Bottled the mixed berry melomel

[oldbloke]

It's ended up quite sweet, but not oversweet - about the same as our annual flavoured spirits, which have about 1 to 1.5 lb sugar per gallon.
Which would mean, given it got 2.5kg of honey which is about 80% sugar, 2.9 to 3.4 lb of sugar got converted to alcohol, minus losses at racking/sampling.
Which makes it somewhere between 15 and 17.5 %. Feels about that.
Good flavour, great colour.
Bottled it into my MiL's cast-off half bottles of whisky, got 12 to put away and 1 with a bit of sediment that we drank tonight.
Two or three of them will make excellent christmas gifts.

[seymour]

Hmmm...how to become oldbloke's best friend by Christmas. Think, think...

[oldbloke]

I think we may crack another open this weekend and put the hydrometer in it, and do some back-of-envelope stuff to find out how strong it really is. Not very, I suspect.

[seymour]

My understanding is that if your mead is still (no carbonation at all) then a cheap vinometer (wine alcohol tester) is handy:
http://www.hambletonbard.com/how-to-mak ... meter.html

[oldbloke]

Well I'll certainly run it through the vinometer - I bouhgt one a few weeks back, just for fun. But have you ever tried using one? Whatever you put in, it'll tell you something between 4 and 9 %.
First try at my carrot wine it said infinite (ie the wine fell straight out). They're not serious kit.

No, I know exactly how much sugar went in, so a hydrometer reading to tell me how much is left wil let me do arithmetic

With any luck, t'missus will get me a refractometer for christmas. Just for fun.