New to mead making

Hello and welcome to the forums!

Are these five gallon batches? You can make a rough guesstimate of the starting gravity by working out how many gravity points the honey contributed to the must.

Some time ago I worked out a figure of 35 gravity points per pound honey, when diluted to one gallon of must. What I had done was take the average specific gravity of honey at 18% water, according to the National Honey Board figures (it's 1.4171) and from there worked out the calculations.

After posting this to the Mead Lovers Digest, Ken Schramm replied and said it was more like 38 gravity points per pound honey. I never followed up with this, which I should have. My figure of 35 points per pound is a pure mathematical abstraction, whereas I'm assuming Ken had worked his figure of 38 points per pound from his observations in the field. In other words, my figure may have been more mathematically correct, but Ken's figure was more accurate.

Anyway, give it a try and let us know what you think your starting gravity was.

Dan McFeeley said:

...Some time ago I worked out a figure of 35 gravity points per pound honey, when diluted to one gallon of must. What I had done was take the average specific gravity of honey at 18% water, according to the National Honey Board figures (it's 1.4171) and from there worked out the calculations.

Click to expand...

Dan,
My calculations agree with yours [I actually got 35.34 pppg]. I guess I'd also like to see the math behind that 38 point value.

A while back there was a thread regarding the sugar content of various honeys, which it seems can vary. Could there be enough of a difference from type to type (or even from flow to flow) to account for something like this?

-David

I would believe that's the case David. In my experiance (little there is), different honey's has given different O.G.'s.

Anthony

Damnchi,

Welcome! You're questions are good ones, but very subjective. IMHO, the spice amounts certainly seem reasonable. However, we all have different tastes, whether we prefer sweet or dry, strong or subtle on the fruit or spice, etc. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what I like, but I tend have a very specific goal in mind when designing a must. I encourage you to sample as many meads as possible (try commercial meads, join a local homebrewing club, attend homebrew competitions, experiment in your own mazing, etc) to help you determine your personal tastes.

To answer your questions:
1) That's a personal judgement call. I tend to start sweet and dry meads with about 3 lbs honey /gallon. Spices are very subjective.
2) Its hard to take things out. See below.
3) To taste. I encourage you to get a pipette you can sterilize and take small samples with on a weekly basis. This way, you can rack off the spices when they are at your desired level.
4) You can always add honey. I prefer to start my musts with a target gravity in mind so that the yeast can ferment to completion and leave the desired amount of residual sweetness. The brews will almost certainly restart fermentation upon addition of the honey (unless you add sorbate and sulphites or have already bulk aged for about a year). Both of those yeasts should be able to metabolize at least a couple more pounds of honey (assuming it was a 5 gallon batch). However, maybe its safer to add a lesser amount of honey at first (as it appears you did not use any yeast nutrient).

HighTest said:

Dan McFeeley said:

...Some time ago I worked out a figure of 35 gravity points per pound honey, when diluted to one gallon of must. What I had done was take the average specific gravity of honey at 18% water, according to the National Honey Board figures (it's 1.4171) and from there worked out the calculations.

Click to expand...

Dan,
My calculations agree with yours [I actually got 35.34 pppg]. I guess I'd also like to see the math behind that 38 point value.

Click to expand...

I don't think there was any math, although I never asked Ken myself. It's only an assumption on my part. I really need to get with him and ask, although it's been some time since we'd discussed the subject on the mead lovers digest.

My thought is still that Ken's figure is more accurate than mine, primarily because it's empirical (I'm assuming), based on multiple calculations taken from measuring the honeys/honey musts he has worked with, while mine is an abstract calculation based on the average gravity of 1.4171 calculated by the National Honey Board. Actually there were two average gravities, one at 15% water and the other at 18% water. I chose to work with the 18% figure.

35.34 ppg? I should try and find my old calculations -- I rounded off my figure, be interesting to see how close mine is to yours.

Honey doesn't have set values for the ingredients that make up its composition. Instead, you're going to find a range of figures. Water content should be fairly consistent because of the fermentation problems that can happen when water gets over 18%, but even there you're going to get some variances.

That's why I'm saying empirical observation can sometimes have more value and accuracy than an abstract calculation, like mine. With a natural product like honey, where you can get a fair amount of variances, working out figures based directly on what you see can often work better. I've known other people who use different figures for points per gallon, and they all say it gives them accurate results.

I like to use 35 points per gallon as a ballpark figure, i.e., something to give a general idea of where I'm at.
I'm personally comfortable with it, assuming that beekeepers and honey producers will try and keep the honey close to that 18% water value to keep spontaneous fermentation from occuring. I mix up the must based on initial calculations of the gravity, then take a hydrometer reading and calculate what points per gallon really is and make adjustments if needed. Sometimes I've found that the honey I was using was contributing 30 points per gallon. Sometimes it comes close to my abstract 35 points per gallon. All depends on the honey.

Hope this is a bit more clarifying!

Damchi said:

Sorry for the delay in response, Holiday and all and me trying to figure out this formula, which I still have not been able to do.

There were both 5 gallon batches.

at 35 gravity points per pound of honey (I'm going to assume that is 35 * 12) it looks like a total of 420 gravity points. But I used 4 gallons of water, so I'm unsure of how that affects it. (divide 420 by 4?) I dunno there is something I'm missing to throw this off. I figure the OG was around 1.1 but could be wrong. Perhaps you could explain what I'm doing wrong?

Click to expand...

Hello Cory --

I'd worked out that, in a gallon of honey must, the honey will be contributing 35 gravity points for every pound. This an important distinction to make, because honey not only contributes weight but also volume.

In other words, in a one gallon must with a gravity of 1.035, there is one pound of honey in it. In another one gallon batch of honey with a gravity of 1.070, there are two pounds of honey in it.

So, if you have a five gallon batch, you'll be working out how much gravity the honey is contributing to five gallons.

Don't tie yourself too closely to these figures -- honey is a natural product which will vary somewhat. See my post just above this one.

Dan McFeeley said:

...while mine is an abstract calculation based on the average gravity of 1.4171 calculated by the National Honey Board. Actually there were two average gravities, one at 15% water and the other at 18% water. I chose to work with the 18% figure.

Click to expand...

As was my calculation.

With 18% moisture honey, the result is 35.33 [1000*(1.4171-1) / 11.8058
With 15% moisture honey, the result is 36.39 [1000*(1.4351-1) / 11.9549

There's a big difference between those numbers and 38...

You got me!

That's what I get for trying to draw an illustration from an MLD conversation in the past, something which I'd freely admitted to not following up on in order to make sure I'd had the full scoop. :-[ :

Dan McFeeley said:

You got me!
That's what I get for trying to draw an illustration from an MLD conversation in the past, something which I'd freely admitted to not following up on in order to make sure I'd had the full scoop. :-[ :

Click to expand...

That was not my intention... I love mathematics, science, homebrewing, et. al. I take very little at face value without understanding how (or why) a certain thing is (or appears to be) the way it is.

I've found there are very few universal truths that do not have some form of limit, boundary, or assumtion that dictates the validity of the "thumb rule:, axiom, etc. As such I always like to ask to see the basis for many of our hombrewing "truths". Doing that has helped me learn, and reveal some "interesting" findings...