Mead starting gravity

[ASYLUM_SPIRIT]

Hi

I'm brewing a mead for a mate. I'm a fairly experienced home brewer (beer)

Followed a recipe on YouTube.
5 litre batch
1.5kg honey
Mead yeast
Tanic tea- orange peel, raisins, black tea.

Getting a SG is hard, no matter how hard I shake and mix the must it doesn't seem to fully disovle, as my SG was intially 1034.

Shook it again reading was 1064. I know this is still quite low for a mead. I followed the YouTube recipe and his SG was 1105.

How do others get their SG for mead?

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks

 

[MHB]

Honey is typically 80% solids and 20% water, so 1.5kg of honey gives 1.2kg of solids
From Mass Extract = Volume * SG * oP (set it up in excel and use goal seek) (Plato is percent WW so 22oP would be 0.22 in the equation)
I get an OG of 1.088

If the guy on YouTube got 1.105, well I didn't know Jesus was a home brewer, but that gravity would require a 5 loaves and 2 fishes approach to brewing
Mark

 

[ASYLUM_SPIRIT]

Ok thanks mate mead is quite new to me, not used to not getting a accurate SG reading like beer.

 

[GalBrew]

I plugged your recipe into the GotMead recipe calculator and your OG should be around 1.090. Getting a stable gravity reading isn’t hard with mead but you will need to do more than shake it up to mix. You will need to warm the honey first to dissolve it into your water and don’t add it all at once. For a 5 litre batch a sanitised whisk or large spoon should be sufficient to mix your must properly.

 

[SKBugs]

Have you thrown in some nutrients at all?
I know that mead seems like a simple process, but it does take a bit of work.
If you have just thrown it all in and are hoping for the best, then you are looking at a year at least for a worthwhile wine.
There are plenty of advances to the mead world to speed up fermentation time if you wanna hear about them.
The reality is that beer ain't mead, and just chucking it all in at once and hoping for the best is a bit redundant.

Mead is great fun to brew, and done right, will give you drinkable stuff in a couple of months, as opposed to years.