Newbie question: pasteurize mead?

Hello all, I have been wondering about the possibility of pasteurizing my meads so that the addition of chemicals such as potassium sorbate and metabisulfite is no longer needed to stabilize the brew. What would happen if I heated my mead? Does it get wasted or spoiled in some manner? I am already collecting my first batches of JAOM, they are really sweet and my main concern is not getting bottle bombs, specially now that the temperatures are warmer than in the winter and considering that the bread yeast cake is so easily disturbed that additional rackings would be needed to clean as much yeast as possible.

Thanks in advance, best regards!

EDIT: What I have in mind is taking the mead bottles and heat them in a pan with warm water. I guess this should not be dangerous if done with the bottles opened and not reaching boiling temperature. Any suggestions? Thanks!

I know people that pasteurize beer by capping their bottles and running them through a cycle in the dishwasher....Doing it on the stove won't hurt them, but I wouldn't do anything with the bottles uncapped.

My main concern is about the flavor. I don't know if pasteurizing a bottle of mead by heating it up on a stove would spoil the flavor or somehow ruin the mead... But I guess that if the flavor is OK after heating, the resulting product should have no viable yeast on it so it does not referment... Can anybody confirm this? I would prefer not to add chemicals to my brew.

Thanks!

Really no short answer to this.

Will it spoil the flavor? No, most likely not. Will it change it? Very possible.

Any time you heat honey, you stand to lose some of the more volatile flavors. A pasteurized honey may not have the same fresh, delicate flavor of unpasteurized. It may not even be enough of a difference that you would notice, but then again, it might.

I seriously doubt that you'll ruin anything by pasteurizing after fermentation. So, the question is: Is the possible flavor change worth not just using a chemical stabilizer? That'll just take trial and error.

Thanks for the answer! I just have some 5 liter (1.32 gal aprox.), differently flavored mead batches going on, so I guess I will try to pasteurize some bottles and stabilizing the others with sorbate and metabisulfite, and then taste each one. I will post the results along with some pics if I have the time (and memory!).

Best regards, and good brewing!

There is a big difference between sanitising and sterilizing. Hell if you have a microwave oven tall enough, you can just fill bottles with water and then zap the hell out of them. But if you then emptied the hot water out and filled them with mead cracking or breakage are both possible.

The "boil in a pan" trick works, but again, you wouldn't want to be putting cold/cool mead into hot glass would you, and there is always the possibility of some bacterial/fungal contamination during the cooling of the glass unless you happen to have a "clean room" (dust and other contaminates measured in microns......)

So whatever you do, there's likely to be a level of compromise.

As for pasteurising meads, I don't even heat my honey, except if it needs warming a little to make it liquid enough for the making process - then it only gets put into a sink full of hot water, no hotter than about 60C. Apart from that, I keep the heat away from it as I don't want to drive off any of the esters/aromatics (same reason for not using champagne yeasts).

Which puts us back to the compromise. Sulphites help prevent spoilage, as well as assisting the sorbate when stabilising. Filtration can help as well with a finished mead. I don't like to use too fine a filter, but 1 micron seems good as it polishes the finished mead and removes most of the possible particulates ("sterile" filtration i.e. 0.25 microns, can remove colour and aroma particles as well).

Ha! maybe if you know anyone who works in a hospital or other medical facility, maybe they'd put your bottles through an autoclave, and then place them in sterile plastic to transport them home again........

Sielm, what did you decide after comparing your pasteurized and unpasteurized mead samples? Did it affect the flavor?

It looks like the OP isn't responding. If anyone else has ideas I'd love to get input here.

I've got a few gallons of mead that I put oak into, and they will take longer to mature than I'm comfortable with as it is unpasteurized. (and I forgot to boil the oak... I can already see a very small amount of unhappy items forming little floating colonies on the top of the mead.)

I'm starting to realize that at least for me, part of the attraction of homebrew is the excitement and suspense around how things turn out. I really appreciate all of you on here sharing your experiences and opinions.

Any news on this pasteurization front would be great. Especially in situations where you may have a flavor profile that can take a while to get ready.

Pasteurization would seem to me to have no value. Either you have fermented dry your honey and if you want to back sweeten then after ensuring that there is no viable yeast colony left you stabilize the mead by adding K-meta and K-sorbate and so can sweeten without any new fermentation occurring OR you have used so much honey (deliberately) that knowing the tolerance of the yeast for alcohol you have left sugar that the yeast CANNOT ferment because they have died of alcohol poisoning... So what would be the value of pasteurization? Just because you can?

Sigh...all these things for inpatient people. Chemicals galore and now more about pasturization (sp?) If you age the mead in bulk for atleast 6 months with air lock on it. You can take hydro readings once a month and if it stays the same the yeast is no longer active due to alcohol suicide or no more sugar availability(dry wines) so in essence there is no need to add any chemical unless you don't like the higher alcoholic wines and want a sweet lower abv wine. If you make it for taste find a low tolerance yeast (i like high abv so I have no suggestions) and it can be sweeter with lower abv and yeast will go die off at lower abv with a sweeter end result, like a dessert wine.
As for me I add 15lbs of honey to a 20 liter jug, with about 4.25ish gallons of water, the yeast die off everytime and leave me with generally a 14-15% mead sometimes higher and more dry sometimes lower and sweeter. It really depends on if your yeast took thier steroids or not prior to packaging lol. Anyways no need to pasturize.

sielm said:

Hello all, I have been wondering about the possibility of pasteurizing my meads so that the addition of chemicals such as potassium sorbate and metabisulfite is no longer needed to stabilize the brew. What would happen if I heated my mead? Does it get wasted or spoiled in some manner? I am already collecting my first batches of JAOM, they are really sweet and my main concern is not getting bottle bombs, specially now that the temperatures are warmer than in the winter and considering that the bread yeast cake is so easily disturbed that additional rackings would be needed to clean as much yeast as possible.

Thanks in advance, best regards!

EDIT: What I have in mind is taking the mead bottles and heat them in a pan with warm water. I guess this should not be dangerous if done with the bottles opened and not reaching boiling temperature. Any suggestions? Thanks!

Click to expand...

If you can purchase a souis heater cirulator and put your bottles sealed in a large pan with water lvl covering your bottles content lvl. Also put 1 bottle opened with just water in it and use it to test fluid temperature in your brew bottles with a thermometer. Thus the bottle with water shows you your brews temp. Set heater to bring water temp in side your test bottle to 140 F. After your test bottle gets to 140 deg. leave them in for 20 mins. This will kill the yeast off and stop all fermentation in your mead, and you can leave your mead bottles sealed and never open them for the pasturization.

@Brew Chief , not to be a Richard-Head, but this is from 11 years ago.

Edit: Great info, though.

pvtpublic said:

@Brew Chief , not to be a Richard-Head, but this is from 11 years ago.

Edit: Great info, though.

Click to expand...

I know . It's just who ever signs on and sees this question, might be looking for a good answer. So time is in my opinion irrelevant, but thanks for the shout out!

I've done it before to grape-mead as a test. It's a pain to pasteurize in the home environment and takes a long time. Too much for my liking.

pvtpublic said:

@Brew Chief , not to be a Richard-Head, but this is from 11 years ago.

Edit: Great info, though.

Click to expand...

Brrraaiins…

Brew Chief said:

If you can purchase a souis heater cirulator and put your bottles sealed in a large pan with water lvl covering your bottles content lvl. Also put 1 bottle opened with just water in it and use it to test fluid temperature in your brew bottles with a thermometer. Thus the bottle with water shows you your brews temp. Set heater to bring water temp in side your test bottle to 140 F. After your test bottle gets to 140 deg. leave them in for 20 mins. This will kill the yeast off and stop all fermentation in your mead, and you can leave your mead bottles sealed and never open them for the pasturization.

Click to expand...

On a after thought I always pasturize my mead recipes that I have back sweetened, as to stop any further fermentation without adding chemicals to my brews. Also it seems to round out flavors that you may feel are a bit too bright.

Pasteurizing or heating honey in general can lead to toxicity creating a compound known as HMF the same is applied to sweet wines.

HMF can form in sugar-containing food, particularly as a result of heating or cooking. Its formation has been the topic of significant study as HMF was regarded as being potentially carcinogenic to humans. However, so far in vivo genotoxicity was negative. No relevance for humans concerning carcinogenic and genotoxic effects can be derived.[6] HMF is classified as a food improvement agent [7] and is primarily being used in the food industry in form of a food additive as a biomarker as well as a flavoring agent for food products.

This may be useful to some considering pasteurizing mead, or the ingredient honey...

"The study has shown that heating of honey reduces the specific gravity with a subsequent raise in ash value, pH, HMF, browning, phenolics and antioxidant activity..."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3215355/
In about 100x 6-gal batches of mead, with various local and cart-based honey product, various styles & ABVs, not once have I used but gravity and time for stabilization and clarification except on 3 or so occasions an inline counter pressure system filter for super fining/ultra polishing. No chemicals or clarity agents ever.

I'm bottling into champagne glass (clear mostly for looks) with various capping and cages. Not one bomb yet, nor do I expect it.
Altering honey is to me unnecessary. With proper process, technique, protocols, diligence, patience and stable temps in storage (bulk or bottles), I just don't see the point of making no-bombs when there are no bombs to begin with, or ruined product.

This is my experience so far.

SDO said:

This may be useful to some considering pasteurizing mead, or the ingredient honey...

"The study has shown that heating of honey reduces the specific gravity with a subsequent raise in ash value, pH, HMF, browning, phenolics and antioxidant activity..."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3215355/
In about 100x 6-gal batches of mead, with various local and cart-based honey product, various styles & ABVs, not once have I used but gravity and time for stabilization and clarification except on 3 or so occasions an inline counter pressure system filter for super fining/ultra polishing. No chemicals or clarity agents ever.

I'm bottling into champagne glass (clear mostly for looks) with various capping and cages. Not one bomb yet, nor do I expect it.
Altering honey is to me unnecessary. With proper process, technique, protocols, diligence, patience and stable temps in storage (bulk or bottles), I just don't see the point of making no-bombs when there are no bombs to begin with, or ruined product.

This is my experience so far.

Click to expand...

The biggest issue is getting a backsweetened mead without using chemicals. I tried over loading my mead with honey hoping the yeast would die off and they ended up running down to around 0 gravity at around 18-20 percent abv very first batch ever on top of it lmao. I tried another batch before using a souis heater with similar results. I will say though I used the soius heater on around 3 batches and still ended up with yeast starting back up on 1 of them. Ran it to 145 degrees for 30 mins