Hello All! I have a three gallon dandelion mead finishing off around 1.030 which is a bit sweet for my tastes and I'm wondering what the collective wisdom says to diluting this with 2 gallons of water. It was a vigorous fermentation but I think the yeast, D-47 has hit its tolerance. I believe the SG was 1.130? I assume that this dilution would take it dry which is what I want but I'm just curious if someone has ever done this and would never do it again. thanks. Of course I step-fed with fermaid-k and DAP, rehydrated in Go-ferm so I think everything is fine health wise, I'm just not into the sweetness. thanks for any advice!
question about diluting my dandelion mead
- Thread starter beeboozled
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Diluting will definitely cut down the sweetness, but also everything else. If this mead is recently finished, a small dilution will probably restart fermentation. I think going straight to adding 2 gallons of water is probably too big a step. Maybe try 1/2 gallon and see how it goes. You can always dilute more later.
If you don't want to water down the flavor too much, you could try making a really really dry gallon of traditional and using that instead of water. I think someone else on the board (possibly Chevette Girl) uses unsweetened apple juice for topping up, which would also bring your SG down without making the whole thing thin.
Guilty as charged ;D, but that's generally for topping off when I don't want to dilute the alcohol level too much. Even unsweetened apple juice still has a SG of around 1.050 which in a must that hasn't hit its tolerance should ferment out... so in this case where the yeast HAS hit its tolerance, it might raise the sweetness if its water content doesn't dilute the must enough that the yeast can continue fermentation. In this case I'd try a small amount of water like Akueck suggests (it might lower the alcohol level enough that the yeast can go a little further too), or blend it with a dry traditional, but make sure to stabilize everything before blending if you make a lower-alcohol traditional (especially with a yeast with a higher tolerance) and don't want it to cause the dandelion one to go completely dry.
Thanks everyone for the advice. I think I will try to brew up (maze up?) two gallons of dry traditional and combine them in a five gallon carboy with the three gallons of dandelion. I had great success with dandelion mead last year and I was hoping to bang out at least a fiver this year but it got away from me. Again, I really appreciate the advice.
