New meader: My mead is too dry, considering adding pear juice

[Gooby_Rastor]

Hi everyone. About a month ago I started making my first meads. I used a friend's honey as favors at my wedding, and had a bunch left over. It was either baklava or mead, but mead won out.

So I started two batches: A 5-gallon batch aimed at becoming a medium-sweetness straight mead, and a 1-gallon batch aimed at becoming a sweeter, straight mead. The 5-gallon batch is doing fine in the primary, I'll rack it in a few weeks.

The 1-gallon is the interesting case. I used a packet of dry Red Star Montrachet yeast, and about 4-5 lbs of honey at the start. The OG was 1.084, and I sealed it up in a bucket on Feb. 20th. I racked it somewhat early, on the 7th (into a glass carboy), after it had had a couple days vigorous bubbling, and then about a week of no visible activity. At the time of racking, the gravity had fallen to 1.002, and the mead was dryer than I'd expected it'd be.

Now, I'd like to backsweeten this little batch of mead, and am considering how to do that. Either I will get some more honey, maybe from the same source, or adding some Loosa pear juice to make it a melomel. Either way, what I'm shooting for is to have a relatively sweet, clear mead. If I go the melomel route, I'll want the pear flavor to hold its own against the honey.

So my question: How do I back-sweeten? Do I rack back into the primary fermenter and add the sweeter liquid to taste? Should I leave it in the primary in case further fermentation occurs? And is there anything else I should bear in mind as I make this attempt? Thanks for any help, and I'm really enjoying this new hobby!

 

[Droc]

It depends how much sweeter you want it. Even my melomels were back sweetened with honey because the fruit I was using didn't have a whole lot if sugar in it. You also have to be careful with pear, they're pretty dense and can be a bit if a pain to clear. If you do decide to use it u would add some peptic enzyme along with it. But a pear melomel does sound good. I have a raspberry, blackberry and peach one aging right now. I may try a bottle if the peach tonight to see how's it's coming along. If you do make the gallon pear you might be a little upset with yourself later though. After trying it you'll wish you had made a bigger batch.


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[BernardSmith]

Hi Gooby Rastor and welcome to the forum. You say that the one gallon batch of mead was interesting. It is. You say you used 4-5 lbs of honey to one gallon of water. I would have thought that that amount of honey would have resulted in a far greater density than 1.084. As a rule of thumb I would assume that 1 lb of honey in 1 gallon will raise the gravity by about 1.035 (perhaps even a little more - 1.040) so 4 lbs will result in a gravity of about 1.140 which is a potential ABV of about 18.3 percent. Five pounds in one gallon will be close to rocket fuel (about 23% ABV) My guess, however, that 4-5 lbs of honey will mean that the honey flavors will be front and center and that you will need to use a great deal of fruit to have the fruit flavors stand their own with that amount of honey.. But others on this forum with far more experience in mead making may disagree with my assessment.

 

[Gooby_Rastor]

Ha, well, I'd misremembered how much honey I'd used at first, and checked my notes on everything but that part. Checking my notes again, the honey was just under 3 lbs. But I still take your point, that I might need to use a fair amount of juice to bring out the pear flavor.

And Droc thanks for the advice on the peptic enzyme. I'll drop by the brewing store in the next day or two and grab some.

Meanwhile, I'm figuring that I'm looking at a mead of ~11% ABV right now (which is fine), assuming my initial measurement wasn't off. So if I add, say a pint of 0% juice, that will take me to something like 9%, and a quart would drop it down to about 8% (also fine). Of course, adding some honey will add some more sweetness and drop the % down further.

Would fermentation be likely to start up again under those conditions, as the alcohol content is dropped, or am I likely to see no further activity, and have a sweetish, moderately alcoholic melomel? (Or is it anyone's guess? )

 

[Droc]

You'd want to add sorbate before you add anything with sugar as that may start fermentation again. The reduction in alcohol for back sweetening is one of the reasons I try to get my meads up to around 13-14%. They normally settle out around 11 or 12.


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[BernardSmith]

You'd want to add sorbate before you add anything with sugar as that may start fermentation again. The reduction in alcohol for back sweetening is one of the reasons I try to get my meads up to around 13-14%. They normally settle out around 11 or 12.


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I'm curious. Droc. Why would backsweetening result in a measurable drop in ABV? The change in volume when you add a few ounces of sugar /gallon should be fairly insignificant. No?

 

[Droc]

Yeah, but I never know if I'm going to want to add more fruit and that cuts down. And I have most of my other wines aging a little longer so I don't have anything ready to top up so I sometimes use a little water. That and worst case scenario I have a little higher abv. I actually started taking my lees and pouring them into a mason jar and then throwing them into the fridge to let clear. That way when I rack I can use the clear wine in top to top up. Just one of the tricks I picked up off this forum. So I will probably edit my recipes to bring the alcohol down a little.


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[SouthernChemist]

I would avoid adding straight juice to backsweeten. The level of sweetness is always subject to personal taste, and you might end up changing the volume significantly more than you intended. You could make your own fruit/honey reduction to sweeten it with, though.

An off-dry Pear Melomel can be tasty and rather easy drinking.

 

[Gooby_Rastor]

Thanks Chemist! That sounds like good advice; I had considered going in the direction of a reduction myself. Sadly, the pear juice I had wasn't going to be pear-y enough (it was only 42% juice, so the missus and I just drank it. Yum), so I'm looking at a different direction. Bananas are real cheap these days, so... Should be fun!

 

[Pumpkinman]

I recently back sweetened a cider that was too dry for my taste, and needed a bit more apple flavor. I started with fresh cider straight from the farm, but even so, after fermentation, it was a little too bland for me.
I back sweetened with a little honey for added body and brown sugar, then added 100% pure unsweetened apple juice concentrate until it reached a level that I wanted, the cider ended up so good that the 5 gallons that I bottled in beer bottles and let carbonate is gone except for 10 bottles that I hid...lol
I would try to get a can or two of pure pear concentrate, it will give the flavor a boost, and if you get the unsweetened concentrate, you can still back sweeten to your taste.
Just remember, if you plan on back sweetening you'll have to stabilize it first or it will start fermenting again.

 

[Bob1016]

I never understood the want to add brown sugar, it's just white sugar with molasses added back. Think of the flavor contributions: white sugar tastes bland and sweet (though better than most artificial sweeteners), the molasses adds the flavor, your also diluting the flavors already present with bland white sugar. Why not just add the apropriate amount of molasses?
I say this (going off an a semi-tangent) because juice does the same thing. It's a bunch of water and mostly flavorless sugar, what you want are the favinoids. So, concentrates, reductions, flavorings etc would seem better. Think of molasses and honey as pre concentrated syrups that we dilute to make meads (and other wines), anytime we add volume without flavor (water, sugars, etc) we are decreasing the intensity of the flavor (sometimes desireable, but not always).

 

[seth8530]

As others have stated make sure you add sorbate prior to adding sugars back to the mead. Also, I would use concentrated pear juice since pear juice has so little sugar in it. I am afraid you will end up killing your abv before you ever get the mead as sweet as you want it if you do not use concentrated juice...

Also, being one month in, it might be a bit too early to tell just how much sugar the mead will need to taste right.