Schramm and the typical gravity of honey?

[BernardSmith]

I read very recently in Schramm's Compleat Meadmaker that as a rule of thumb you can assume that 1 lb of honey in 1 gallon of water will have a gravity of 040. That translates to 2 oz of honey (50 gms) will raise 1 gallon by 005 which is the rule of thumb I understood applied to dry sugar (no water or other liquid). Is my understanding of Schramm wrong? If he did indeed offer this rule of thumb, does it come close enough to reality for it to be useful? (I made a one gallon batch of clover honey must with 3.5 lbs of honey and got a reading of 1.130 which suggests an average SG of about .037 per lb which I think is close enough***) but does that mean that 1 lb of sugar is for all intents and purposes the same as 1 lb of sugar for purposes of back sweetening, for example, or to carbonate a wine?

*** for the record, that wine now at 3 gallons with 7.5 lbs of honey and so has an estimated starting gravity of about 1.090

 

[seth8530]

I think a better assumption to work with is that honey is 80 brix which corrisponds to 947 grams of sugar per liter of honey. Thus, you can take the volume of honey you have in liters multiply that by 947 and then you have a rough sugar equivalent. If you want to get a little fancier you can even try and compensate for the volume addition of the honey in the wine.

 

[BernardSmith]

Thanks Seth, Much appreciated. I will check the volume of honey and do the calculation. Does all honey have the same brix?

 

[Deezil]

All honey is different, like fruit. Different sugar levels, different moisture levels, different amounts of enzymes and goodies...

A rough ballpark for fermentation is 1 quart (3lbs) of honey per gallon for an SG between 1.100 - 1.120 ish... Give yourself a little extra for "top off" and you'll drop that SG down to the 1.090 range

 

[seth8530]

No, not all honey has the same brix but for the most part it is pretty close to 80 brix. Close enough to get you near your starting gravity anyways. You can always make slight adjustments later.



Of course, one could always use my wine calculator to figure out just how much honey to add! (;

Also nothing wrong with Deezil's rule of thumb either.

 

[BernardSmith]

I think I am going to need to add another 1.5 lbs of honey to the must to bring the equivalent starting SG to a total of about 1.090 .

 

[fatbloke]

Isn't there some sort of Federal/FDA reg that requires honey to be a minimum of 80% sugar ? I seem to recall reading that somewhere......

Obvously it depends on the % sugar in the honey as to the weight to volume ratio and what gravity it'll measure up as.....

I think I'm correct in saying that the gotmead mead calculator presumes 80% sugar......

 

[BernardSmith]

Isn't there some sort of Federal/FDA reg that requires honey to be a minimum of 80% sugar ? I seem to recall reading that somewhere......

I dunno about regulations and honey but my working assumption (before reading Schramm ) was that 1 lb of honey was equivalent to about 12 oz of sugar but on p63 of Schramm's Compleat Meadmaker (2003) he notes that in 5 gallons of must, 1 lb of honey should raise the gravity by .008. Simple arithmetic suggests that 1 lb of honey in 1 gallon would raise the gravity by 040 which is the same as the rule of thumb that says 1 lb of sugar would raise the gravity by 040. So, Schramm's rule of thumb implies that 1 lb of honey = 1 lb of sugar... or am I missing something?

***When I want to backsweeten say, gooseberry or elderflower wine I assume that 2 oz of sugar (50 gms) will raise the SG of 1 US gallon by .005 (therefore 1 lb will raise the SG by .040)

 

[fatbloke]

I dunno about regulations and honey but my working assumption (before reading Schramm ) was that 1 lb of honey was equivalent to about 12 oz of sugar but on p63 of Schramm's Compleat Meadmaker (2003) he notes that in 5 gallons of must, 1 lb of honey should raise the gravity by .008. Simple arithmetic suggests that 1 lb of honey in 1 gallon would raise the gravity by 040 which is the same as the rule of thumb that says 1 lb of sugar would raise the gravity by 040. So, Schramm's rule of thumb implies that 1 lb of honey = 1 lb of sugar... or am I missing something?

***When I want to backsweeten say, gooseberry or elderflower wine I assume that 2 oz of sugar (50 gms) will raise the SG of 1 US gallon by .005 (therefore 1 lb will raise the SG by .040)

Whereas, I was reading somewhere that the mead calculator has been developed using the 80% as sweet as table sugar, because of the regulatory background of that figure - can't say for certain though (different regs here, hell not surprising, different region/continent).

If the data shows a raise of 40 points for 1lb of sugar (but 40 points in what volume ? 5 litres ? 1 imp gallon ? 1 US gallon ?), then given that honey is 80% as sweet, then 1lb of honey should raise the gravity by 32 points per whatever volume unit you're working too a.k.a. 80%

This is often the issue that crops up. What's the volume measurement being used in any given data you might be referencing from ?

It's why I've learned just to back sweeten to taste, and use small increments, rather than try to use the numbers.

The only certainty you will have are hydrometer readings, so if I find something I've made is a bit dry, I'll do the stabilising thing, then add maybe a tablespoon of honey to the same of water so the back sweetening mix is 50/50 then carefully mix it in. Once I'm happy it's properly incorporated, I'll remeasure gravity, too see how it's doing. If I find that it's characteristic has changed too far to the sweet, I'll just add a bit of acid until it's to my taste. If it's then still missing something, I'll do tannin as well..........

I don't work to mega-accurate figures, it takes the fun out of home brewing IMO.......

 

[BernardSmith]

The metrics are for US gallons. So 1 lb in 1 US gallon would raise the gravity by 040. If honey is 20 percent water or 80% the quantity of sugar then that would suggest that 1 lb of honey in 1 US gallon raises the SG by 032. So, 2.5 lbs would raise the gravity by 080. But the calculator at Gotmead suggests that this amount of honey in that amount of volume would raise the gravity to .090. Not a huge difference but identical to the level if 1 lb of honey and 1 lb of sugar contained precisely the same amount of fermentable sugar.

 

[Deezil]

The only real way to be as accurate as you're trying to be, is to invest in a nice refractometer for honey.. You'll have to get a Brix reading for each individual batch of honey you come across and run numbers individually for each Brix level.

Honey isn't standardized like table sugar.. You can only ballpark so-much

Honey cant have over something like 17-18% moisture or it'll ferment in the hive... So the difference between that 17-18&, & the 80% sugar you guys claim (havent read that myself) is proteins, minerals, vitamins, etc..


Thats the easiest, most accurate way, to approach this, without getting into full-blown chemistry... IMO, anything more precise than a ballpark figure (3lbs / gallon), without a refractometer & a particular batch of honey, is just over-thinking it.

 

[seth8530]

Actually, I bet you could get the brix pretty accurately by taking a sample of a known volume and then taking the mass of that. So get the mass in grams then divide that by your volume in units of ml which is a cm cubed. This would give you the specific gravity of the honey. From that it would be a simple matter of converting the density into brix. If anyone is interested in trying this out I could try and flesh this out a bit.

 

[BernardSmith]

Hmmm... not sure that any of my tools are sufficiently accurate enough to work with something as viscous as honey. I think I will stick with my rule of thumb that 3 lbs in 1 gallon provides me with a gravity of about 1.090

 

[Bob1016]

3lbs with enough water to bring the volume to 1gal is ~1.108. That's my metric, and I always have a diluted honey water mix (~50*Bx) and some clean water around when maing the must to do adjustments with.

 

[BernardSmith]

3lbs with enough water to bring the volume to 1gal is ~1.108. That's my metric, and I always have a diluted honey water mix (~50*Bx) and some clean water around when maing the must to do adjustments with.

So by calculation your rule of thumb is that 1 lb of honey raises the SG in 1 gallon by 0.036.

 

[Bob1016]

Let's say I want a 6gal batch at 1.097 (23*Bx):
(36*x)/6=97, rearrange for x
(97*6)/36=x, solve
16.167=x
So 16.167lbs of honey and water to bring the volume up to 6gal will result in a SG of 1.097 (there abouts, honey varies in its sugar composition with vintage, varietal, location, and storage time).