When using yeast with different Alcohol tolerances how does that effect how much honey you use. My better half really likes the taste of a mead i made with RC 212 and 3lbs of honey. I planned on making more but instead ill be using K1V 1116. Will the 1116 "eat" more honey and make it more dry? Should i use more than 3lbs?
Yeast tolerance and honey amount?
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Yes, someone far more knowledgeable than me will set you straight here... but very generally (because there are several approaches), you use the mead calculator to give guidance on the amount of honey you need whilst also using the target gravity as a guide. Approx gravities are as follows:
Dry: 0.990 – 1.006
Medium: 1.006 – 1.015
Sweet: 1.012 – 1.020
Dessert: 1.020+
The theory is that your yeasties eat up all your lovely honey to the alcohol tolerance of the yeast, and then they quietly shuffle off their mortal coil, and any remaining honey (or not) dictates the sweetness (or dryness) of the mead. The calculator is your friend in this case.
However, yeasties as charming as they are, can't read the outside of the packet, and some will be lazy buggers and curl up their toes a % or two before their meant to. And on another batch they'll blow through their allotted alcohol limit and become drunken bums eating all the honey they can to maybe a % or two more than you'd been lead to believe.
From watching lots of postings on here.... it seems the preferred method, is to calculate the amount of honey required to get the alcohol that you want and ferment to target to ensure that you get your number, then back sweeten to taste, if required..... but someone will put me straight if I'm full of it!!
Apologies if this seems a bit incoherent, I'm pretty new to this whole brewing malarky and my neurons are still trying to get it all straight in my old addled noggin!
Hope this in some way creates some decomplexification for you!!
In parting I'd like to leave you with a link to a post from FatBloke in another similar thread, where he lays out the method I'm trying right now: http://www.gotmead.com/forum/showpost.php?p=210243&postcount=5
Tony.
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I5s up to how you make yours as to how dry you get it at the end of the ferment.
The only way you can test or taste would be to make comparison batches as identical as possible.
Even then, different yeasts and their nutrient requirement will give different tastes. K1-V1116 and D21 (Maury yeast) were the 2 strains the late Brother Adam seemingly used to great success/acclaim. Maury AOC is closer to the Pyrenees, whereas the k1v1116 is Montpellier and still very south but further east....
Similar characteristics but equally different.
I haven't looked up RC-212 but its generally though of as good for "reds" though I'd have presumed that the other two would likely be used for reds given their southern origins.....
Hence just make a couple gallons with K1V and taste them at similar times as you might if they'd had RC-212.
The flavour differences are gonna be both relative and subjective. ....
Another hard question to answer......
The only way you can test or taste would be to make comparison batches as identical as possible.
Even then, different yeasts and their nutrient requirement will give different tastes. K1-V1116 and D21 (Maury yeast) were the 2 strains the late Brother Adam seemingly used to great success/acclaim. Maury AOC is closer to the Pyrenees, whereas the k1v1116 is Montpellier and still very south but further east....
Similar characteristics but equally different.
I haven't looked up RC-212 but its generally though of as good for "reds" though I'd have presumed that the other two would likely be used for reds given their southern origins.....
Hence just make a couple gallons with K1V and taste them at similar times as you might if they'd had RC-212.
The flavour differences are gonna be both relative and subjective. ....
Another hard question to answer......
