Specific gravity with fruits

[tomashek]

Hi, this is my first post here so any help would be greatly appreciated! 👍I was considering making a 5 gallon batch of blackberry melomel/mead but was wondering how you would go about accurately measuring the specific gravity while the fruit is in. Wouldn't there be a higher sugar content than what a hydrometer would read? (Say your liquid reads 1.10, wouldn't the berries break down, releasing sugar to raise it gradually to a higher gravity?)

 

[TandemTails]

From what I've read the fruit additions are negligible for gravity change due to the fact that the fruit also contains water and the sugars + water in the fruit essentially balance each other out.

I haven't been adjusting my OG when doing fruit additions in my meads.

Others might have different opinions though

 

[tomashek]

I never thought about the water balancing it out! Thanks!

 

[meatcleaver]

I don't know how accurate it is but the brewersfriend recipe calculator has fruit in the fermentable drop down list. honey too. I've formulated Mead & wine recipes that way but it was just for an approximation of og.

 

[HB_in_Subic]

I usually use a refractometer to measure my fruit wine OG with good accuracy.