r/mead • u/WildYarnDreams Advanced • 1d ago

Help! Experiences with heather honey? I got bitterness

I got gifted 4 kilos of heather honey (the proper jelly-like stuff with spicy notes that costs a fortune) and late 2022 pitched a simple mead with it. 10 liter, a sweet mead yeast that I have 50+ batches worth of positive experiences with. When I got back to it early 2024 (yes I'm slow), it had finished dry and had a bit of a bitter back note. I backsweetened with more heather honey and it is now at 1028. And it's BITTER. To me, very in the face bitter before I even taste much of the sweetness.

Does anybody have experience with heather honey who has ideas about correcting it? It stood on the sludge for a fair while, but all my meads get that treatment and I've never had this issue. The one thing I can think is that it's one of the batches I made with fermaid O - I usually use only a yeast activator and let things fend for themselves. But that doesn't explain how the bitterness got stronger with backsweetening.

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u/Klipschfan1 1d ago

I don't have much to offer, but have you tasted the honey straight?

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u/WildYarnDreams Advanced 1d ago

Yes, and it's delicious! Strong and kinda spicy. Never noticed bitterness. The mead smells really good too...

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u/ProfessorSputin 1d ago

Seems like it might just be a bit of a bitter honey? If you want to counteract that but keep the nice honey flavor you could backsweeten with another honey or other sugar. Brown sugar seems like it could be pretty good judging from your description of the flavor. As for the gravity, some flavors or honeys require a higher final gravity to have the same perceived sweetness as other flavors or honeys with a lower final gravity.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous though!! I’ve never even heard of heather honey being used before, and it seems super interesting!