Update and vanilla chamomile metheglin

[Arpolis]

Here is a rundown on the recipe. First of all I will say I made this without reading anything about mead making.

20fl oz of clover honey
8 bags of celestial seasonings honey vanilla chamomile herbal tea
1 package of yeast from a "spike your juice" Think Geek kit I got for x-mas
Water up to 64fl oz

Started this 1/23/2012

The tea was added loose leaf and all other ingredients added at room temp.

No OG reading but got mead calc suggests 1.135

I slowly swirled it 3 times a day to release co2

Today I took some cheese cloth, rubber banned it to the bottle and strained into another to remove the tea. Also added 4 more bags of tea. I took a gravity reading with my new hydrometer and it was 0.993. So looking like 18.03% ABV? And this has only been 24 days? Now the temp of the mead is about 70'F so I think I need to adjust that gravity reading but don't know how to adjust. Still pretty cloudy so I bet another 2 or 3 weeks to settle.

Let me know what you think.

 

[Bugeaud]

I don't think that's accurate. Considering that honey greatly differs in sugar-water ratio, it is safe to say that either going by weight or fluid amount will be fairly inaccurate, unless you already know your OG from a different batch, and are sure you are using the exact same honey from the same apiary. It's surely possible it would of reached that high in such a short amount of time, but high tolerance yeast who's tolerance is 18% usually start to lag a little at the last 3%, where yours has not. I'm not sure what you mean by "Adjust that gravity reading". Please specify.

 

[Arpolis]

Well arn't you supposed to take a gravity reading at a specific temp. The hotter the liquid the thiner it is. So a must at 75'f and the same one at 60'f would give different gravity readings right?

 

[Bugeaud]

I never really payed attention to that stuff, just always took a gravity reading at room tempeture. But I don't think by much.

 

[Arpolis]

If you take the OG and SG at the same temp I don't think it matters but I am going off of an OG from a calculator so I thought that the temps would play a role. I think my mead should have been at 63'f for an accurate reading so my SG is probably lower which would make the true ABV less than I am guessing. Next batches will have much better notes taken lol.