It has been some time since I posted.  Haven't been doing too much other than trying to organize my life up and going up north to Traverse City with family.  I didn't manage to search for any gluten free tidbits in the area since my parents and their friends (who really kinda have the place) decided to cook the entire time.  There were quite a few wineries though.

Once I got back, I decided to finally start on my mead.  I had cleared out my top loading fridge so that the sake could sit in there for a while, so I knew I had room to put in the plastic carboy of mead.

I looked at my materials and calculations and unfortunately got confused.  I had planned on a 5 gallon batch, but the container was a 6 gallon batch.  At 5 gallons, 15 pounds of honey was expected to give me a 15% ABV, at 6 gallons, 15 pounds was only going to give under 13%.  Which I somehow thought was going to be too low for a mead.  Thus, I decided to add an additional 3 pounds of honey.  However, I only had one more 5 pound container.   I thought to myself,  "Well, 20 pounds of honey and 6 gallons of water makes 3.33 pounds per gallon.  Still good."  So I put in 20 pounds into the carboy.

The astute person will have already realized what I've missed.  Indeed, I found out after I poured 20 pounds of honey into the carboy and started filling jugs and adding water, did I realize that I was using half gallon jugs per 5 pounds of honey, and that I didn't account for the volume honey would take up.  Somehow, I thought that 20 pounds of honey would dissolve in water, as if it were a dry sugar product.  Yet I knew from baking, that when using honey as a sweetner, a person had to use less liquid because of the fluidity of the honey.

This means that I had 2 gallons of honey, and only room for 4 gallons of water.  Indeed, when I took the measurement, I found that I had a gravity of about 1.130.  Not necessarily a bad thing, however, the yeast I was using was Lalvin's D-47.  A yeast that would tolerate up to 14% abv, and is used for dry white wines (whose style I was aiming for.).

At this point, I have been letting the mead ferment, using some nutrient additions to feed the yeast, however I have to consider 3 options after the fermentation has completed.  Assuming that the yeast will cease it's activity exactly at 14% abv (which is unlikely, since it varies) which happens to be a gravity of 1.020

1)  Leave the mead as a sweet mead.  However, the residual sugar would be around 10% per a graph I found here.  If I were to do this, then I'll have to find the appropriate acid blend to bring the acidity up to balance the sweetness.  Sweet reislings (and even semi-dry but probably not dry since it is dry) have their sweetness balanced out by the natural tannins and acids in the grape.

2)  Use a different yeast to continue fermentation until the mead is dry, however this further means that the aging time will be pushed to 2 years, since this would give a higher alcohol content of 18.5, and this would likely strip away much of the varietal characteristics of the honey.

3)  Dilute the mead with water and continue fermentation.  I could potentially split the batch into two separate containers and add just a single gallon of water to each, and let fermentation restart and finish to give me the 14% (or less if I decide to add more water)

I'm not exactly sure why I keep aiming for the 14% other than the yeast limit is 14 percent, and that my calculator showed that 3 pounds of honey and one full gallon of water (or 15 pounds honey, 5 gallons water) would ferment dry at 14% abv.  I somehow forget that it's certainly possible to aim for a 10% abv, and many times, is what I would prefer.  Many dry reislings for example, hover around the 10-12% range (with 3% residual sugar), and sweet reislings down at 8% (with 8% residual sugar).

Perhaps next time I'll try a batch at 1 pound of honey topped off with water to equal a gallon, which (when fermented completely dry) will give me an estimated abv of 6% equal to a beer.
Or 2 pounds of honey topped off with water to equal a gallon to make a 12.5% mead.

One pound of honey takes up 0.1 gallons of space, so the 1 pound of honey is .9gallons of water, the 2 pound of honey is .8 gallons of water.  Thus the ever increasing %.  Which leads me to 3 pounds of honey and .7 gallons of water would actually give a dry mead of 20.94.  Which likely halts earlier than that at around 16-18% and leaves a bit of residual sugar.

And although I've waited a week to post this, today 8/6 is national mead day!