Aged mead

[Mightyballs]

So I made a few batches of mead and they all are pretty much gone and I wanted to make around 15 gallons this time to keep and let sit long term this time but I was reading that bottled mead will only sit for up to 5 years.i thought mead would last forever if it remained unopened.so I guess my question is,if I make a ton of mead,do I have to drink it within 5 years or will it last so my great great great great great great etc grandkids can enjoy it when I’m eventually not here any more?I planned on building my own wine cellar but with mead but if it’s gonna go bad,I don’t want to waste all those ingredients?

 

[DBhomebrew]

I think you're safe with something between 5yrs and seven generations. For the latter, plant an orchard.

 

[Rish]

Make sure your bottles are well sealed (maybe waxed?), store cool and dark and you should be good for many years.

 

[CKuhns]

Mead sealed and temp controlled will not go bad. It acts similarly to wine when aged.

 

[Horseflesh Inferno]

About a month ago I opened a bottle that I brewed 10 years ago. It was even better than I remember when I first made it. Yeah just keep them in a cool dark place and they should be fine.

 

[Miraculix]

All good advices so far. I want to add that the higher the abv, the better it is for long long long term aging. So maxing out the yeasts abilities and choosing one that can go a little bit higher than the average might be a good idea. I'd also wax the bottles.

 

[MxWhiskey]

I'd highly suggest bottling with natural cork so it can breathe like wine does and truly age in the bottle, unless you want to bulk age. But it sounds like you want to have some bottles set aside like people do for traditional wine.

A few things to consider:

• Age and quality are NOT always synonymous. Things can age poorly and very old wine often does.
• Please either stabilize or pasteurize your mead. I'm ok drawing hate for this, but letting something unpasteurized or not stabilized chemically sit for that long is a fantastic way to grow botulism. Now, obviously if made following good sanitization practices the risk is very low, but if this is something you want your grandchildren to enjoy why risk it? In before the influx of "I've been aging mead/wine for years and never gotten sick!" crowd, That's fine, you do you. This is my suggestion as someone that cares about health and safety.
• Part of maintaining a wine cellar is making sure the humidity, temperature, and lighting are ok. They take a good amount of work to maintain, and you should rotate your bottles every so often. If you think you can maintain that and are ok assuming the risk of your mead aging into something undrinkable, have fun!

Ultimately there are things you can do to help ensure a good age, but aging for very long periods is risky and often enough leads to failure. If you think you'll have fun and learn from the potential failures, then absolutely give it a shot!

 

[MightyMosin]

I agree with a lot of the comments above especially about the higher ABV helping aging and the stabilizing of the mead. Proper sanitization will also be key.

If corking, spend the money on good quality corks. Avoid the Agglomerated ones at all cost.

You want the grade 1 corks and know that after a max of 20 years you should pull those corks and stopper them again.
Waxing the bottle will help limit the amount of O2, but I don't really know how much that affects over a really long period.

 

[An Ankoù]

Please either stabilize or pasteurize your mead. I'm ok drawing hate for this, but letting something unpasteurized or not stabilized chemically sit for that long is a fantastic way to grow botulism. Now, obviously if made following good sanitization practices the risk is very low, but if this is something you want your grandchildren to enjoy why risk it? In before the influx of "I've been aging mead/wine for years and never gotten sick!" crowd, That's fine, you do you. This is my suggestion as someone that cares about health and safety.

In the interest of health and safety, it's worth mentioning that doing something you think is safe, but isn't can be as bad, or worse, than doing nothing at all.

From what I've gleaned about botulism, there are four issues: The bacterium, the spores, the toxins, different varieties.
I gather that neither stabilising (whatever that is) nor pasteurising will kill the spores; these need to be heat treated above 121C, under pressure for several minutes.
The bacterium is killed when the alcohol content reaches 6% abv. Any spores that "hatch" would be killed by the alcohol so ageing the mead isn't an issue. Of course, after consumption, the spores could develop in the gut, but there would be no more than in the original ingredients since the bacterium cells have been killed and were unable to produce any more.
Toxins would be an issue if you were using badly infected source ingredients or poor sanitation. I don't know what level would be harmful or how they are denatured, but let's hope we are all avoiding contaminated materials.
Different varieties of the bacteria. I really don't know how they behave in alcoholic solutions or whether they are relevant to this discussion. It may be they are only relevant to choosing an antibiotic. (Or not!)

Let's also remember that wine and cider also use uncooked natural ingredients that are not pasteurised. And even bulk produced wines and ciders often only contain sulphur dioxide as an antioxidant. It so happens that c. botulinum is a gram positive bacterium and would be vulnerable to the presence of SO2 if the cells had not already been poisoned by the alcohol.

Bottom line is that I'm not going to add any sulphites or sorbates to my mead or ruin it by attempting to pasteurise it as these processes do nothing to reduce any perceived danger.

On the other hand, I may have misunderstood how these things work and so, if it's clear that I have got something wrong, then please say so.