Maltodextrin in Mead

[Wraithraider]

Howdy.

I have a quick question about improving mouthfeel in general. If you end with an end result that seems a bit thin or week, where back sweetening isn't enough, and flavoring isn't an option, will Maltodextrin do the trick? Seems to have a lot of promise based on the beer brewing posts, but I'm not finding much on it's use in mead. Appreciate the help. Cheers!

 

[biochemedic]

I have never tried it, but have also thought about the possibility, both for mead and for cider. I have used maltodextran in beer, one time, when I had a holiday beer that I used both honey and a little cider in. The OG went all the way down to 1.002, and I used maltodextran to bring it back up to ~ 1.010 or so, and did increase the body a bit. I will mention that, at least to my taste buds, it did not add all that much sweetness. Even when I taste it straight up, it isn't all that terribly sweet, but apparently the degree of sweetness perceived from maltodextran can vary from person to person...

I've thought about it more for cider than mead, as I use lactose to backsweeten my cider so I don't have to stabilize -- this allows me to still bottle condition. I've wondered if a combination of lactose and maltodextran would add a little something, specifically a little bit of the head retention that I see on some commercial ciders (and perhaps slightly bolster the sweetness I get from the lactose).

Not sure specifically why you'd want to increase body on mead...it tends to be more of a wine like beverage in terms of body/mouthfeel, but feel free to give it a try! Let us know how it turns out...

Edit: I was thinking...perhaps what you're describing as "weak" may be something that could be 'fixed' by adding a little acid blend and/or tannin too. Some meads just 'pop' more with these additions...melomels especially

 

[Wraithraider]

A little bit of backstory. The second mead I made was meant to be sweet mead where is used around 17 pounds of orange blossom honey. I was more or less following the recipe out of Schramm's book. However, I had a rookie mistake and misread my hygrometer so my OG reading was off by quite a bit. I blamed the foam after aerating but there may have been some drinking involved that day. So when I racked to my secondary the math looked that I had achieved a 17.8 ABV. It didn't seem to be clearing up though so I went to rack it again. I tasted it and while sweet it didn't have a lot of alcohol in it. Tasted more at a cider level IMO. I looked at my notes and my hygrometer and realized that my hygrometer couldn't even have given me my OG. But it was more like lemonade in mouth feel and had a good bit of acidity already. I want to butch it up a bit. I currently have three gallons of it on oak to see how that helps it overall. My thought process then went towards making sure it had some legs in the glass.

I doubt I'll need to back sweeten but seems like Maltodextrin might be the way to go. I'll certainly keep this up to date, but I'm gonna give it another month first.

Thanks for the reply.