Mead versus Sugar water tastes

[shopkins1994]

Why do you think that mead made with just honey, water, and yeast tastes OK, but a ferment made with water, table sugar, and yeast tastes so bad?

Sam

 

[jlangfo5]

Well for starts most meads also include the addition of yeast nutrients since honey can be a bit low in nitrogen if I am not mistaken, but more to the point, there is more to honey than just sugar.

If you smell honey there are quite a lot of aromatics going on, and if you taste it, there is more than just plain clean sweetness like in table sugar. Essentially, the assumption that honey is just the same as table sugar in the alcohol equation is wrong as I believe you implied and wanted to know more about.

Now, making mead can be quite tricky, especially dry meades because great care and patience is required in order to preserve all the delicate flavors and aromatics without the aid of many residual sugars.

With sweet meades, they can be quite a bit more forgiving, but tend to get kinda boring after the first glass.

 

[shopkins1994]

Thanks for the response. When I brew just plain sugar water there is definitely a sharp unappealing taste to the liquid compared to the honey made liquid. I was wondering if there was something else other than nutrients that would make that happen. I'm going to brew the sugar water with some nutrients and see what happens. The only thing I can think of is that the yeast are stressed when there are no nutrients and they put out other compounds in addition to alcohol.

 

[Rivenin]

well, sugar is just cane sugar
Honey is a fermentable sugar made by bees vomiting up pollen and such, more of a process, and there are aromatics and such with it.
If you want to try this, do it like wine makers do. Take the sugar and infuse something with it and ferment it out.
EG, rose pedals, jasmine pedals, a sack of blueberries... but just straight sugar i can see as being burny.