newish...

[Yaksha808]

I have 2gals of mead going and I decided on not exactly waiting for it to finish before starting my next batch... kind if impatient if I do say so myself...
I went with a 5gal strawberry melomel, the thing is... I didnt have all the honey as the time I made it... so I kind of added 6lbs to it over the last week about 2lbs every 2 days on top of the original 10lbs I started with... what I am wondering is... is 16lbs of honey added at different times going to effect the mead at all? And, how can I figure out the modified gravity for this? Im using 1118 for the yeast btw.

 

[fatbloke]

If it's just the honey then I can't envisage any problem.....it just makes record keeping a bit of a mare.....

 

[biochemedic]

You should be able to estimate your effective OG if you measured the gravity from the start. Say, for example, your gravity with 10 lbs in 5 gal volume was 1.076 or 76 gravity points. If you divide this by 10 (= 7.6 points) then multiply by 5 gallons, you get 38 points per pound per gallon (pppg). I used these numbers because 38 pppg is fairly average for honey.

Suppose you ran your numbers and did end up with 38 pppg...you added 6 additional pounds of honey, so 38 points x 6 pounds = 228 / 5 gal = 45.6 additional points Add this to the original 76 points, and your OG is 1.122

In terms of effect on the mead, it shouldn't have any negative effect... What you can sometimes do though with step feeding is you can actually push a yeast past it's usual tolerance -- adding the sugar over a week or so though is probably not having that effect, as the active fermentation is largely ongoing...with true step feeding, you add more honey after things start to slow down, in order to get it to kick back up again. One theoretical positive benefit of your procedure is that you started with a lower OG, so your yeast didn't have as much osmotic stress to deal with at the start. I actually use a similar technique when I add honey, brown sugar, molasses or other simple sugar fermentables to beer, but I do usually wait until the main fermentation has started to slow, more like the step feeding technique...I do that in those cases though more to help prevent the flavor aromatics of the addition from being blown off with the violent CO2 release of the main ferment.