Newbie question

[usaf1199a]

What a great forum! Happy to have found it. Anyways, just getting into home brewing and I'm starting with a mead. Found a pretty traditional mead recipe online which utilizes 15 lbs of honey. I prefer a finished product not overly sweet but with a decent kick. Should I adjust the honey or will 15 be ok based on my aforementioned preference? Thanks very much. Cheers!
-Tyson




weight

 

[Ace_Club]

What a great forum! Happy to have found it. Anyways, just getting into home brewing and I'm starting with a mead. Found a pretty traditional mead recipe online which utilizes 15 lbs of honey. I prefer a finished product not overly sweet but with a decent kick. Should I adjust the honey or will 15 be ok based on my aforementioned preference? Thanks very much. Cheers!
-Tyson

It would depend on a lot of factors. Especially, what type of yeast are you using. With 15# of honey in 5 gallons, you could either get a dry mead or a sweet mead, or anything in between, all depending on the strain of yeast you choose.

 

[usaf1199a]

Lalvin D-47 Mead/white wine yeast (5g packet)

 

[usaf1199a]

Also I was going to add a yeast energizer. It was suggested by someone at my homebrew store.

 

[Ace_Club]

Lalvin D-47 Mead/white wine yeast (5g packet)

Also I was going to add a yeast energizer. It was suggested by someone at my homebrew store.

Well, 15 pounds of honey mixed with water to 5 gallons total volume should get you in the area of ~1.108 OG. With D-47 maxing out, per manufacturer's literature, at 14% abv, this would mean that the mead could ferment down to 1.000 or less. So, if you want a slightly sweeter mead, you could either add more fermentables prior to pitching yeast, or you could ferment and then backsweeten.

 

[usaf1199a]

Great. Thanks very much. Looking forward to starting. I've been wanting to get into home brewing for years now. Not sure why I waited so long.