[Coaster]

Originally Posted by Timco

How much honey is used in a batch?

Between 2 and 4 pounds per gal of water. The general rule of thumb I've seen is 3 (this is honey dissolved in water to make 1 gal, not 1 gal + 3# of honey).

For beginners: an introduction to meadmaking

"One pound of honey, dissolved in water to make one gallon of must, will yield about 1.036 depending on moisture content. So let's say that you want a five-gallon, 11%, dry mead. From the chart above, you'll need a starting gravity of about 1.078. A little math: 78 "gravity points" (truncate the one-point part), times five gallons of must, means you'll need about 390 points of "total sugars" starting out. If honey gives 36 points per pound per gallon, take 390 divided by 36, and you'll need 10.75 lbs honey (rounding for convenience is a meadmaker's friend!) plus water to make five gallons. See how that works?

Let's try a three-gallon, 14% alcohol, semi-sweet mead. We'll choose a yeast that is alcohol tolerant to 14%, and start with enough sugars to leave (theoretically) about two percent's worth of unfermented sweetness. Several strains would be good for this; let's say we'll use Lalvin's D-47 Cotes-dú-Rhone for its aromatic and fruity notes. Again consulting the potential alcohol chart, finding 16% (minus the 14% the yeast should consume leaves 2% for us to taste, a semi-sweet level) means we'll need to start at 1.103 or so. Mazers, start your calculators! 104 (starting gravity minus the "1." part) times three gallons = 312 total gravity points. 312 divided by 36 p.p.g. for honey means we'll need eight and two-thirds pounds plus enough water to make three gallons. Slick!

This procedure will hold for any mead you'll want to make. Note that the yeast do not read the same books we do, and do not always perform the way we want. However, if they've been treated well we can usually count on them to get us near their published tolerance level. High-alcohol or high-gravity musts, or musts with a lot of acids, can inhibit them from reaching that level and they'll give up prematurely. Preparing a nutritious starter to propagate the yeast and providing adequate nutrients will help them do their best."