Newbie Question About Sanitation of Must

[FruityHops]

So it appears there are three options regarding sanitation or killing wild yeast and bacteria that might be in they honey when preparing must.

1) Do nothing. IE, no heat and no campden/sulfites. The Current Mead Making Techniques article doesn't mention campden nor does it mention heating, unless I've missed something.

2) Campden tables (sulfites). With this method you should add 1 tablet per gallon of must and let it sit for 24 hours before pitching yeast, correct?

3) Heat. Essentially pasteurization, IE heat the must to 140 for 30 minutes or so?

Are those three options valid, or am I misunderstanding something?

 

[landsknechte]

Apparently pasteurization is not so good. It kills off the delicate aromas, so effectively you may as well use store brand honey.

 

[Sailingeric]

I have done a couple meads and I did nothing. Honey is naturally antibacterial, that is why honey can keep forever.

 

[thm57]

The basic principle with doing nothing is that honey literally sucks all of the water out of anything living in it. Spores can survive this process and wake up to ferment or infect the must. This however takes much more time than it takes for added yeast to colonize the whole must to the point they can kill off virtually all other organisms and ferment you some tasty mead. The alcohol then stops any remaining organisms from growing.

At least that's my understanding of why the no heat or chemical method is safe.

Also the spores that survive are typically some other form of yeast anyways.

 

[ChrisVZ]

I use heat while preparing my must, not to sanitize it, but to aid in getting the honey dissolved.
I boil 1 1/2 gallons of water, add another 1/2 gallon of cold tap water to bring the water below boiling, add my honey and nutrients, and then top off to 5 gallons with more tap water. (Volumes of water are based on the normal temp of my cold water which is 48*F and room temperature honey. . You can use an online calculator for liquid mixing temps to adjust yours as required)
Preparing it this way puts the final temp of my must just above the ideal fermenting temp and gives my yeast a little extra warmth to kick off fermentation.

 

[CKuhns]

"Are those three options valid, or am I misunderstanding something?"

All three are valid and have been used by many. - Do what make you comfortable.

My practice is to do nothing other than start my yeast 48 - 72 hours prior to pitch to create Billions of healthy yeast.

Couple of benefits to this is that they will out perform anything else if it is there and with a Staggered Nutrient Addition protocol it makes for a much quicker and cleaner ferment.

 

[ElCid79]

Posted in wrong thread...