Any Experience with Vintner's Harvest SN9, CL23 or CL17?

[Briatta]

So the boyfriend wants me to do a plain (traditional) mead using some 'berry' honey that he bought. We have 12 lbs of honey for 5 gallons. He said the label at the store (god forbid they put it on the honey jar) said it was either a blackberry, marionberry, raspberry honey or a blackberry, marionberry, loganberry honey. He can't remember which. He wants it to be semi-sweet and around 11%-12%. Back sweetening is no big deal. Figure we can pick up some blackberry honey for that if needed. We aren't adding anything else to the honey flavor-wise. It's just going to be honey, water, yeast and nutrients. All my research on here came up with a fairly overwhelming majority of "votes" for Lalvin D-47, however the last time I was at my LHBS I noticed they also have a brand of yeast called Vintner's Harvest. After researching them, I narrowed it down to SN9, CL23 and CY17 as possibilities. Someone mentioned that CL23 was the equivalent of EC-1118. If that's true I probably won't use it. I also read that CY17 was equal to D47. If that's true is there a reason to use one brand over the other if they are supposed to be equivalent? Has anyone had any experience with these that could share their thoughts?

 

[alane1]

I've never used Sn9 for mead but a meadmaker at my lhbs swears by it. I have used it for wine, with very good results. It clears up very nice in just weeks after fermentation. I will be using it on my next mead as I've just made one with D-47, just to do a side by side.