I have been making mead for sometime now and I am new to making beer. When I make mead I usually ferment until the specific gravity is somewhere around .998. To my understanding, if I were to add more sugar of any sort to the batch it would start to ferment again. So if I want to make my mead sweeter than I'll use an additive to the batch to make the yeast inactive. Why is it that beer never has a final gravity that low and why does the yeast apparently stop fermenting but will convert sugar in the bottle to carbonate?
Og and fg
- Thread starter ryagates1
- Start date
Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:
Alcohol has a specific gravity less than 0, that is to say, alcohol is less dense than water. There is so much sugar in mead that the FG can drop below zero. Beer wort has much less sugar in it.
You're stopping the fermentation before the yeast run out of sugar to eat, that way the mead stays sweet. With beer, we let the yeast eat all the sugar they can until there is no more sugar to eat (that they can process, some larger chain sugars remain) before we bottle.
Then we add simple sugar back to the bottle, and the yeast get back to work on that in the bottle because simple sugars are easy to process. The CO2 produced from that fermentation in the bottle has nowhere to go, so it dissolves into the beer, and that's carbonation.
You're stopping the fermentation before the yeast run out of sugar to eat, that way the mead stays sweet. With beer, we let the yeast eat all the sugar they can until there is no more sugar to eat (that they can process, some larger chain sugars remain) before we bottle.
Then we add simple sugar back to the bottle, and the yeast get back to work on that in the bottle because simple sugars are easy to process. The CO2 produced from that fermentation in the bottle has nowhere to go, so it dissolves into the beer, and that's carbonation.
Golddiggie
Well-Known Member
When grain is mashed, to make wort, you get a combination of long, and short, chain sugars. The yeast eats up the short chain sugars to create alcohol for us, leaving the long chain sugars alone. The temperature the grain was mashed at determines how much of each sugar type is created. Lower mash temperatures makes more short chain sugars, which makes for a lower FG, and thinner (less body) brew. Higher mash temperatures makes for more long chain sugars, a higher FG, and more body in the brew. Buying extract means you're at the mercy of the company mashing the grains to make the extract for you (one of the reasons why it can be difficult to get a specific FG when making extract batches).
IMO, you typically don't want a beer to drop to a very low FG. Unless you want a dry, thin, brew that is.
Also, with mead (I've made it too), you can target a higher FG than .998. You just need to either step feed the batch more sugar as it progresses, or design it to hit the yeast tolerance before it reaches too low a level. That can be tricky so most people simply make the batch, stabilize and then back-sweeten to get back what was fermented out. Personally, I've not done that. I have a batch of traditional mead (made with regional wildflower honey) started a year ago, in my brew fridge (in a keg) chilling. I had it aging on oak for about a month, or so. I don't have any pressure on it (sealed, purged the keg, then vented the CO2 from the head-space) since I'm not looking to have it carbonated. I plan on bottling it up this weekend. I expect it to be very clear, due to the time in the keg, in the fridge. I will mark the first bottle to be filled, so that I know which one it is.
IMO, you typically don't want a beer to drop to a very low FG. Unless you want a dry, thin, brew that is.
Also, with mead (I've made it too), you can target a higher FG than .998. You just need to either step feed the batch more sugar as it progresses, or design it to hit the yeast tolerance before it reaches too low a level. That can be tricky so most people simply make the batch, stabilize and then back-sweeten to get back what was fermented out. Personally, I've not done that. I have a batch of traditional mead (made with regional wildflower honey) started a year ago, in my brew fridge (in a keg) chilling. I had it aging on oak for about a month, or so. I don't have any pressure on it (sealed, purged the keg, then vented the CO2 from the head-space) since I'm not looking to have it carbonated. I plan on bottling it up this weekend. I expect it to be very clear, due to the time in the keg, in the fridge. I will mark the first bottle to be filled, so that I know which one it is.
the gravity will stabilize and stop going down. barring a stalled fermentation, at that point it is done.
