Well, I had a friend stop by today and we decided to throw together a few gallons.
recipe:
128 oz Welch's Black Cherry Cranberry Juice
32 oz Great Value frozen mixed fruits
~8 pounds of honey
Lalvin K1V-1116
The procedure was basically the same as I used for the White grape melomel I started about a week ago except that I doubled the recipe and then split the must between two 1 gallon carboys. This will be my friends first mead.
I took an OG before adding the fruit. I'm starting to think that I may have added too much honey to these batches and the White Grape batches. My hydrometer goes to 1.17 and these were of the scale. I estimated about 1.19,
which would give about 24-25% potential alcohol. I do believe that I'll end up having to add some water to these after racking to drop the sweetness down some. Even if the yeast goes to 18%, that still leaves an exceptionally sweet final product.
Questions: If this turns out to be way to sweet, can I just add water and let it ferment some more? Will it start back up (it will assuredly have more sugar available)? Would it be better to rack it into halves now and fill the rest with water?
I think that this weekend, I'll rack half of one of the latest gallons off (into another gallon bottle) and then fill them both with water. Then, I can see the difference in doing it at the beginning and waiting until the end.
recipe:
128 oz Welch's Black Cherry Cranberry Juice
32 oz Great Value frozen mixed fruits
~8 pounds of honey
Lalvin K1V-1116
The procedure was basically the same as I used for the White grape melomel I started about a week ago except that I doubled the recipe and then split the must between two 1 gallon carboys. This will be my friends first mead.
I took an OG before adding the fruit. I'm starting to think that I may have added too much honey to these batches and the White Grape batches. My hydrometer goes to 1.17 and these were of the scale. I estimated about 1.19,
which would give about 24-25% potential alcohol. I do believe that I'll end up having to add some water to these after racking to drop the sweetness down some. Even if the yeast goes to 18%, that still leaves an exceptionally sweet final product.Questions: If this turns out to be way to sweet, can I just add water and let it ferment some more? Will it start back up (it will assuredly have more sugar available)? Would it be better to rack it into halves now and fill the rest with water?
I think that this weekend, I'll rack half of one of the latest gallons off (into another gallon bottle) and then fill them both with water. Then, I can see the difference in doing it at the beginning and waiting until the end.
