Too Much Potassium Sorbate

So in a stupid move I put way too much potassium sorbate into a 4 gallon batch. 4 teaspoons instead of 1. Is there anything that can be done with it besides blending it with 20 gallons of un-sorbated mead?

Thanks,
GTG

Well, how does it taste? In my opinion, the only "side effect" of too much sorbate is taste. Sorbate does have a slight taste. If it's unpleasant, blending may be the only option. If it still tastes great, then don't worry about it.

Yooper_Brew said:

Well, how does it taste? In my opinion, the only "side effect" of too much sorbate is taste. Sorbate does have a slight taste. If it's unpleasant, blending may be the only option. If it still tastes great, then don't worry about it.

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It tastes very dry and somewhat salty but the salty part could be my imagination since I'm fixed on the potassium thing. Dr4yness could be because its a blackberry/raspberry melomel that probably needs backswetening for my taste.

GTG

GTG said:

So in a stupid move I put way too much potassium sorbate into a 4 gallon batch. 4 teaspoons instead of 1. Is there anything that can be done with it besides blending it with 20 gallons of un-sorbated mead?

Thanks,
GTG

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I am on here because I did the exact same thing.....I was Googling the LD50 to see if it will kill us or if we can just drink it. I read "1 spoon per gallon" and put in 1 per litre. I didn't realise at all until I was making the clearing solution up and it clotted like solid clay - I thought, I'm not tipping this slop in my wine, something's wrong...then I re-read the pot and realised what I'd done.

So shall we just drink it then? did you drink yours?......are you still alive....lol

I'm still alive, just haven't figured out what to do with it yet. Maybe some fining agents, bentonite, etc may help pull it out? I'm thinking a charcoal filter may add some benefit as well?

GTG

Your best bet for removing it is precipitating it with some calcium. A little calcium chloride wouldn't raise the pH and might drop some calcium sorbate out, though it might precipitate out other things as well.

You probably don't need to worry about it. If you figure each tsp or K+ sorbate had 4 grams then you added about 1052 mg per liter of K+ sorbate. Since 25% of that weight is from the potassium the sorbic acid is about 790 mg/L (or 790 ppm). The LD50 is rats is somewhere above 500 mg/Kg so you aren't going to be harmed by the sorbate unless you drink a barrel full at once.

The sorbate may adversely affect the flavor and I can start to taste it in water at about 400-500 ppm so it might show up in your mead, but fining and charcoal filtering may harm the mead more than a little sorbate. If it isn't sweet already, a little backsweetening can cover a variety of errors.

Medsen

We've decided to just drink ours, I left it clearing for a week and bottled it today. It looks ok, it tastes ok and there are only 7 small bottles of it...how bad can it be? lol I figure we'll make another batch, get it right that time, then alternate a good bottle with a dodgy bottle and spread our consumption out over a few months.

I am going to try backsweetening first to se if that helps and will post results.

GTG