Recent content by Pharquart

I just racked my cherry melomel off the dried (and now rehydrated) cherries. I took a gravity reading afterward, something I apparently hadn't done on the finished product when I've made it before. Here are the stats: 1.022 gravity after back sweetening, but before addition of dried cherries...

"finesse my way to taste" is exactly right. Add a little honey, mix well, taste. Repeat until it's where you want. Trust your taste buds more than the hydrometer reading. I don't add acid to my cherry melomels, as I get enough tart from the dried cherries. All acid does is add tart bite. I...

Hesster: While there is sugar in the dried cherries, and it might add to the gravity of the final brew, it might not make it taste much sweeter. I used dried tart Montmorency cherries from Costco. And while my brewing notes don't have a record of how much the gravity changed by soaking on the...

Option 2 is pretty reliable as well, but can be unpredictable as to the final ABV. But once you've exceeded the yeast's tolerance, fermentation should stop. Of course, adding your sweetener dilutes the alcohol content slightly, so that may permit some fermentation to happen again until...

If you're like me and want sweetened mead, there are several ways to do it, but most have drawbacks or risks. I've been brewing meads and ciders for a couple years now and still haven't found a foolproof way to completely deactivate the yeast for safe backsweetening. 1. You can cold crash...

I'm in!

Thanks for the help so far. If only it were as simple as plain "sweet." But I like to use the back sweetening process to also characterize. For example, I'll start with basic apple juice fermented to dry. Then I'll add a can of frozen apple juice concentrate to give it a strong apple flavor...

I'm happy to avoid chemicals. I want an ABV level below the yeast tolerance, yet a sweet final product, and I would also like to avoid non-fermentable sugars since they generally taste bad to me. dmtaylor: how would you do this without chemicals? It's clear I need to stabilize the product and...

I'm resurrecting an older thread rather than starting a new one because my recent experience has been very similar. I have let cider and mead ferment to dry, stable over the course of a week or more with no airlock activity at all, at or below 1.000SG. (Total fermentation time between 3-8...

One of the few ideas I've read elsewhere suggested pectin as well. It can be clear in normal solution but heat denatures the proteins causing it to cloud up. Makes sense in the cherry apple cider, but not the other one. And now, looking back, I realize I used the wrong brew name. I used...

I have been making meads and ciders for about 3 years now, and am getting much better with practice. I generally like sweeter (1.010 to 1.020ish) stuff. The original technique was to start with enough honey to reach the yeast's alcohol tolerance so I could back sweeten to the desired level...