Maturing mead

[honeybrewmead]

Hello,
I've made my second batch of mead. It was fermenting for 12 days and after reading the hydrometer it said 1.006. I proceeded to bottle it because i didn't want a dry mead which would surely happen if i left it to ferment further. I didn't use any yeast stopper. So i filled 16 bottles of mead and placed them in the dark room. Then it hit me. I probably made bottlebombs. Upon reading a few posts about mead i found an advice to put the bottles in the fridge to stop the yeast from making co2. What im concerned about now is will the mead mature in the fridge? Will the yeast come back to life if i take it out of the fridge after some time and put it in the dark room to mature and blow up my bottles?
I understand i made the mistake of bottling too early. Im still learning and my next mead will stay in secondary for a few months before bottling.

 

[madscientist451]

Will the yeast come back to life if i take it out of the fridge after some time and put it in the dark room to mature and blow up my bottles?

Maybe, maybe not. Can't really tell with the information that has been provided. After 12 days the gravity was 1.006, so what was the starting gravity? What yeast did you use? There's a chance the alcohol level is high enough that the yeast can't go any further.
Also, you can heat pasteurize your bottled mead and then you won't have to worry about it.

 

[honeybrewmead]

Maybe, maybe not. Can't really tell with the information that has been provided. After 12 days the gravity was 1.006, so what was the starting gravity? What yeast did you use? There's a chance the alcohol level is high enough that the yeast can't go any further.
Also, you can heat pasteurize your bottled mead and then you won't have to worry about it.

Og was 1.080. the yeast i used was a wine yeast. I do not have more info on the yeast. The package was vague and said 5g for 25L of wine. I made 14L of mead with it. Added 20g of yeast nutrients as well.

 

[honeybrewmead]

Heat pasteurizing at the moment. thanks for the advice!

 

[honeybrewmead]

Heat pasteurizing at the moment. thanks for the advice!

Uhh one bottle broke during heat pasteurizing process. Temp was 85°C but i guess the bottom of the pot was hotter :/

 

[Berol]

85C is very hot for pasteurization (185 F). You only need it above 140 for 20ish minutes to pasteurize. Going over 170 degrees brings you over the boiling point for ethanol as well which isn't desired.

Best practice would be to use a metal wire rack at the bottom of your water pot to keep the bottles off the bottom surface which will be warmer than the water in the pot. This is the kind of rack that folks canning preserves in Mason Jars will use.

Combining the above information into your next attempt should help to keep you from breaking bottles.

 

[whattabrau]

I didn't use any yeast stopper.

There is no such thing as "yeast stopper", except heat. You can prevent yeast from multiplying with sorbate resulting and a very very slow and never observably progressing fermentation if you start with a low cellcount, and you can shock it at least for a while with sulfite, but you can't *reliably* stop yeast. The emphasis is on the keyword.

Upon reading a few posts about mead i found an advice to put the bottles in the fridge to stop the yeast from making co2.

Cold does not reliably stop all fermentation, so you may eventually have gushers and bombs even if you keep the bottles cold.

Both chemicals and cold may work even if used improperly, but since the injury risk from exploding glass is high, it's better to not take the chance. For future reference, the easiest way to make a mead with residual sweetness is to ferment it completely dry, let it clear so as to minimize the amount of yeast in suspension, rack it, add sulfate and sorbate, and then sweeten to taste.

If I would pasteurize (which I don't), I'd do it with a sous vide device to ensure that everything is uniformly heated. As a bonus, you can just set the temperature and timer and walk away. Still, the key to safe pasteurization is having a sufficiently large gas cushion in the bottle -- liquid expands when heated, and unlike gas it doesn't care about pressure buildup in any practical magnitude.

 

[honeybrewmead]

There is no such thing as "yeast stopper", except heat. You can prevent yeast from multiplying with sorbate resulting and a very very slow and never observably progressing fermentation if you start with a low cellcount, and you can shock it at least for a while with sulfite, but you can't *reliably* stop yeast. The emphasis is on the keyword.

Cold does not reliably stop all fermentation, so you may eventually have gushers and bombs even if you keep the bottles cold.

Both chemicals and cold may work even if used improperly, but since the injury risk from exploding glass is high, it's better to not take the chance. For future reference, the easiest way to make a mead with residual sweetness is to ferment it completely dry, let it clear so as to minimize the amount of yeast in suspension, rack it, add sulfate and sorbate, and then sweeten to taste.

If I would pasteurize (which I don't), I'd do it with a sous vide device to ensure that everything is uniformly heated. As a bonus, you can just set the temperature and timer and walk away. Still, the key to safe pasteurization is having a sufficiently large gas cushion in the bottle -- liquid expands when heated, and unlike gas it doesn't care about pressure buildup in any practical magnitude.

Ill keep that in mind thanks. After a few hours i checked on the pasteurized bottles and they still had co2 when i opened the cork (im using glass vodka bottles with aluminium screw-on tops) so im concerned they still might blow up. Ill degas them every day by opening the top in hopes it will diminish over time.

 

[whattabrau]

Ill keep that in mind thanks. After a few hours i checked on the pasteurized bottles and they still had co2 when i opened the cork (im using glass vodka bottles with aluminium screw-on tops) so im concerned they still might blow up. Ill degas them every day by opening the top in hopes it will diminish over time.

Naeh, don't bother degassing. If you successfully pasteurized the high point of bottle stress was during pasteurization, and if you didn't it's a race against time. Also, you'll just vent the headspace, and given that the CO2 is roughly equally split between the gas and liquid as a proportion of the respective volumes, removing a fraction of, say, 1/20th of the total amount in the bottle will have you venting for months. If you don't like the CO2 from a drinking perspective, you can fairly efficiently remove it after pouring by swirling the glass for a few minutes.

If you plan to pasteurize in the future, consider using bottles that are rated to handle pressure. For recycled bottles it means using something that came with a carbonated beverage.