Newbie question

[Bydand]

I just joined the site. I have a question about yeasts for Mead, do I ask it here or in the Fermentation & Yeast area?

Thank you.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Welcome to the forum... It's about mead, so here should be okay.

 

[Elkobrewer]

Ask away.

 

[Bydand]

Thanks.

I have made 1 successful 1 gallon batch, I have another going now. Just the Joe's Ancient Orange. But I want to do some more and experiment. I like a sweeter wine, not mega sweet, but a bit more than semi-sweat. I have been reading a lot of different threads here and there is mention to all kinds of yeasts, how do I know what is what and what to use it on with what results?

Thank you.

 

[BeerSmith]

I use 71B for most of my meads and melomels. For me it tops out around 14.9% (your mileage may vary) so I plan my batch around that. If you want a very sweet meet (say 1.025 or 1.030) you just calculate the OG based on 14.9% (roughly a 110 point sugar drop) and start around 1.035 or 1.040. You do need to use the TONSA 2 nutrient schedule and degas 1-2 times a day to get strong yeast performance, but it can be done. This is the risky strategy, however, as if your fermentation stalls you have some overly sweet syrup.

Option B is to ferment a lower alcohol mead and then kill off the yeast and backsweeten. I personally prefer fully fermented mead (not backsweetened) as they have a different taste, but many people backsweeten with good results.

Brad

 

[Bydand]

Okay, that was like reading latin. I'm not sure what much of that actually meant. How can I learn the lingo?

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi Bydand and welcome. To learn the lingo you might want to get hold of a mead making or wine making book. Published works tend to be vetted by editorial staff who fact check. Youtube videos are self published and can be utter nonsense - though some are very, very good but you need to be able to judge which is which.
Under all normal circumstances every wine yeast will ferment all the sugars in the must (the liquor comprises your honey and the liquid you have used to dilute the honey. Most people will use between 2 and 3 lbs of honey in a gallon of water or fruit juice or wine. This will result in a mead with a suitable quantity of alcohol (9% - 14% ABV (alcohol by volume). If you were to measure the specific gravity (SG) otherwise known as the density of the must that would be between 1.070 and 1.105 (or thereabouts).

What many mead makers will do is allow the yeast to finish fermenting all the sugars and then allow the mead to age, racking (siphoning) the mead into a sanitized carboy (cleaned so that there are no bacteria, mold or fungi that will compete with the fermentation process) every two months or so. After a few rackings there will be very few viable yeast cells in the mead. At that point you can stabilize the mead by adding two chemicals: potassium sorbate and potassium metabisulfite. These two chemicals - when there are very few yeast cells present - will prevent any further fermentation and that then allows you to add any sweetener. You can add any kind of sweetener . If you add 4 oz of sugar to a gallon this will raise the specific gravity of the mead by about 10 points (1.010) but to know precisely how much sugar you want to add you should bench test. Bench testing means taking a few samples of the mead at a known volume and adding different but known quantities of sugar and totally dissolving the sugar in each glass. You taste each glass and determine the precise amount of sugar you prefer for this batch of mead.
Since you know the volume of the glass and you know the total volume of the mead you can divide the total volume by the sample size and use that number to multiply the precise quantity of sugar to determine how much total sugar you want to add to the carboy.
Hope this helps until you get hold of say, Ken Scchramm's The Compleat Meadmaker (the spelling is correct) or Steve Piatz' The Complete Guide to Making Mead. Schramm's is viewed as the definitive and classic book although it was published 13 years ago and there have been changes in the way we add nutrient since then but both are good at translating the Latin.
Good luck!

 

[Bydand]

Thank you so much. This helps greatly!!! I will get the books and start reading. I had done some reading, but nothing specific, so thank for the books as well as the info.

Michelle

 

[BeeDeeEff]

Some basic concepts you'll see no matter what you're trying to ferment:

-Yeast convert sugar to alcohol, so measuring the amount of sugar present before adding yeast can often predict how much alcohol you'll end up with

-Sugar is heavier than pure water, so you can measure how much is present by measuring how dense (weight per volume) the water/sugar solution is. You do this by floating a hydrometer in solution, the denser the solution the higher it will float. The numbers that tool will give you will typically be from 1.000 to 1.080 (or higher), meaning the mixture is either 1.000 times the density of water (or just water) or 1.080 times the density of water (meaning there is sugar present).

-Finally, yeast can only tolerate so much alcohol before they stop fermenting. So if you know how much sugar you start with, and how much will be turned into alcohol before they yeast can no longer continue, you can estimate how much will be left over causing sweetness.

 

[bernardsmith]

@BeeDeeEff, When brewing beer you will always have unfermented sugar left over because the yeast is unable to ferment some of the sugars in the wort (the liquor that is made from the grain)but in wine or mead making to achieve a reasonably balanced wine or mead (all other things being equal and the wine maker being a relative or absolute novice) you will want the alcohol level (the ABV) to be in the region of 10 - 14% and at that level there is no yeast incapable of fermenting brut dry any and all sugars in fruit or honey. So you aim to have about 2.5 - 3 lbs or so of honey dissolved in water (or fruit juice) to make a gallon of must not 5 or 6 lbs. What you then do is allow the mead or wine to age racking every couple of months or so and this racking , this transference from one carboy to another tends to leave behind the yeast so that after about 6 months there are very few yeast cells (even dormant ones, since there is nothing for them to feed on) in the carboy. What wine makers can then do is stabilize the wine or mead by adding K-meta and K-sorbate which will inhibit any chance refermentation and so then they can add more sugar to sweeten their wine or mead. Adopting this protocol means that you can aim for and hit a target ABV and you can back sweeten the wine or mead to a target sweetness - No Russian Roulette here, no gambling, no risk. To adopt your protocol of killing the yeast through alcohol poisoning means that you really have no control over whether the specific batch of yeast you have will be able to tolerate 14% ABV (as advertised) or 16% or 19% . If you know exactly what you are doing and you know how to add nutrient and oxygen (air) and remove CO2 (degas) and how the yeast deal with temperature then IMO you can use the published tolerance of the yeast to control the sweetness.