Hi there, I'm a new member.
Some background: I'm from Poland (country in central-east Europe
), I'm a pretty much successful homebrewer, I also did quite a few batches of fruit wines and 2 of grape wine. As I got some interests in beekeeping recently I'm going to ferment some meads. Just to get a rough idea of technical parameters of a mead I got the law regulations on mead, and... well they seem to be crazy, but maybe I'm missing something so I wanted to consult with community.
For historical reasons meads in Poland are named: półtorak (1,5), dwójniak (2), trójniak (3) or czwórniak (4), which depends on must volume to honey volume (eg. trójniak is made using 1 part honey, 2 parts water so it's 3:1). The law requires various parameters depending on type of honey, i've put them into table below:
[td]Non-sugars g/l[/td]
[td]>15[/td]
[td]>20[/td]
[td]>25[/td]
[td]>30[/td]
[/tr]
Additionally titratable acids should be in 3.5-8 g/l (as malic acid)
Apart from requirement to add acids (why?!) there are some other things that bother me:
1. Guessing that calculation of total sugar as sugar + 18*ABV comes from ca. 18 g/l of sugars that are transformed into 1% ABV: so if i have 240g/l sugar (OG 1.090), will finish dry if fermentation is not stopped (or yeast with alcohol tolerance <12% is used)... ok, law does not allow dry meads
2. non-sugars for czwórniak are required to be >15 g/l so the honey itself should have > 60g/l of them. This is 4% (assuming 1L honey = 1.4kg). I've got an analysis of my honey in my hand... 15.1% water, 83,9% sugars... only 1% left for other stuff, how is that possible?
Any comments on that?
Some background: I'm from Poland (country in central-east Europe
), I'm a pretty much successful homebrewer, I also did quite a few batches of fruit wines and 2 of grape wine. As I got some interests in beekeeping recently I'm going to ferment some meads. Just to get a rough idea of technical parameters of a mead I got the law regulations on mead, and... well they seem to be crazy, but maybe I'm missing something so I wanted to consult with community.For historical reasons meads in Poland are named: półtorak (1,5), dwójniak (2), trójniak (3) or czwórniak (4), which depends on must volume to honey volume (eg. trójniak is made using 1 part honey, 2 parts water so it's 3:1). The law requires various parameters depending on type of honey, i've put them into table below:
| Parameter\Honey type | Półtorak (1.5) | dwójniak (2) | trójniak (3) | czwórniak (4) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sweetness (reducing sugars content) g/l | 35-90 | 65-120 | 175-230 | >300 |
| Total sugar calculated as sugars + (18* ABV) | >240 | >323 | >490 | >600 |
| ABV | 9-12 | 12-15 | 15-18 | 15-18 |
[td]Non-sugars g/l[/td]
[td]>15[/td]
[td]>20[/td]
[td]>25[/td]
[td]>30[/td]
[/tr]
Apart from requirement to add acids (why?!) there are some other things that bother me:
1. Guessing that calculation of total sugar as sugar + 18*ABV comes from ca. 18 g/l of sugars that are transformed into 1% ABV: so if i have 240g/l sugar (OG 1.090), will finish dry if fermentation is not stopped (or yeast with alcohol tolerance <12% is used)... ok, law does not allow dry meads
2. non-sugars for czwórniak are required to be >15 g/l so the honey itself should have > 60g/l of them. This is 4% (assuming 1L honey = 1.4kg). I've got an analysis of my honey in my hand... 15.1% water, 83,9% sugars... only 1% left for other stuff, how is that possible?
Any comments on that?
