Beer Forum

I recently made a pyment, loosely following the recipe in The Compleat Meadmeaker for Dan McConnell's Riesling Pyment. I'm having problems figuring out how to calculate the starting gravity and was hoping someone would be able to give me some guidance...

Here is the recipe:
4 g grape juice from a winexpert kit (Trio Blanca- Pinot Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc, and Chenin Blanc). I measured the gravity of the juice at 1.126 (which is much higher than they indicate in the kit)
1.5 g water
7 lbs citrus honey

Any thoughts on how to calculate gravity for the batch?

Also, for what it's worth, I pitched 3 packs of Lalvin K1-V1116 (Montpellier), and it fermented down to 0.999 in just over 3 weeks. Temp was 72F. I was pleasantly surprised at the high attenuation, as I really don't like sweet meads.

Thanks for any input!

The way I figure it, honey has a potential of 35 pppg. 7 pounds is about a half gallon. Add 1.5 gallons of water and you should end up (according to Promash) with 2 gallons of honey water at 1.122.

Plugging these figures into the dilution calculator, this should give you 6 gallons at 1.125.


Honey will vary in gravity depending on how much water is in it but this is the default figure in Promash. You might ask around at www.gotmead.com to get another, probably more informed, opinion.

Wayne

Unless you have a sample of the original honey, figuring your SG is gonna be hit or miss.

I've had some honeys be as low as 1.025 and high as 1.040.