My first mead explosion

Well, guess it had to happen anytime now...
I made some Joe's Quick Grape Mead, stabilized, backsweetened it and bottled.
Yesterday, I heard a grenade and well, you know the drill: cleaning everything, swearing and licking the broken glass to see if it tasted good.
Can anyone help me detect what went wrong? It was a 1g batch, so I added 0.33g of kmeta and and 0.5g of k-sorbate, according to the FAQ. Did I bottle too soon?

What was your FG before stabilizing and backsweetening? Had it been stable for three days running?

Man, I hate reading these kinds of stories. I have a batch I want to backsweeten, but I'm worried about bottle bombs.

-Rich

It was 0.998. Pretty dry and stable, I guess... I'm thinking these bottles got a little bit of lees which decided to go zombie on me (ec-1118: chewing sorbates like if it were a candy bar)...

Not everyone likes the flavor (I do), but I backsweeten with stevia powder. It's 300x sweeter than sugar, so a little goes a long way. Completely unfermentable, no calories/sugars in it.

My first explosion was out of pure ignorance. I was using a growler to brew in. Had the lid closed and had been venting once per day. Let it go a few days with no venting by accident. Heard a loud pop... The o ring had been pushed out. Saw the cause of the sound and very foolishly opened it with out preparing for the eruption.... Whoosh!

I had a lot of cleaning to do after that...

How long did you wait after back sweetening before you bottled?

Bluespark said:

How long did you wait after back sweetening before you bottled?

Click to expand...

I didn't wait much... A day, perhaps... Maybe this was my mistake?

I had a multiple bochet bottles push the corks out the other day..thank goodness no explosions. I had stable readings for quite awhile..but didn't actually stabilize with chemicals. I recently concluded that all my meads will be treated like they are sparkling and capped instead of corked!

I've come to the conclusion that we all just have to be very (very, very) patient with mead. I'm starting to think of everything in months, not days. Seems to be clear and done fermenting? Leave it for another month...

I agree completely with Bluespark. In my experience so far, the more you mess with it and think about it, the worse it turns out. Just let it sit and focus thoughts toward future brew products instead.