Bottling Fermented Shrub Soda

[GreenSmithGoodness]

I've been really into fermenting fruit shrubs and using them in mixed drinks and as added flavors for soda.
How can I bottle it without pasturizing it, while maintaining the quality of the product?
similarly, I have also been fermenting elderflower champagne and want to do the same. This is naturally highly carbonated due to the natural yeast from the flowers and easily bursts the bottles.

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi GreenSmithGoodness - and welcome to this forum. I cannot speak to your question about shrubs - Have yet to make one but I make elderflower wine all the time and there is really no good reason for "bottle bombs". Or rather the reason for bottle bombs is that you are bottling the wine without knowing how much residual sugar is in the wine and/or how much pressure the gas (CO2) will build up once you bottle the wine and /or you are using glass bottles that cannot withstand the pressure.

Here's a wine making secret - you really cannot make a wine that is both sweet AND carbonated unless a) you use unfermentable sugars to sweeten the wine (so the yeast cannot transform half the weight of those sugars into CO2 and that mans you must allow the yeast to fully ferment the sugars and that means that you need to measure the specific gravity of the wine to determine whether there is sugar remaining, OR b) you force carbonate the wine after stabilizing it and back sweetening it with a sugar of your choice and force carbonating means pumping CO2 into the wine at a known pressure OR C) and this I do not recommend - you know precisely how much residual sugar is in the wine AND you know the rate at which the yeast is converting that sugar into alcohol and CO2 and at a specific point you bottle and pasteurize the wine. The pasteurization will kill the yeast preventing them from producing more alcohol and more CO2 - but the problem is that you will be heating wine full of CO2 in a sealed container and the gas will expand and may burst the bottles.
Last point: for any carbonated wine (sparkling wine) you want to use either sparkling wine bottles - they are reinforced; champagne corks with cages - they are tethered to the bottle but excess pressure can force the cork from the bottle rather than cause the bottle to explode sending shards of glass in all directions - Or you can use plastic bottles that have some "give" and store the bottles in a refrigerator - the colder the better as that will inhibit any further action of the yeast.
Good luck - and hope this helps - elderflower wine is incredible, isn't it?