Simple Dry Mead with table sugar?

[martyjhuebs]

Heres what I have going on, I have an empty 3 gallon carboy, a small amount of honey, a 5lb bag of sugar, bread yeast and champagne yeast...

I am thinking about just brewing up a simple 3 gallon dry mead using 1lb of honey and 3lbs of sucrose. I may even do a burnt caramelization to the mixture before fermenting. Any ideas on this? I know it will be really dry and thin but Im looking for something that is highly carbonated with a kick that is easy drinking.

 

[SerifSansSerif]

It's not going to be a mead, buuuuuuuuuut...

I guess I'd start with the sugar, maybe caramelize that first, use the champagne yeast, and then, depending on when the yeast seems to be slowing down a little bit from all the sugars it has eaten, toss in the honey.

Here's my rationale.

The sugar by itself has little to no flavor, so caramelizing it will give it a little something. If you use this first (and because you have more of it), you'll have the champagne yeast (which will, theoretically give a higher ABV and cleaner profile), will burn through it like crazy and hopefully, will be a bit more sluggish with the honey when that gets added later and the flavors from the honey might hold better. (basically the honey would be more of an adjunct to a sugar based brew), You'd still want to cut it with something like orange peel or a fruit flavor, cause it's not going to be a wildly good mead.

The other option is to wait till you can buy another pound or two of honey and some more suitable yeast, and do a regular mead.(recommended).

 

[MarkKF]

It's not going to be a mead, buuuuuuuuuut....



The other option is to wait till you can buy another pound or two of honey and some more suitable yeast, and do a regular mead.(recommended).

What is an appropriate yeast for mead? I used cider yeast for a cyzer but usually have ale yeast on hand.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

What is an appropriate yeast for mead? I used cider yeast for a cyzer but usually have ale yeast on hand.

Different wine yeasts will impart different characteristics to your Mead... And, the many insist that bread yeast is best for JOAM. Ale yeast can be used, depends on the result you want.

 

[martyjhuebs]

So, here's what I did... I put 3 lbs of sugar in a pot and boil it until it burned (which I don't suggest unless you want to make the wife mad). I then watered it down and warmed it back to disolve the sugars that hardened... afterwards I racked into the carboy topped with water and pitched my champagne yeast. Gravity read 1.045 which beersmith projected 1.046. I plan to ferment out, and based upon serifsanserif's suggestion, add honey to the secondary along with some oak chips. We shall see how this little adventure turns out...

 

[SerifSansSerif]

So, here's what I did... I put 3 lbs of sugar in a pot and boil it until it burned (which I don't suggest unless you want to make the wife mad). I then watered it down and warmed it back to disolve the sugars that hardened... afterwards I racked into the carboy topped with water and pitched my champagne yeast. Gravity read 1.045 which beersmith projected 1.046. I plan to ferment out, and based upon serifsanserif's suggestion, add honey to the secondary along with some oak chips. We shall see how this little adventure turns out...

I'm interested to see what happens myself. (and I may just decide in the next few days to do a similar brew. Might as well test what I advise, right? )

As mentioned, typically a mellower wine yeast and sometimes even an ale yeast is used. I have a batch going using BM4x4 which I don't think has gotten any use from the mizers here, but has had good reviews from the vintners. The Safale S-04 or US-05 is used in a lot of the recipes I've seen. So has 71B. There's also some yeasts out there being sold as specifically mead yeasts (I think white labs has a liquid mead yeast that I've used for ciders).

The Pasteur Champagne and Premier Cuvee are two that I tend to have on hand, but they are for high ABV brews and Champagne does tend to strip away some flavors (though it works really well with cider IMHO).

 

[ThatVideoKid]

I am also interested to see how this turns out! If you highly caramelized it, which it sounds like you did, it could be like a caramead.

 

[Ariel]

I know this is old....how did it turn out?

 

[Dan O]

I know this is old....how did it turn out?

The OP hasn't been seen on here since April 29 of 2018. We may never find out.

 

[D.B.Moody]

He probably burnt one too many pots.

 

[Dan O]

He probably burnt one too many pots.

Or the wife took him out back. Maybe the brew did him in

 

[dwhite60]

Could have turned that sugar into invert syrup. I would have used lemon juice for the citric acid and gone a little heavy with it to make it a bit fruity.

Interested to hear how this turns out.

 

[KyleinMN]

I was thinking that might be a good way to try a sack mead without having to use so much honey.

First ferment inverted sugar to bump up the alcohol content before adding the honey to the approx level of sweetness you might want past the tolerance of the yeast strain.

If the sugar doesn't really add any flavor I don't see why it wouldn't work. The question would be what percent sugar vs honey could you get away with without impacting the flavor of the end product?

 

[Dan O]

Well, to my understanding, @ least 50% of the fermentable sugars needs to be honey for it to be called a mead. I think the honey flavor would be there, but, you'd be really straining to taste it. Not that it would not be there, I just think it would be very subtle. IMOHO
Happy meading