Carbonating from a scientific perspective

So I have three batches of mead going right now and have never made it before. I've tried it at the renaissance festival about 6 years ago and i absolutely loved it! The only think i can think of that I, as a new mead maker can't really wrap my head around is the way to carbonate. If you are to add a type of sugar before bottling, does that mean that your honey and other sugars are completely depleted, leaving you with a very dry mead? from what i can remember the two that i had sampled they were very sweet. So technically, would it be true that if you want a sweeter mead (I do) does that mean you cant carbonate it because the yeast is gone, or the alcohol percentage is too high for the yeast to handle? I've done so much reading on this subject and just can't seem to figure this one out. unless the mead is still able to have a sweet taste with the sugars broken down into something else that the yeast simply doesn't want. I'm sure i'll find out after a few tries, but i don't want to end up with 15 gallons of sparkling dry mead.

tl;dr - is it possible to carbonate a sweeter mead considering the fact that sweetness is what carbonates it at bottling?

The yeast stop doing their thing (producing alcohol and CO2) mostly for these reasons:

They run out of food (sugar).
They can't handle the alcohol level.
They die for some external reason (heat, infection).

If you want to carbonate a sweet mead, you just need to make sure they have enough sugar to crank out EtOH and CO2 before going dry.

Right, but come bottling time, shouldn't the process of fermenting be over? Meaning that either the sugar or the yeast is done for? If you have 2/2 of them left then the fermentation process is still happening, am i correct? And if the alcohol content is too high for the yeast to handle, then adding sugar at bottling time would do nothing. At least that's what i'm assuming.

Normally, you carbonate by fully fermenting your mead, cider, beer, or whatever, then adding a small amount of sugar at bottling time. This added sugar restarts a small fermentation in the bottle and carbonates the beverage.

A sweet, sparkling beverage is sought after by many a new meadmaker and cidermaker. Unfortunately, given the options of sweet vs dry and still vs sparkling, a sweet AND sparkling drink is the hardest to make. You (usually) need yeast and sugar to carbonate and additional sugar to create sweetness. Problem is, you can't train yeast to eat just enough sugar to carbonate. The yeast want to eat all the sugar. Your sweet mead becomes dry and your bottles will become overcarbonated and possibly explode.

There are a few options, such as carbonating with pressure in a keg, pasteurizing the bottles once they are carbonated properly, and sweetening with a non-fermentable sweetener.

For a new meadmaker, I wouldn't suggest any of these. I would suggest trying my hand at either sweet OR sparkling first. Then, you can try for both.

thanks for the great responses! i have considered using dry ice to carbonate, as well. anyone have any experiences with this? i figure if i put in some dry ice in a partially air tight bucket, it will carbonate it enough and should turn out fine without effecting flavor or making bottle bombs an issue.

GinKings said:

For a new meadmaker, I wouldn't suggest any of these. I would suggest trying my hand at either sweet OR sparkling first. Then, you can try for both.

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Learn to walk before you run.

I would stick to using the sugar and yeast for the following reasons, The first is the high chance that you might make a mead bomb in the house. once the dry ice vaporizes back into it's gas state it's could easily raise the prussure over what the bottle can handle (giving you the Sticky honey bomb). But even if we figured out just the right amount of CO2 you still have the issue that the industrial process to make dry ice might involve steps you probably wouldn't want to put in your drink. However, if you do use the dry ice methode keep us informed, I would like to know how it worked out.

You could add complex sugars that the yeast cannot consume hence giving you the sweet taste

Zbay said:

I would stick to using the sugar and yeast for the following reasons, The first is the high chance that you might make a mead bomb in the house. once the dry ice vaporizes back into it's gas state it's could easily raise the prussure over what the bottle can handle (giving you the Sticky honey bomb). But even if we figured out just the right amount of CO2 you still have the issue that the industrial process to make dry ice might involve steps you probably wouldn't want to put in your drink. However, if you do use the dry ice methode keep us informed, I would like to know how it worked out.

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my plan is to carbonate it with the dry ice prior to bottling, therefore giving it no opportunity to over-pressurize. the dry ice will be long gone before the mead touches the bottles.

i do like the idea of a complex sweetener, but i don't want to add any kind of unnatural or off-flavors. what would you recommend?

I have had success using lactose in mead. It adds a nice creamy sweetness to the brew and is typically not fermentable by brewing yeast. I have gone as far as 4# in 5 gals without issue. Not for the lactose intolerant of course.

I think it depends a lot on how sweet you want it. I do my cider semi sweet and sparking using non-fermentable lactose and regular corn sugar for priming. I don't think you'd be able to use lactose to make it much more than lightly semi sweet (even that takes a pound in a 6 gal batch.)

Overall your best bet for sweet and sparking is stabilizing and backsweetening, then force carbonating in a keg. It is possible to bottle from there...you are indeed talking about a lot of extra equipment and effort though.

I have no idea how you would control using dry ice to carbonate...you'd have to add a fixed amount of dry ice to each bottle before filling and then immediately corking/capping, and then hope like hell you didn't add too much dry ice...

i was thinking of experimenting with something along the lines of what these kids did only on a slightly more sanitary and larger scale



maybe doing this method in a 3 gallon carboy and transferring directly into bottles. nothing will be sealed while the carbonation is happening. looks like a good idea to me.

biochemedic, you're making a caramel quad? you sir, are my hero

I'm pretty sure the carbonation process needs a higher inside the bottle pressure in order to work. The amount a liquid can hold in solution is directly related to the pressure which is explained by Henry's Law (Solubility of Gases with increasing pressure)

Solubility=Kh*Pressure (Kh is Henry's constant which for co2 is .034 M/atm)

So if you did this in an open container at one at your solution would be able to .034 moles (1.5 grams) of CO2 per litter. However once you seal the container this lets the pressure build up and in your solution or mead will be able to increase its CO2 saturation threshold by the factor the atm is increased, which is what gives you the carbonation effect in fluids like coke.

Well I hope that helps a bit and good luck on carbonating your mead.
Zbay

Zbay said:

I'm pretty sure the carbonation process needs a higher inside the bottle pressure in order to work. The amount a liquid can hold in solution is directly related to the pressure which is explained by Henry's Law (Solubility of Gases with increasing pressure)

Solubility=Kh*Pressure (Kh is Henry's constant which for co2 is .034 M/atm)

So if you did this in an open container at one at your solution would be able to .034 moles (1.5 grams) of CO2 per litter. However once you seal the container this lets the pressure build up and in your solution or mead will be able to increase its CO2 saturation threshold by the factor the atm is increased, which is what gives you the carbonation effect in fluids like coke.

Well I hope that helps a bit and good luck on carbonating your mead.
Zbay

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You are forgetting temperature. The colder the liquid the more gas it can store, and since we're dealing with ice, this seems like a really genius solution. I've even wondered myself - what if I simply took a Sodastream machine, carbonated some mead, and then bottled it. There would be no danger of exploding bottles, the machine already carbonates water as well or better than seltzer from the store, and after bottling there is no reason why the mead would lose its carbonation or, for any obvious reason anyway, why the fermentation would restart.

yeah, i was thinking the same thing. i'm going to try a few different methods for carbonating before putting it to the mead. one thing i did as a science project in grade school was carbonating fruit with dry ice. i put the dry ice in a styrofoam cooler that seals itself, but isnt quite air tight and put the fruit around it. after a short while you have apples and oranges that taste fizzy. maybe the same could happen if i do the same, only with a few one gallon carboys? when it comes time and i have experimented, i will certainly post all results. this is actually exciting!

You didn't mention if purchasing equipment was out of the question or if you're goal is to carbonate in the bottle, that said....

You could always invest in a kegging system(could skip the taps and buy a counter pressure filler or a beer gun instead). Force carb in the keg, then fill bottles, cap or cork, done. Plus this method will work for any mead, or liquid, regardless of dryness/sweetness.

Alternatively if these are 1 gallon batches, you could buy one of those fancy carbonators for carbonating 1 bottle at a time too, but if these are 5 gallon batches the kegging setup would be more realistic.

There's also the old fashioned method too, which can be tricky to get right, and I'm also pretty certain the problems you are facing carbonating mead naturally is the very same reason why champagne is traditionally very dry.

Well, i'm sure in my future i may purchase some kegging equipment, but for now i'm hoping to carbonate in bottle. or in bigger bottle then transfer to smaller. I have also considered, hesitantly, but have considered the premature bottling if i can get it just right. i know, i know its dangerous and very unpredictable, but if i can try it with maybe 6 bottles, i could use some real thick grolsch bottles and find a safe place to store them. maybe wrap each one up in an old towel or something, i dunno.

MasterJeem said:

Well, i'm sure in my future i may purchase some kegging equipment, but for now i'm hoping to carbonate in bottle. or in bigger bottle then transfer to smaller. I have also considered, hesitantly, but have considered the premature bottling if i can get it just right. i know, i know its dangerous and very unpredictable, but if i can try it with maybe 6 bottles, i could use some real thick grolsch bottles and find a safe place to store them. maybe wrap each one up in an old towel or something, i dunno.

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If I were to try anything like this I'd certainly use some of the safety measures you've described, and I'd use big heavy champagne-style bottles like Dogfish Head uses to bottle some of their bigger beers. You can both cork and then cap them, and they are really very heavy thick glass, and I'm sure would take a higher level of carbonation than even Grolsch style bottles.

If you bottled prematurely, you'd en up with sediment in your bottles which wouldn't be great. I don't have any suggestions, but the risk of bottle bombs and having sediment would completely rule this option out for me.

well... how bad is sediment? have you ever had a blue moon or a hoegaarten? i understand that this is mead and not beer so maybe it's different, but after its racked once or twice what sediment is there is usually very fine and if you pour it correctly (some into a glass, then roll the bottle around to mix it up) then it should mix together and not have a bad taste. you shouldn't have 1/4 inch of sediment or anything. i'm actually hoping that my experiments with dry ice will keep me from having to do this.

tinman1 said:

I know this post will make most cringe.... I make about 4 batches (5 gallon) of sparkling ginger mead every year. My yeast of choice- 2 packs of Nottinghams ale yeast. Most of my meads start 1.120 and up range. I just dry pitch it, cover the bucket with saran wrap, rouse once a day, let it be happy. I always have rave reviews ( and the LHBS begging me to enter it into competitions). 1118 is always a backup when fermentation is stuck, but ironically, I have never had to use it in my mead ( except I do add 1/4 pack 1118 rehydrated into bottling bucket to produce the " sparkling", along with 5 oz of corn sugar)

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maybe combine tinmans carbonation method with nonfermentable sweetening method and avoid some of the ice experiments

yeah, that's another thing i was wondering. if there's a small amount of yeast that will help carbonate. has anybody else tried this with good results? i would really hate to add too much...

You won't have as much as in a beer, but if you bottle before fermentation is complete, there will be sediment. The fact that you can rack 3 times post primary and still have sediment speaks to this.

I usually rack about 4 times (or until I can read a newspaper thru the carboy. I found that I don't have alot of active yeast available by then. That is why I learned to add a little yeast at bottling. I agree with above posts- use champaign bottles, LHBS 22s, or EZ caps. I have had them explode in anything else. All the talk about dry ice, etc I have no experience with. Been making mead for years, and the one constant is KISS. Alot of people have been given my recipe, only to jack with it constantly, and then wonder why it didn't turn out right. Monks do mead.... For 100s of years.... With the simplest of processes, and create wonderful mead. I tend to stick to their ways.....