# honey to sugar conversion



## meadmaker1

I have made a few batches of mead so far and the results varied but none are bad. A couple are just better. My recipes are all derived from others, twisted or changged to suit my tastes.
My question is 
Does anyone know a conversion for substituting honey for sugar.
I find of coarse many more recipes for traditional wines than meads and am hoping for a simple tit for tat sulution.


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## Johnd

meadmaker1 said:


> I have made a few batches of mead so far and the results varied but none are bad. A couple are just better. My recipes are all derived from others, twisted or changged to suit my tastes.
> My question is
> Does anyone know a conversion for substituting honey for sugar.
> I find of coarse many more recipes for traditional wines than meads and am hoping for a simple tit for tat sulution.



Fermcalc offers a calculator in which you can select honey as your method of adding sugar, so you could use that program as an option. When you select honey as your sweetener, it defaults to 80 BRIX. I'm not a mead maker so I don't know if that's the correct BRIX for all honey, or if it varies, but you can plug in the BRIX for your particular honey and go from there.


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## meadmaker1

Privious posts states 
.8 × sugar by wieght = honey × by wieght
I will add that 1 qrt of honey is supossed to bee 3 lbs. But I have not been able to quite get it to all fit, but its very close.


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## BernardSmith

By weight 1 lb of sugar added to water to make a gallon raises the gravity by 40 points. One pound of honey added to a volume of water to make a gallon raises the gravity 35 points. This is a standard rule of thumb.


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## bkisel

Awhile back my research turned up 1 cup honey =~ 2 cup sugar. This is the ratio I've been using.


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## jburtner

Next honey mead I try I'm considering using generic white-grape-juice-from-concentrate from the grocer instead of water... Might first test a quick one half gallon batch before buying six or seven gallons of white grape juice from the Kroger to eyeball the specific gravities / absence of sorbate / etc....

Plus of course any other fruit add-in's I might get excited about in the moment -

Cheers!
-johann


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## Mortalpawn

Average honey will yield 35 points per pound of sugar in a gallon of must. Multiply to scale up - so 15 pounds of honey in 5 gallons would be:
35 points x 15 lbs / 5 gallons = 105 gravity points

One point is a point of specific gravity so 105 points is a original gravity of 1.105 (i.e. the points just go after the decimal). 130 points would be 1.130 and so on...so the example above 15lbs in 5 gallons would give you a starting gravity of around 1.105.

For comparison pure table sugar yields 46 points per pound in a gallon of must, so the weight conversion is 35/46 which is 0.76 so roughly 3 lbs of sugar replaces 4 pounds of honey.

That being said there is some variety in honey density. I've had some honeys yield as much as 38 points and some as low as 33-34 points.

Brad


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## treesaver

Mortalpawn said:


> Average honey will yield 35 points per pound of sugar in a gallon of must. Multiply to scale up - so 15 pounds of honey in 5 gallons would be:
> 35 points x 15 lbs / 5 gallons = 105 gravity points
> 
> One point is a point of specific gravity so 105 points is a original gravity of 1.105 (i.e. the points just go after the decimal). 130 points would be 1.130 and so on...so the example above 15lbs in 5 gallons would give you a starting gravity of around 1.105.
> 
> For comparison pure table sugar yields 46 points per pound in a gallon of must, so the weight conversion is 35/46 which is 0.76 so roughly 3 lbs of sugar replaces 4 pounds of honey.
> 
> That being said there is some variety in honey density. I've had some honeys yield as much as 38 points and some as low as 33-34 points.
> 
> Brad



Thanks for that conversion info. That is very good info right there!


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