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Best time to back-sweeten

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pwizard

pwizard

NewBee
Registered Member
Oct 17, 2015
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Birmingham, AL
I have a 1-gallon (split from a larger batch) jug of traditional mead that I'd to sweeten up a bit since the whole batch fermented slate dry. I have it in long-term aging right now, having racked it out of secondary last Friday. I'm in no hurry but should I stabilize and back-sweeten now or do it closer to bottling time? Does stabilization interfere with aging?

The only thing I'm keeping a close eye on just now is some cinnamon metheglin. Should that be stabilized as it infuses? I might sweeten that up too depending on how it tastes after some aging, but for now I intend to check it every week so I don't get too much cinnamon (I have two sticks in a hop bag floating in there). For some reason, that jug cleared up real fast! Maybe the cinnamon had something to do with it.
 
Backsweetening can and usually will cloud the mead, so its best (in my opinion) to backsweeten as soon as you know what sweetness level you want.

Stabilize with K-meta and k-sorbate, backsweeten and let it settle and clear again. Once its clear, taste it, bottle it, put it away for x months.

Do you have a plan for how to backsweeten?

Best way I've found is the FatBloke method....
Check your SG, taste it, mix a little honey in a bit of the sample, taste it and do it again until you get the taste you want, then check its SG again. Add honey to the rest of the batch until the SG matches your taste sample.
 
I have a suggestion for maybe later down the road. Make 2 different batches of a traditional mead. Make it bare bones with no additional flavors. Make one sweet and the other dry. Now, when you have a mead that is too dry , stabilize it and add some of the sweet traditional. If you have a mead that is too wet,,,,,, you know the drill.
 
I have some campden tablets but I'm not sure how to use them (I only know it's 1 per gallon). Should I drop it in whole or crush it up and mix it with water?
 
pwizard said:
I have some campden tablets but I'm not sure how to use them (I only know it's 1 per gallon). Should I drop it in whole or crush it up and mix it with water?
Click to expand...

GOOD question! Crush 'em!

I've got a mortar and pestle that I've used, but I get much better results, much more easily and much more cleanly, using a couple of tea spoons to crush them.

And yes, you've got it right... 1 tablet per gallon. Don't forget the sorbate. You need both.

I stabilize at my last racking. I crush the campden tablet(s), drop 'em in the new carboy or jug along with the sorbate, then rack on to it to dissolve 'em, let it sit like that for a day or two, then bottle or bulk age.

Stay to the potassium (K) metabisulfate and sorbate if you can. Sodium can leave a metallic or salty taste.

Cheers!

Joe
 
Understood.

I've used sorbate on every batch I've made except for the JAOMs, and never had an issue. I think that its POSSIBLE, but not probable.
And I'd be willing to bet that the times people have ended up with the geranium effect have been either because they used way too much or used it with out metabisulphate.

But I can respect your thoughts on it whether or not I agree with them. And if there is a viable alternative (the 0.5u filtering), I'd say go for it.

Joe
 
After tasting my batch tonight and finding it surprisingly drinkable as-is (despite being only 2 months old), I might only backsweeten lightly. I plan to age it more but it is much, much better than it was when I racked it last week. I'm not sure what happened.
 
pwizard said:
After tasting my batch tonight and finding it surprisingly drinkable as-is (despite being only 2 months old), I might only backsweeten lightly. I plan to age it more but it is much, much better than it was when I racked it last week. I'm not sure what happened.
Click to expand...

Ah the mysteries of science and nature. ;)
There are probably at least a couple of things at work there. Reduction of CO2, the breaking down of a couple of less palatable compounds in the mead, the phase of the moon... who knows? But ain't it great?


Joe
 
joemirando said:
Understood.

I've used sorbate on every batch I've made except for the JAOMs, and never had an issue. I think that its POSSIBLE, but not probable.
And I'd be willing to bet that the times people have ended up with the geranium effect have been either because they used way too much or used it with out metabisulphate.

But I can respect your thoughts on it whether or not I agree with them. And if there is a viable alternative (the 0.5u filtering), I'd say go for it.

Joe
Click to expand...

The truth is, however, I tend to ferment with the sg above the lvl that a yeast can ferment, so I don't have to backsweeten. I know, it's not exact, but it works for me.
 
I've bottled meads bone dry that turned out semi-sweet a year later. Weird.
 
But sweetness IS a perception. Saccharine and aspartame are both a huge amount sweeter than sucrose, and yet have no nutritive value... or very little in relation to what we perceive as sweetness.

Perhaps what remaining sugars there were in the mead were bound in more complex or in simpler forms that do not present themselves as 'sweet' to our taste. Give it a year and they've recombined or split apart and... voilà.

Take inverted sugar, for instance. You take a given amount of sucrose, add a little acid and heat it and it splits into fructose and glucose and, without adding any more sugars, it is 'sweeter' than the sucrose was.

Just a thought.

Joe
 
I strive to make a mead that tastes sweeter than the hydrometer says it should be. So Nimrod, nice job. But the categories of mead are based on S.G. and not perceived sweetness. Or am I missing something?
 
Experience? Just kidding.
On paper I agree with you, but now that I'm cracking open 18-month-old bottles I'm noticing that 1.000 isn't as dry-tasting as I originally thought. Maybe it's because the fussels are gone and the honey has come through? I really don't know.
 
Of all the lies I have told, just kidding is my favorite. But hey, I do lack experience. Gotta start somewhere! And yet we all gain more with each new brew and with very informative discussions like this thread. With higher abv meads , my favorite SG so far is in the 1.004 to 1.008 range. As others have said, the perceived taste changes as your mead ages.
 
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