Haha I imagine that the raspberry and brown sugar wouldn't taste great!
Joe I haven't ran things through the calculator. I will do so tomorrow. Right now it's four am and I have had far too much rum to do maths!
On a side note... If vikings can made mead with no concept of sanitation or standard gravity or anaerobic respiration, I figure I can make some sort of beverage in my lovely clean kitchen!
A lot of it isn't about getting too hung up on the numbers, it's about learning stuff as you go.
Spotting "non-US" isn't so hard. Sussing the AUS/NZ from us is different, a little harder, but doable ;D
So...... your excitement of getting something started is fine. The "ad hoc" method using tesco's water, etc is also fine. The only thing you need to watch for, is that in the early stages of anything, especially with fruit in it, is that even slight movement can trigger foaming, where it bubbles up and goes everywhere.
Which is why it's often suggested, to make the liquid part up to the target amount, then remove a litre or so and put it in a pop bottle in the fridge. So if you're using the water bottle/can, there's some room for expansion. Not always enough to prevent it foaming completely but enough so that if you prepare a bit, you can stop or reduce it's chances from coming out the top or through an airlock (or even through the holes in a balloon), by just grabbing whatever you have for stirring (plastic brewing spoons and stirrers are handy as you can spray or dip them in sanitiser first, then start whatever you're doing, then if it foams grab it and stir faster or slower whichever seems to be slowing the rise of the foam, until it stops rising).
If your batch is actually like a Joes Ancient Orange, but without the spices, it's actually good to add them even if you don't generally use them as they all help toward the balance of the end result.
You should be OK for using D47 most of the time in NI, as you can more likely find somewhere to put a fermenting batch, where it will stay below 70F/21C. Many in the US, parts of Canada and certainly South Africa and Aus/NZ have to think about that as their summers can get damned hot can't they.
As far as worrying with the maths, have a look at
Winesathome, as Bob who runs it, has put some nice easily followed tutorials and other good info in the new winemaker section (all in his finest "geordie", with the generally used numbers and terminology here
). Obviously meads are a bit different to wines, but not by that much, so when it comes to working out stuff like possible/probably ABV, there's a nice table that explains that a certain drop in gravity points equates to a certain level ABV - like this......
say 3lb of honey made up to a gallon, gives you a starting gravity of 1.090, then you do all the usual stuff with the yeast, nutrients and so on, and when it's stopped bubbling completely, you've done the checks to confirm it's finished it's fermenting and your hydrometer tells you it's finished at 0.990 ?
Ok, so that's a drop of 100 points yes ?, then just look that up on the table (I've got a copy of it downloaded to my desktop) and you find that it's 13.58% ABV. Easy eh ! no number crunching etc.....
Of course, when it's finished the ferment, it doesn't mean it's finished does it. You still have to get it clear, then taste it and if it's a bit dry, check out a few things before you proceed.
Extending the example above.....so your batch is 13.5%, yet the published tolerance for D47 is 14%, so there's a little space for further fermenting if you added more fermentable sweetness i.e. honey.
Now even when it's cleared, unless you ran it through a filter that's fine enough to remove all the yeast cells, there will still be some in the batch, so as it costs £'s for a filter that fine, it's cheaper and easier to "stabilise" it, using sulphites (usually in the form of 1 crushed campden tablet per gallon) and sorbate (potassium sorbate, also sometimes sold as "wine stabiliser") with the dose as per the pack - usually.
After that, you can add a small amount of honey to sweeten it back up to how you like it.
Possibly, it still won't be perfect, hell it might even still taste bloody horrible. Meads are a bit weird, because they mellow and change with age, which is why you'll see so much mention of ageing in threads hereabouts.
Even the well known recipes like JAOM, which Joe himself says is drinkable once it's cleared and the fruit has dropped, I find less so and age it for a minimum of 6 months and even that relatively short time, it improves dramatically.
The NewBee guide covers most angles for the new mead maker, the rest is making some, experiments, learning curve, asking questions and patience.
The patience is the hardest part to learn........
Good luck with your efforts.....
p.s. rum
rhymes with yum.......