?
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fatbloke
Well-Known Member
If you're sweetening with honey, it will need stabilising if you haven't already done that.
Then to back sweeten, make a "syrup", some do 2 parts honey to 1 water otheres do 1 to 1. Add a small amount, stir in gently, measure gravity, taste. Just do that incrementally until you achieve you desired level of sweetness.
Have 2 part finings on hand as its possible that you'll get a hazing from proteins in the honey. If you don't then great, you could just bottle but if you do get the haze you'd need to clear it. So that's either leaving it again to clear with time or kiesol/chitosan finings. You may still be hard pressed to achieve your weekend time scale if you do experience hazing from the honey...
Then to back sweeten, make a "syrup", some do 2 parts honey to 1 water otheres do 1 to 1. Add a small amount, stir in gently, measure gravity, taste. Just do that incrementally until you achieve you desired level of sweetness.
Have 2 part finings on hand as its possible that you'll get a hazing from proteins in the honey. If you don't then great, you could just bottle but if you do get the haze you'd need to clear it. So that's either leaving it again to clear with time or kiesol/chitosan finings. You may still be hard pressed to achieve your weekend time scale if you do experience hazing from the honey...
When you stabilize with sorbate and campden, you normally wait before adding the honey. If you stabilized a while ago, it's probably ok, but normally you stabilize then wait three days. Then add the sweetener, and wait three days. And then bottle. If you skipped the wait, you could have bottle bombs if the stabilizing didn't "take". I'd really watch those bottles.
How long ago did you stabilize?
You ain't exactly new at all this are ya?
"New?" Well, no. I don't think I've hit the 20 year mark for making mead or wine yet- I'm close, though.
fatbloke
Well-Known Member
2 cups of honey will raise the SG about 0.01, a quart 0.02, you have less then a quart with only 3 lbs so you can probably only raise it by 0.015. If the berries are tart then you might need a little more. After a year in the primary we just add KMet, sorbate and immediatley backsweeten with undiluted honey, stir really well. Your yeast should have fallen out by now. Then hit it with something like superkleer after you mixed everything up and wait for it to clear and your good to go. WVMJ
fatbloke
Well-Known Member
The making of alcoholic products like this avoids using heat for many reasons. If it didn't have negative impact on the products everyone would be doing that. Especially the professional makers.
They don't. The whole chemical factory that is a ferment has one set of results. Any heating has completely different results.
If you've experienced only the tiniest change in your batch you're lucky. I wouldn't expose my brews to heating like that period. Pastuerisation is a technique for killing harmful bugs. You've got the alcohol in there already to do that.
Using techniques potentially harmful to the brew should be avoided or at least discouraged as there's plenty of correct methods out there.
Besides its booze we're making not pickling cucumbers or making jams/jellies......
