Fruit messing with OG

[BSamp95]

Hello, I'm working on my second and third, five gallon batches.

My two recipes are
5Gal Water
4c Rhubarb (Blended and squeezed)
5Ibs Strawberry (Blended and Squeezed)
33Oz Lemon Juice
1 pack of Red Star Premier Dry Wine yeast
13.5Ib Honey

5Gal Water
5Ibs Blackberries (Blended and Squeezed)
33oz Lemon Juice
13.5Ib Honey
1 Pack of Red Star Premier Dry Wine Yeast.

My question is, when getting the starting gravity for my mead/melomel... do I take the starting gravity BEFORE adding the Blended fruit? It seems every time I take the gravity reading after adding the fruit I have a ridiculously high reading... for instance both of these came out to around 1.65 for starting gravity... and no matter how much I diluted it stayed high, or at least not in the ideal range of 1.1-1.2.

Also just FYI, I am putting fruit in primary AND secondary.

 

[4give]

Hi. Any additional sugars can raise the SG. I still take way too long mixing my must to try and hit a volume and SG I'm looking for and still include the additions I want to ferment with... and I'm on my 40th batch - LOL. You might want to start with less honey. Another thought is trying smaller batches at first in the event things go wrong while experimenting.
Your batch size is actually going to be at least 6.25 gallons with all those ingredients assuming 13.5lbs of honey is 1.125 gallons (average volume since a typical gallon of honey is appx. 12 lbs.).
I'm not sure how much you've worked with lemon juice. I have limited experience. One idea might be not fermenting with it, and considering lemon zest in secondary instead of lemon juice in primary. This gives you greater flexibility in determining how much lemon nuance you really want to have because once it's in there, it ain't coming out. Lemon zest allows for small additions at one time, and you can always add more as you go.
This link might help you give you a rough guide how much certain fruits contribute to SG and TA.

Sugar, Acid & Tannin Levels of Fruits @ Improved Winemaking

Improved Winemaking: Sugar, Acid & Tannin Levels of Fruits

www.brsquared.org

Hope this helps some.

 

[Chevette Girl]

What 4give said about small batches and lemon juice.

I'm curious how you developed your recipes, what resources were you using? Any time I see lemon juice in primary, I think "ooh, that's an old recipe." Current methods don't recommend using lemon juice in primary because not only is the fruit acidic (rhubarb is for sure) and the honey acidic but the yeast will produce even more acidity and if the pH gets too low, you might start running into problems with stuck fermentations or stinky annoyed yeast. If the mead is a bit bland or flat, by all means add lemon juice after fermentation to balance things out, but though many successful batches (including a lot of my own) have been done with lemon juice, it's a way better habit to get into to use it after. And if you want that zing of citrus flavour, the zest is what you want anyways, the juice really doesn't have a lot of flavour.

Are you using any pectic enzyme? I typically mix my must, add the pectic enzyme, wait 24h, then check the SG and then pitch my yeast because the pectic enzyme can cause the fruit to release more of its sugars into the must, but then I tend to only use fruit in primary. Calculating the amount of sugar you add with secondary fruit additions gets tricky and you want your before and after volumes and your before and after specific gravities, then it's just a straight concentration calculation.

When you say "blended and squeezed", do you mean you ran it through a blender then strained out the bigger solids through something like a jelly bag or cheesecloth? Don't be afraid to be very descriptive when you're asking for help with troubleshooting, also when you say you add fruit in primary and secondary, that suggests that the amount of fruit you stated in your recipe might not all have been added, more words is more better when it comes to trying to share your work so others can check it over And as 4give pointed out, those batches will be over 6 gallons if you included 5 gallons of water rather than water up to 5 gallons, which is how I usually do it (I measured it out on all my primary fermentation buckets and made sharpie marks on the outside so I just fill a bit past the line then when I rack, it's enough to fill the carboy after losing some to lees and fruit crud). I'm also not sure how you measured your SG, you didn't state whether you used a hydrometer or refractometer so I'm assuming you have a hydrometer.

In the future you might want to check the SG before adding fruit, then after, then you'll know for sure where your high readings are coming from, you didn't state whether you checked before adding the fruit. Though in my experience, straight fruit juice other than grape juice rarely exceeds about 1.060 so so you're more likely decreasing the SG by diluting the must, and any solids that make it into the must should not be affecting the spcific gravity, only dissolved sugars should.

We used to have a mead calculator around here that could give an approximation of what your SG should be based on your total volume and the amount of honey you add, but it's been a while and a couple site rearrangements since I've used it... aah there it is https://gotmead.com/blog/the-mead-calculator/
It thinks your initial SG should be about 1.100 if you made aa 5 gal batch, less if you used the entire 5 gallons of water, so something's definitely weird. Did you test the fruit SG separately before adding it?

Things that could cause a false high reading could include the must being really cold (I don't think it would make it .05 too high though), the hydrometer being out of calibration, or air bubbles stuck to the hydrometer and making it float, I sometimes get fermentation bubbles doing that when I'm checking the progress after pitching so I make sure to give the hydrometer a spin (or if it's in a plastic hydrometer test container, I'll tap it to gently bounce it off the bottom) just before I read it to knock any bubbles off.

Have you tested your hydrometer? Make sure it gives you a reading of 1.000 when in room temperature water.

Good luck, and I hope you get to the bottom of this, something's definitely off somewhere.