How much honey to use for backsweetening

[Ty520]

What do you base your statement on?

I'm willing to accept (for now) the ideas in the article @Raptor99 posted, as it sounds reasonable and I don't have another source of information. If there is another source, I'd love to read it.

If the article is correct and honey is ~95% fermentable sugar, then a 25 brix must results in 1.25% residual sugar, well above the dry wine level. If the fermentable sugars are 99%, then the residual sugar is 0.25%, which is dry red range.

In my limited experience in mead making, I suspected the residual sugar was in the dry red range -- but I make metheglin and the spices alter the taste, and having few samples to form an opinion from, I don't trust that my palate made an accurate evaluation before I backsweetened the wine slightly.

The fact that I can take a 25 brix mead to below 1.000 fg; if 5% of the sugars were unfermentable, it'd never be able to get that low.

Dry is dry is dry - red wine,white wine or mead, it's all dependant on final gravity; and they can all potentially be dry or sweet and everything in between.

 

[Aleatoric]

My meads stall out at 1.010 or thereabouts with some regularity. OG independent. But then I'm using wild yeast (no boil, no filter, no kill) from berries and the honey. Interesting discussion. If I'm aggressive and/or impatient and use commercial yeast they drop down much further, then .. backsweetening. Sometimes the "unfermentable" sugars are in actuality "Unfermentable for now but just you wait you impatient bottler person" and fizzy meads are enjoyed later.

I'm pulling some very nice meads off my rack after a year or three doing this, and finding some delightful results. I think the thing that "mead is undrinkable for a year" is hogwash (ask any Viking) but also "time hides all sins" is a good reason to hide bottles from yourself so you can discover the neat things that happen.

So far so good, regardless. But as I said .. only a few years in ...

A couple berry meads *(I hate the word "metheglyn" so I tend not to use it) I used glycerin and/or oak to round out after the fact, and this contributes to the aging/ and response .."hmm. wow!"

I've learned that over-oaking a bit is good. The character softens with time. To date I've never regretted oaking more or for longer. (Using either spirals, or chunks of staves I "toasted") This also contributes somewhat to perceived sweetness.

 

[winemaker81]

The fact that I can take a 25 brix mead to below 1.000 fg; if 5% of the sugars were unfermentable, it'd never be able to get that low.

Good point. However, the alcohol present skews measuring residual sugar with a hydrometer. The higher the ABV is, the lower the SG for the same level of sugar, so we get a different FG if the mead is 11% or 15% ABV.

I checked my records -- I've made 3 meads whose OG, FG, and Yeast are:
1.102 -- 1.002 -- Red Star Epernay II
1.092 -- 1.008 -- Red Star Champagne
1.089 -- 0.996 -- Mangrove Jack’s M05 Mead Yeast

The middle batch bulk aged for a year and the fermentation would not budge. I expect the Champagne yeast would ferment it if anything could. This batch provides anecdotal evidence of a higher level of non-fermentable sugars -- I say "anecdotal" as that batch is long gone so there is no way to test it.

None of this proves anything about mead being inherently sweeter than red or white wines, but it's been an interesting discussion in that it made me think a bit deeper about what the FG means.

 

[Ty520]

I think now we're venturing into a conversation of "perceived sweetness" which is immeasurable, but fun and interesting.

tannins, higher alcohol and bitter/sour will definitely subdue perceived sweetness. Oaking however, can actually work both ways - the tannins and char level in it can subdue perceived sweetness, but the vanillins can bump it up.

a 1.010 11% and a 1.010 15% technically are equally sweet by every objective means and methods of measurement, but the extra alcohol in the 15% abv beverage will mask your perception of the sweetness.

The trouble with your example, though, is that all the variables are all over the place - especially your yeast strains which have alcohol tolerances from 13% for the champagne, to 18% for the M05, so the numbers make sense and don't have anything to do with unfermentable - the m05 ravaged your sugars and ran out of them to metabolize, whereas, on the contrary, your champagne yeast probably hit its alcohol tolerance before it could finish metabolizing all of the sugars.

And if we get really into the weeds, there's the issue of atmospheric conditions such as temperature and altitude that can not only affect your physical measurements, but also perceived sweetness (cold and high altitude dull your taste). hell, even how much water you drank that day will affect your perception of how sweet something is.

And going even deeper into the realm of the unfermentable sugars rabbit hole, you'd have to take into account the differences in the unfermentable dextrins in honey versus unfermentable arabinose, rhamnose and xylose in wine grapes and adjust for their differences in sweetness. And even then, these quantities will vary between every single batch, because not only does every variety of honey and grape have different ratios of unfermentables, those quantities will change with each season based on climatic conditions - in reality, the minute variables are so complicated, it would be nearly impossible to make a pure and true 'apples to apples' comparison.

But the biggest wrench in the gear is that 'sweetness' measurements are actually subjective - the scale was derived from a panel of tasters, and their opinions of how sweet different sugars are (relative to sucrose being "1.0"), which was then tabulated and averaged into a consensus - there really isn't any 'true' scientific means or device to measure "real" sweetness.

 

[dmw_chef]

Honey is almost 100% fermentable for the most part. When meads stop early well below tolerance, it's a sign you have poor nutrition.

Everything I make that runs dry is less than 1.000.

 

[Aleatoric]

I find this interesting as I usually "over administer" nutrients. However, I will say that the other factor is temperature .. in my realm, the house is not quite 70F even in summer, so ..

When I use heating apparatus, (which I've never done with mead) things ferment more fully.

Honey is almost 100% fermentable for the most part. When meads stop early well below tolerance, it's a sign you have poor nutrition.

Everything I make that runs dry is less than 1.000.

 

[dmw_chef]

OG/FG/yeast/nutes?

 

[tedlofland]

My first batch mead is coming along nicely. When I am ready to bottle it, I plan to add Kmeta and K-sorbate and then backsweeten it with honey. My question is how to determine how much honey to add. I am shooting for a "medium" level of sweetness. It is difficult to bench test sweetening with honey because it is not easy to measure small amounts of honey accurately. If I have a reasonable starting point I won't have to spend so much time making a lot of adjustments.

Gal of honey needed = (Gravity point increase needed x gallons of mead) / (1.416 - Desired Sp.Gr.)
Pounds of honey needed = Gal of honey needed x 11.96
Pounds of table sugar instead of honey = Pounds of honey needed x 0.883

 

[tedlofland]

Gal of honey needed = (Gravity point increase needed x gallons of mead) / (1.416 - Desired Sp.Gr.)
Pounds of honey needed = Gal of honey needed x 11.96
Pounds of table sugar instead of honey = Pounds of honey needed x 0.883

Desired Sp.Gr. - starting Sp.Gr of dry mead or wine = Gravity point increase needed

 

[tedlofland]

Desired Sp.Gr. - starting Sp.Gr of dry mead or wine = Gravity point increase needed

A final specific gravity after back sweetening depending on what sweetness you like can range from 1.010 to 1.040

 

[Jovimaple]

@tedlofland Welcome to WMT!