Mead newbie question: how to make a bottle conditioned, sweet, sparkling mead?

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weirdboy

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I don't have the equipment or even space to put equipment for kegging or carbonating, so all of my stuff is always bottle conditioned. I was hoping to make a sweet or semi-sweet sparkling mead, but given these limitations, is it even possible?

The only method I can think of would be to let it ferment to close to the alcohol tolerance of the yeast, throw in extra honey/sugar, bottle, and then let it continue to ferment out. However this has some serious drawbacks, such the yeast being unpredictable and causing bottle bombs anyway, and possibly too much sediment ending up in the bottles and causing off flavors.

But I'm a complete n00b and would love to hear experienced opinions and advice.
 
i have never done this but... if your corking your bottles you might not have to worry about bottle bombs. i would think the cork would push itself out before the bottle exploded. i believe that's why they suggest having the bottles sit upright for a few days after bottling. if your worried wrap the box you have your bottles in in a trash bag to catch any of the liquid should a bottle or two explode.
 
I was wondering about this too. I'm new at this and I was thinking about getting a small keg and some CO2 and just making a little bit of sparkling with the rest as still in bottles... but it would be nice to at least do a test on a few bottles and see how it comes out.
 
Corks are not a "sure fire" fix for potential bottle bombs (pun intended). They will more often than not blow out before the bottle explodes, but I have seen some cases where a cork was still firmly installed in the neck of a bottle that had disintegrated from built-up pressure. It doesn't happen often, but it is not something that I would risk.

The simple answer to the original poster's question is that producing a sweet or semi-sweet carbonated mead using natural bottle conditioning is best done in screw-top, plastic containers that can periodically be opened to relieve excess pressure in the event that the yeast doesn't know when to quit. I still would not do this, since although it is safer than tightly capping or corking a glass container, the potential for violent rupture still exists, even if you are careful about monitoring pressure. The best way to make a carbonated mead with residual sugars present is still to stabilize the mead, then carbonate in a keg with injected CO2. The next best thing to try is to sweeten with a non-fermentable sweetner. All other methods come with some significant risk.
 
try making your best mead recipe as you always do, and bottle a six pack or so in beer bottles when your SG is within about 4 points or so of your target. Don't add any sweetener or alter your recipe at all.

Set the six pack aside for a month or two, and when you dare, open slowly. If you refigerate for a couple of days before opening it will help hold the C02 in as well.
 
try making your best mead recipe as you always do, and bottle a six pack or so in beer bottles when your SG is within about 4 points or so of your target. Don't add any sweetener or alter your recipe at all.

THIS IS DANGEROUS!

If your target is wrong, or the yeast are just feeling perky that day, look out! If you don't want to (or lack the equipment to) force carbonate, your safest bet for make sweet sparkling batches is to put them in PET plastic bottles. They will get firm as the pressure builds, and if one ruptures it will just make a huge mess but won't send glass shrapnel flying.

If you insist on bottling in something other than plastic, don't use beer bottles. They aren't designed for more than about 50 PSI and yeast can EASILY exceed that. Champagne bottles are sturdier, but even they can explode so I don't recommend using them unless you are using procedures to know how much pressure you are going to generate (which is not easy if you are trying to leave it sweet).
 
This is not quite bottle conditioned, but it is naturally conditioned and you dont need CO2. I offer it up, because I would not try to make a bottle conditioned sweet sparkling mead, unless I was back sweetening with artificial sweetener and using some sugar to carbonate in bottles (sugar that I measure and control closely).

I assume you can make a mead that will finish sweet. Start this off, and then rack it with about 15 gravity points left to go into a sanitized keg ($25). On the outlet, put a spunding valve (use the search function in the main forums) and dial in the pressure that you want for the temperature you have.

When you go to bottle, chill the keg down to freezing or a bit below (but still liquid) and bottle disturbing the liquid as little as possible. It would be useful to have CO2 at this point, but not required if you can make a siphon.
 
This is not quite bottle conditioned, but it is naturally conditioned and you dont need CO2. I offer it up, because I would not try to make a bottle conditioned sweet sparkling mead, unless I was back sweetening with artificial sweetener and using some sugar to carbonate in bottles (sugar that I measure and control closely).

I assume you can make a mead that will finish sweet. Start this off, and then rack it with about 15 gravity points left to go into a sanitized keg ($25). On the outlet, put a spunding valve (use the search function in the main forums) and dial in the pressure that you want for the temperature you have.

When you go to bottle, chill the keg down to freezing or a bit below (but still liquid) and bottle disturbing the liquid as little as possible. It would be useful to have CO2 at this point, but not required if you can make a siphon.

Also to add here that you pretty much have to keep your mead cold forever using this. If at any point there is yeast that has survived and they get warm enough to start chewing away at leftover yeast...KABOOM!!

Also, this was a thread zombie with bad advice...and needs to just go back into it's hole and die as to not confuse the n00bs.
 
Thanks for the info. I've done this before, but I never knew the term "Spunding." You learn something new every day.

Some yeast can tolerate and generate enough pressure to ferment through 15 gravity points because they'll keep going as the pressure is released even if the pressure has to build up high enough for the release valve on the keg lid to open - that happened on mine at about 120 PSI. The yeast can generate better than 8 atmospheres of pressure which is why I'm so vocal in urging caution when it comes to bottling active yeast. Adding sulfite tends to lower their their pressure generation (down to about 5 atm according to some sources) and lower pH also tend to keep the pressure from building as high, but doing it in a keg definitely makes the most sense to me (and drinking it out of the keg too).

Medsen
 
If your SG is in the 1004-1008 range, your not going to blow anything up. Beer bottles can easily handle that kind of pressure.

I hear so many tales of exploding bottles, but haven't had anything blow up. I have 25 cases of a failed hard cider experiment that need to be opened outside, or somewhere you don't want to repaint again (like my kitchen).

Back sweatening between fermentation and bottling may well give you large bubbles that drink like roofing nails.
 
If your're finishing at 1.004-1.008 and are going lower than that (due to fermenting sugars to carb) then you're also not talking about SWEET mead, which is the topic of the thread.

If you know you're down in the last ~5-10 gravity points and it physically can't go any lower, then yeah -you're probably pretty safe. If you're talking about doing it sweet (around 1.020) and it has the potential to dry out back down to the 1.000 range --- then you are in very dangerous explosion territory.
 
If your SG is in the 1004-1008 range, your not going to blow anything up. Beer bottles can easily handle that kind of pressure.

You can find various tables that will show you a gravity of 1.008 corresponds to roughly 24 g/L of sugar. Fermentation of 4 grams/L produce 1 volume of CO2, so at this gravity you can produce about 6 volumes of CO2, and about 5 atmospheres of pressure. That will be roughly 75 PSI at room temp in a beer bottle - kids don't try this at home!

I hear so many tales of exploding bottles, but haven't had anything blow up. I have 25 cases of a failed hard cider experiment that need to be opened outside, or somewhere you don't want to repaint again (like my kitchen).

HoneyJack, I am glad that you and your family have never experienced exploding bottles. I have. Fortunately they were inside my spare fridge (which had lost power) - I had a big mess but no injuries. If you take a tour of any Champagne house, the one thing they all share in common is broken glass, and these are Champagne bottles designed to hold beverages with 6 atmospheres of pressure. Glass is inherently unpredictable, and to generate excessive pressure inside bottles is tempting fate. I would encourage you and anyone reading this to consider safer practices.

Good Mazing!
Medsen
 
Related noob question.
Can't you just ferment and rack like you normally would for 9 months or so, and then add back a measured dose of sugar? There might not be much yeast leftover after racking 5 times, but I bet there's still enough to carb up if given enough time.

No?
 
Related noob question.
Can't you just ferment and rack like you normally would for 9 months or so, and then add back a measured dose of sugar? There might not be much yeast leftover after racking 5 times, but I bet there's still enough to carb up if given enough time.

No?

Right, but then what makes it sweet if all the sugar has been fermented away?


It's approaching 8 months since I brewed the mead I wanted to do this with, so I am thinking about bottling again. So, this question is once again relevant, and I never really had a satisfactory answer. Or at least no answer that achieved the result I'm after.

How about this solution?

I add some lactose to sweeten, then add a bit more honey or sugar for carbonation. This mead has been at .096 or thereabouts for months, so I'm not particularly worried about it fermenting out any further than whatever I add to it.
 
I think .0960 is an incorrect reading. I'm sure you mean .996.

I think lactose would be fine, if you like the taste. Or spenda if you can stand the taste of it. You may need to add some fresh yeast to carbonate, especially since the mead is clear and has been finished for a long while. If you have a pretty high ABV, though, that wouldn't work since the high ABV would "poison" the yeast. So, what's the ABV of this mead?

How's it taste? Do you think it'll taste better sweetened with lactose, and carbonated? The reason I ask is that I've never yet had a mead that was better sparkling. Or sweetened with anything except honey, and only to off-dry. A sweet mead just isn't my thing. It may be exactly what you're looking for, though.
 
I think .0960 is an incorrect reading. I'm sure you mean .996.

You are correct, I just made a typo.

The current ABV is not very high; around 10%.


My initial idea for this was to make something akin to Framboise in mead form in terms of mouthfeel and sweetness.
 
What? I don't understand. If you brew a high gravity sweet mead recipe to begin with, it will end up sweet, even though the fermentation is complete.

If there's ANY yeast left to carb, then there's yeast left to make bottle bombs.

The yeast don't magically stop at an exact point. There's a science to it, and yeast is quite unpredictable.

If there's residual sugars (sweetness) and yeast available to carb - then there's the potential for bombs.

In theory, you may be correct. IE: if a yeast has a 14% tolerance, and you decide to bottle it somewhere around 13% - (these are generic figures because I don't do math) you would (again in theory) carb up while it eats that 1% remaining.

However, 14% yeasts have been known to hit 15, 16 or even 17%. There's no automatic shut off point where the yeast knows exactly when to die. It's a living organism that "generally" dies off at 14%...but how many times have you seen a good hearty 14% yeast poop out at 12%??? Plenty of times. They die early, they stay alive longer than they should, and sometimes they die where they're supposed to.

Some people tempt fate and survive, but its certainly not something that anyone should recommend to others.
 
I was buying dry ice recently and noticed that the dry ice manufacturer had included a "recipe" for homemade soda. It entailed putting some small quantity of dry ice into a bottle (PET for their case), adding flavored sugar water, and capping. Voila - sparkling fizzy drink. That got me thinking - can you sorbate a mead, bottle it with some dry ice and carbonate it that way? Has anyonw tried this? You'd need a scale, of course, but seems like this could work.
 
If there's ANY yeast left to carb, then there's yeast left to make bottle bombs.

The yeast don't magically stop at an exact point. There's a science to it, and yeast is quite unpredictable.

If there's residual sugars (sweetness) and yeast available to carb - then there's the potential for bombs.

In theory, you may be correct. IE: if a yeast has a 14% tolerance, and you decide to bottle it somewhere around 13% - (these are generic figures because I don't do math) you would (again in theory) carb up while it eats that 1% remaining.

However, 14% yeasts have been known to hit 15, 16 or even 17%. There's no automatic shut off point where the yeast knows exactly when to die. It's a living organism that "generally" dies off at 14%...but how many times have you seen a good hearty 14% yeast poop out at 12%??? Plenty of times. They die early, they stay alive longer than they should, and sometimes they die where they're supposed to.

Some people tempt fate and survive, but its certainly not something that anyone should recommend to others.

I'm sorry, but you're assuming that a yeast in a sweet mead environment is done fermenting when it hits its a hypothetical max alcohol tolerance or when ALL of the yeast has flocced out. I just don't think that's correct. First of all, alcohol tolerance (using a wine yeast, no less) is rarely what makes yeast crap out. It's almost always lack of readily available fermentables and nutrients. Second, honey is full of all sorts of complex sugars that the yeast is not able to ferment. Not all flavors that you perceive as sweetness are generated by compounds that yeast are able to ferment.
 
I'm sorry, but you're assuming that a yeast in a sweet mead environment is done fermenting when it hits its a hypothetical max alcohol tolerance or when ALL of the yeast has flocced out. I just don't think that's correct. First of all, alcohol tolerance (using a wine yeast, no less) is rarely what makes yeast crap out. It's almost always lack of readily available fermentables and nutrients.
I'm not assuming that at all. As I mentioned, the "tolerance" is just one of the many factors of yeast that is impossible to predict on a regular basis. It's a guideline and can't be used accurately to bottle carb. In theory, it has some merit, but in real life - you're risking bottle bombs, which is why I have said this whole time that it's not recommended.
Second, honey is full of all sorts of complex sugars that the yeast is not able to ferment. Not all flavors that you perceive as sweetness are generated by compounds that yeast are able to ferment.

Say what??? Honey is super fermentable. Even moreso than malts, which is why our meads routinely end up UNDER 1.000.

If there were that much residual non-fermentable sugars, we'd see a marked difference in our hydrometer readings and would be reading FG numbers more like beers.\
 
Say what??? Honey is super fermentable. Even moreso than malts, which is why our meads routinely end up UNDER 1.000.

Clearly you're right.

But, sweet meads can end up at 1.015 or sometimes much higher depending on the OG. So, what is left over? It's been through 9 months or more of fermentation. Everything that can be eaten has been, right?
 
I'm sorry, but you're assuming that a yeast in a sweet mead environment is done fermenting when it hits its a hypothetical max alcohol tolerance or when ALL of the yeast has flocced out. I just don't think that's correct. First of all, alcohol tolerance (using a wine yeast, no less) is rarely what makes yeast crap out. It's almost always lack of readily available fermentables and nutrients. Second, honey is full of all sorts of complex sugars that the yeast is not able to ferment. Not all flavors that you perceive as sweetness are generated by compounds that yeast are able to ferment.

What jezter has stated is essentially correct.

Alcohol is typically what causes yeast to slow down and die. It disrupts a wide range of internal cellular processes as it accumulates in the cell. In a healthy fermentation with well nourished yeast, the alcohol eventually poisons them.

There are many things that can cause a fermentation to stick before the alcohol level gets to the typical tolerance level - really low pH, lack of nutrients, lack of aeration, temperature, yeast toxins, spoilage organisms and so forth. In these cases, one should be very careful before bottling and should consider stabilizing. There is an old saying in winemaking that the best way to get a stuck fermentation going again is to bottle it. Later on, chemical changes that occur can allow shifts in the pH, or breakdown of yeast can release nutrients for other yeast to use, or warming up may reactivate the yeast and you can have fermentation in the bottles. Yes, I've definitely done it, and I've reached the point where I never trust a fungus.

A fermentation that is undernourished can go on almost imperceptibly for months with no visible airlock activity and just a very slow drop in gravity over time. Brother Adam, the revered mead maker at Buckfast Abbey did not use nutrient supplements and described continued fermentation in his sack strength batches for up to 2 years. So yes, if there is still sugar around, and the yeast are below their alcohol tolerance, there is a definite risk of renewed fermentation.

By the way, 98% of the sugars in honey are fermentable (on average).

Medsen
 
Clearly you're right.

But, sweet meads can end up at 1.015 or sometimes much higher depending on the OG. So, what is left over? It's been through 9 months or more of fermentation. Everything that can be eaten has been, right?

What's left over is mostly fermentable sugar. If the yeast have been poisoned by the alcohol, they can't eat any more. If they have been poisoned with sulfite and sorbate, they can't eat any more. If they have been pasteurized they are dead. If they have been filtered out, then they are gone.

If none of those things is the case, the the possibility of renewed fermentation should addressed.
 
Okay. You've swayed me.

So, to go back to my previous question, you can't just add priming sugar to a sweet mead, because either the yeast is dead drunk, or it's cleared so much that there simply isn't enough present to ferment the remaining honey sugars, much less the priming sugar.

Got it.

Thanks for the patience, folks.

btw, not to hijack this thread, but a lot of my misconceptions were based on a previous thread here where I was wondering about adding bourbon to a cider in order to raise the alcohol level and thus inhibit a portion of the fermentation, so the cider would retain some sweetness and more apple character. I was told that that absolutely wouldn't work and it would ferment out anyway. But...I'm thinking now that they were wrong.
 
btw, not to hijack this thread, but a lot of my misconceptions were based on a previous thread here where I was wondering about adding bourbon to a cider in order to raise the alcohol level and thus inhibit a portion of the fermentation, so the cider would retain some sweetness and more apple character. I was told that that absolutely wouldn't work and it would ferment out anyway. But...I'm thinking now that they were wrong.

There's a lot of theoretical in there. How much bourbon did you want to add? What was the (after bourbon) ABV expected to be?

And maybe, what they were trying to tell you is that 1) it wasn't going to be a SURE thing, or 2) just because you add the alcohol now doesn't mean them yeast are instantly dead - they may continue on their last legs until they're officially poisoned, or 3) Maybe they were saying the same thing that if you think upping the ABV to exactly 14% - it might not kill the yeast because some live past the expected tolerance and it's not an absolute science.

If you added bourbon to the point where you were easily over 20% ABV - one would think that you would most assuredly kill the yeast in a day or two.

This is all kinda hypothetical though.

If you're interested in trying it out, I'd recommend doing a 1g cider batch and add bourbon and see how well it works. You just have to ensure you add enough bourbon to COMPLETELY overwhelm the yeast's tolerance, which pretty much means it's well over standard cider territory.
 
It will work if you add enough alcohol, but I expect the taste would be rather harsh.

Another approach you can take if you want a sweet cider (non-sparkling) with more apple character is to let the yeast take it dry, then stabilize with sorbate and sulfite and backsweeten it with apple concentrate.
 
I'm going to repost what I posted earlier in the hopes it doesn't get drowned by another aside into fermentation behavior at higher alcohol levels:

I was buying dry ice recently and noticed that the dry ice manufacturer had included a "recipe" for homemade soda. It entailed putting some small quantity of dry ice into a bottle (PET for their case), adding flavored sugar water, and capping. Voila - sparkling fizzy drink. That got me thinking - can you sorbate a mead, bottle it with some dry ice and carbonate it that way? Has anyone tried this? You'd need a scale, of course, but seems like this could work.
 
Yeah... there seems to be a fine line between carbonation and detonation... No fun with glass bottles and mead.
 
The fur is flying here, and it seems to be a battle between those who have had bottle bombs, and those who will. :(
Just hitting a nicely carbonated dry mead in bottles is difficult, doing a sweet carbonated mead in bottles is risky at it's best without unfermentable sweeteners which taste bad in my oh so not humble opinion.
It's an art, it's a science, I just say if you want to attempt it, use SS kegs or PET bottles. Let's be safe out there brewers.
 
The fur is flying here, and it seems to be a battle between those who have had bottle bombs, and those who will. :(
Just hitting a nicely carbonated dry mead in bottles is difficult, doing a sweet carbonated mead in bottles is risky at it's best without unfermentable sweeteners which taste bad in my oh so not humble opinion.
It's an art, it's a science, I just say if you want to attempt it, use SS kegs or PET bottles. Let's be safe out there brewers.

Truer words were never spoken (or typed). Play safely, folks. If you really must prove to yourself that you have an innate ability to predict exactly when your yeast will give up the ghost, then humor us and place those bottles in a rugged, closed container, at the very least.
 
sorry to dredge this thread back up, but is it possible to make a sweet or semi-sweet bottle carbonated braggot?

From what I understand Malt contains some percentage of unfermentable sugars, I just don't know how much sweetness would be left behind with LME or DME.

Anyone have experience with this?
 
sorry to dredge this thread back up, but is it possible to make a sweet or semi-sweet bottle carbonated braggot?

From what I understand Malt contains some percentage of unfermentable sugars, I just don't know how much sweetness would be left behind with LME or DME.

Anyone have experience with this?

You can use a lot of crystal malt. Crystal malt has a good amount of unfermentable sugar in it, due to the unique process of wet roasting it goes through.
 
Hypothetically, couldn't you cap a still fermenting mead at the desired point of sweetness, set aside a few low-volume test bottles, and open one every 3-4 days to test for carbonation. Once the desired level of carbonation is reached, cool the entire batch at near-freezing temperatures for several months until all remaining yeasts has died. Of course, this begs the question of the amount of time it would take the yeast to die at near freezing temperatures.
 
This will only work if you keep the bottles cold right up until you drink them.

Cold, even down to freezing won't kill the yeasts, just cause them to flocculate and go into hibernation. If the bottles warm up again there's no guarantee the yeast won't wake up and start eating again.

People who do this usually use a plastic test bottle, once it's firm enough they throw the whole batch into a spare fridge and leave it there.

Hypothetically, couldn't you cap a still fermenting mead at the desired point of sweetness, set aside a few low-volume test bottles, and open one every 3-4 days to test for carbonation. Once the desired level of carbonation is reached, cool the entire batch at near-freezing temperatures for several months until all remaining yeasts has died. Of course, this begs the question of the amount of time it would take the yeast to die at near freezing temperatures.
 
Ok I know not a mead but there might be a point here. When I was a kid my parents made rootbeer every summer. Now what they did was mix sugar extract and yeast with about five gallons of water. I think it was ten pounds of sugar. I can't be sure because it was years ago. Then we just bottled it in glass bear bottles and put it in the basement in my bedroom. The room was cool but not that much. We would go get bottles and put them in the fridge all summer long. Once in awhile we would find a bottle that had broken open inside the case. But no flying shards of glass everyone talks about.

I'm not giving advice I'm just saying that the exploding end of the world bottle scenerio isn't all that much of a threat. Of course I wouldn't do that today. Because I have a feeling I might have used up my luck in the past with this.

Kind of makes me wonder what ABV this rootbeer had? There was a serious yeast cake in every bottle when we were done.
 
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