Can I Add More Honey To My Mead During Fermenting

Mead wears many faces. Almost all of them can be slotted into two categories: sugariness mead or dry. Though mead is often thought of as a sweet drink, everyone has their own preference. Sweet mead has the wonderful honey sweetness many drinkers are looking for, while dry mead showcases the other ingredients in their purest form.

Striking your desired sweetness takes both skill and do, just there are several things you should understand to aid you go there. Check them out beneath.

1. Mead is not wine.

Though mead is similar to wine in many ways, it differs greatly when it comes to the starting and finishing gravities. Wine is ordinarily limited by the saccharide that the grapes can provide, which keeps well-nigh wine in the ane.080-1.110 range, or about 12-xv% alcohol by volume.

Most wine yeast can handle this alcohol content range without problem, and usually will ferment the vino dry, meaning no or very little sugar remaining. On a hydrometer this is somewhere in the range of 0.994-1.000 or so.

2. Know your yeast.

Your yeast has a large job ahead of it.

Dearest is and so full-bodied that you tin can make your starting gravity whatever yous'd like. You could easily offset at 1.140, for example. If a mead of this sugar content were to ferment dry, it would be over 19% alcohol. Most wine yeasts, all the same, cannot withstand this level of alcohol and volition terminate fermenting earlier all the sugars are gone. That means that some sugars will exist left over, which will brand the mead sweet or semi-sweet.

By paying attending to your yeast strain's alcohol tolerance level, y'all can select a strain and starting gravity that give you lot the desired level of sugariness remaining. The Lalvin 71B-1122 Narbonne strain is an excellent one for making sweetness meads in this fashion, equally it has a relatively low alcohol tolerance and makes a mead that is usually ready to potable relatively quickly.

3. Nutrients make life 100x easier.

As previously outlined, yeast health is essential. Mead is made from honey, which is pure sugar. In other words, the yeast face up a brick wall. To help your yeast along, it helps to innovate nutrients throughout the fermentation - besides known every bit staggered nutrient additions. Apply Go-Ferm & Fermaid K to rehydrate your yeast and give information technology the boost it needs.

4. Practice you need potassium sorbate?

Mead has a choosy way of kick fermentation dorsum into gear only when you recall it'south over. If you want to add extra sugar to the finished product in order to increase sweetness, chances are your yeast will come back to life. They'll swallow up the sugars, and you won't get the height-off of sugariness that you want.

One fashion to avert this outcome is to use potassium sorbate, a chemical that prohibits further fermentation. While potassium sorbate cannot terminate a fermentation that is in progress, if you have a completed fermentation, it allows y'all to add boosted sugars to mead without the yeast starting up again.

If planning to use potassium sorbate, it is a good idea to apply potassium metabisulfite from the beginning of the brewing process, too. Sulfite volition prevent malolactic leaner from getting in your mead, and the combination of potassium sorbate and malolactic bacteria can produce some unwanted, "geranium" like off-flavors.

5. Always, always age.

You should nonetheless age the mead after sweetening to brand sure that all fermentation has stopped (and check to see if the gravity remains constant). It will also give your mead more depth and maturity of flavor.

6. Taste-test & conform as needed.

Sweet meads can be anywhere up to about 1.040 in finishing gravity. Very sweetness and strong meads are sometimes called "sack" mead. The sweetness is usually balanced by the alcohol content too equally the acidity. If you wind upwardly with a mead that is too sweet calculation some acid can help residue information technology out. Our acid blend is a good option.

If you are back-sweetening (adding sugar/love to a completed fermentation, as in the potassium sorbate instance), y'all can add honey to taste by adding it in small increments and taking samples.

Bonus: Effort out carbonation.

If y'all are trying to make carbonated sugariness mead, forced carbonation with CO2 is the only way to become. Priming sugar won't work, as the yeast cannot consume the remaining sugars. But a kegging organisation and a co2 tank works quite well, nevertheless, and is the easiest manner to reliably carbonate any mead.