New to this and have a Cyser question

[TheHoff450]

Hey guys I’m fresh to the mead game and I have a great tasting batch of blueberry mead I made but I just started a apple pie Cyser for the holidays and when I got done my SG was 1.160 and I had to add extra apple juice to get it there. Did i do something wrong or is this just going to be a jet fuel batch?

Recipe:
~2.5 pounds of honey
1 pound of brown sugar
1 Teaspoon of McCormick Apple Pie Spice
1 Cinnamon stick
2 Gala apples cut to fit
Apple juice to top it off

any help or insight would be greatly appreciated and I uploaded a photo of it

 

[MX1]

From everything I have read, you can expect about 100-110 points of attenuation, that leaves you at about a 1.050 final and 14.4% ABV.
Your spices should balance out the sweetness and bring down the perceived sweetness a bit.

Also take into account that if it goes dry, it will be approx 21%, but you have to account for the yeast ABV tolerance.

 

[TheHoff450]

From everything I have read, you can expect about 100-110 points of attenuation, that leaves you at about a 1.050 final and 14.4% ABV.
Your spices should balance out the sweetness and bring down the perceived sweetness a bit.

Also take into account that if it goes dry, it will be approx 21%, but you have to account for the yeast ABV tolerance.

Thanks for the reply and I used the Redstar premier classique so won’t get bigger than 15% I read

 

[MX1]

yeah, that is a good "guess" yeast don't read so well so they don't know when to stop...lol
I would let it run until it dies, should be a decent strength, an still have some sweetness

 

[TheHoff450]

yeah, that is a good "guess" yeast don't read so well so they don't know when to stop...lol
I would let it run until it dies, should be a decent strength, an still have some sweetness

Thanks for the help!

 

[MightyMosin]

You may have a very difficult time getting that high of a gravity to start out. You can actually have too much sugar for the yeast. That looks like the bottle will hold 1 gallon or so with a lot of headroom in it. You can always add some water to drop that gravity some.

Your yeast colony will need to be very strong before pitching and you will need to add slight amounts of that high gravity must to your started yeast to get them acclimated. I would guess you will need to do this multiple times in very small amounts. If you just pitch the yeast into that high gravity I wouldn't be surprised to see the shock kill of a bunch.

If the fermentation gets going and doesn't stall early, you could easily see that 15% yeast go to 18% if it has the necessary nutrients.

What are your nutrient plans? For a gravity that high, I might be using some DAP in my initial feedings as the yeast love it. Once you are at 9%, the yeast can't use the DAP anymore so I would be careful to not add it too late if you are using it.

With that high gravity I might the Travis Blout-Elliot nutrient regimen that works in DAP. You can mess with a calculator here:
https://www.meadmakr.com/batch-buildr/