What Yeast for Semi-Sweet Mead?

[bklynbrewer]

NB has yeast for dry meads and yeast for sweet meads, what about semi-sweet?

[yabodie]

You determine how sweet your mead will be by how much honey you add to it. Use dry wine yeast for your mead.

[Bellmer]

If you want any sweetness at all, I would suggest the sweet mead yeast. Wine yeasts (especially champagne) and dry mead yeast make it really dry. The sweet mead I just made with my homebrew club ended at .998 with just a hint of sweetness. The one they made together before I joined with the dry mead yeast was puckeringly dry, but I don't know what their FG was.

[yabodie]

Sorry but I disagree. The mead maker determines how sweet the mead is by adding more honey to the must that will exceed the ABV tolerance of the yeast. Research wine yeasts and you will see there is a ABV tolerance range from 12% up to 18%.

If you use an 18% wine yeast make your must have an OG of 1.120 for a semi-sweet mead, 1.130 for a more sweet and 1.140 for a dessert sweet mead.

Just remember once you add the honey you can't take it out. So if your mead ends up too dry at the end, add a bit more to sweeten it up.

Design your must for what kind of mead you want as a final product.

[BrewingLiberally]

what if you just made the mead to the alcohol content you wanted, killed the yeast with sorbate, then sweetened it up to the perfect, semi-sweet flavor you wanted? take control (you just can't bottle carbonate if you kill the yeast)