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Strengthening mead with alcohol?

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cayrs

cayrs

NewBee
Registered Member
Mar 21, 2016
26
0
0
France
Hi everyone!

Here's the story: I am making a capsicumel/metheglin with chilies, cardamom, cinnamon, clove.

I am planning on waiting until it finishes fermenting (dry ideally, around 14%), and then strengthen the mead my mixing with some 40% alcohol (the neutral kind to use when macerating fruits, not vodka).
If necessary (most certainly!) backsweeten with honey to taste. The added alcohol will prevent further fermentation of this honey.

The goal is to obtain some sort of liquor around 27% (if I mix equal parts of mead and 40% alcohol) designed to be drunk in shots, with a nice spicy burn and interesting flavors. (Anyone tried Gold Strike liquor? I want the same experience with different flavors).

I already have 5L (a little over 1gal) fermenting, with an unreasonable amount of spices by design

Has anyone experience in this? I haven't found much on this topic. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT DISTILLATION AND DON'T PLAN ON DOING IT, THANKS.
 
That's interesting. I planned to do it in the past, but never did. I think the theory sounds good, but I'm hoping someone here has actually tried it and can add some more helpful info.
 
What specifically do you want to know? I've fortified many different types of mead. Mostly with a clean brandy, some with rum, vodka and everclear. It takes a while to integrate. You can cause it to not even be noticeable or you can add enough to definitely know it's been fortified. I would do some small test before jumping in head first.
 
Well you can probably do it. if you want my opinion, there is alcohol at 95% sold in certain stores without added chemicals. you can mix your mead with that to lose less flavour maybe, since you would have to add much less amount of liquid. I plan to do this myself but hadnt thought on that super-spiced thing. maybe i'll try it out
 
I've fortified in the past and the most important thing is don't use everclear - the burn never goes away, find some nice clean vodka or something else with a taste you like.
 
I've experimented with bourbon and mead, trying to get some oak goodness. I was mixing glass by glass trying to find a ratio I liked, but maybe the missing ingredient was time, like Squatchy said that it take time to integrate. Next batch I bottle, I'll set a gallon aside for an experiment.
 
I have primarily fortified port style (pyment) meads. I use E&J Brandy (extra smooth). It would be hard to say what amount to use as that depends on your mead profile and personal desires. Just remember you can always add more but can't retrieve any once it's been added.
 
Yes, I have done this and I'm waiting on a bit of time to smooth everything out. I mixed our Erlking Mead (between 15-16%, made with apple juice, cranberry juice, yaupon holly honey, and spices) with..ahem...some hooch, and ended up with a mixture that is roughly 35%. I added a few rum soaked oak cubes for about a week and now we are just letting it get a bit of the edge off. The mead was about 18 months old when we mixed everything. It's been resting for about 3 months now. We are hoping it will be ready to drink sometime around next March.

eta: We opened a bottle of the mead and did several taste tests with hooch, whiskey, and vodka and decided we liked the hooch best.
 
RiverNomad said:
Yes, I have done this and I'm waiting on a bit of time to smooth everything out. I mixed our Erlking Mead (between 15-16%, made with apple juice, cranberry juice, yaupon holly honey, and spices) with..ahem...some hooch, and ended up with a mixture that is roughly 35%. I added a few rum soaked oak cubes for about a week and now we are just letting it get a bit of the edge off. The mead was about 18 months old when we mixed everything. It's been resting for about 3 months now. We are hoping it will be ready to drink sometime around next March.

eta: We opened a bottle of the mead and did several taste tests with hooch, whiskey, and vodka and decided we liked the hooch best.
Click to expand...

Adding more wood tannin's will most definitely help to round out the alcohol edge.
 
Sounds great cayrs, neutral spirit would be nice, but I wouldn't shy away from trying dark rum or rye either ;-) but it might overpower the mead at that ratio.

This is very interesting. I have been contemplating back sweetening with a syrup of honey cut with 40% spirit so that the ABV of the syrup is at or just slightly higher than that of the finished dry mead being sweetened.

This will ensure no loss in ABV and the resulting sweet mead may (should?) be stabilised against the resident yeast firing up a secondary ferment. I will probably still stabilise though to make sure.

It turns out this is not a unique idea, now I am even more keen to try.
 
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