I’m following a simple video on YouTube which covers yeast starting, sanitization and setting up the mead.
My question is, if I back sweeten my Meade after a few months… Won’t that just wake up the yeast and get them producing more alchohol? I saw somebody say something about a chemical to stabilize it but what if I don’t want a chemical in my Brew?
Is there an alternative?
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pasteurization then sweetening is your answer here if you don’t want to use the standard potassium sorbate and potassium metabisulfate. Sometimes when I want to bottle carb something and then backsweeten it I’ll just bottle carb it as per usual and serve it with simple syrup as well (if you fancy this is a lovely time to add fresh herbs too)
Your options to backsweeten are as follows;
- Increase the alcohol content past the tolerance of the yeast. This will result in a beverage of 12% or higher ABV.
You can do this by starting with a higher initial gravity (this is my approach for sweet meads), or adding sugar until the fermentation stops restarting, or adding neutral spirits to bring the abv up, then backsweeten.
- Ferment to dry, then add sulfites to prevent the yeast from reactivating, then backsweeten as desired.
Warning! This doesn’t always work, and it’s hard to predict how much sulfite is necessary, if you add too much it can negatively impact the flavor.
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Ferment to dry, then use filters down to 1 micron to filter out the yeast, then backsweeten as desired.
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Ferment to dry, then backsweeten just before consumption.
Most commercial producers filter and add sulfites.
Having recently tried the filtering thing, it’s still a roll of the dice unless you’re using the much more expensive professional grade filters.
It does get your mead clear as hell though, and removes a ton of off flavors.
Yeah, if you’re filtering for yeast you gotta go pro.
I’d love to do so, but the price seems to jump up by an order of magnitude and it’s difficult to justify. I’ll probably be trying a combo of filter + sulfites going forward.
Has anyone tried using a very low attenuation yeast, like Lalbrew Windsor or Safale S-33?
If the low attenuation is because of the inability of the yeast to process certain sugars, there would be little use in mead where you mostly get very simple sugars.
Makes total sense. Thanks for the thoughtful reply!
Adding alcohol to bring your mead to 12-15% and then adding more sugar is the principle behind fortified wine like port. The chemical you’re referring to is sulphites, which are produced naturally by yeast anyway.
In order to safely backsweeten a mead that is < abv tolerance of the yeast though requires both Sulfite and Sorbate. The sorbate prevents the yeast from dividing and multiplying. The sulfite inhibits yeast function, and prevents bacterial infection.
The yeast has a tolerance to about ~12° ABV. Past that, it dies. So if you happen to sweeten your mead, it will not wake up since it has long gone to sleep.
alcoholo tolerance varies greatly species to species and if you’re brewing so strong that yeast dies of alcohol exposure you’re going to introduce tons of off flavors.
Wow that is super good to know!! So as long as I wait it out and take grav readings until 12% abv and then backsweeten I should be good to go?
Different yeasts have different tolerances, so it’s worth checking which one you used. For safety, i’d also keep it in your fermented for a while after sweetening, and bottle once the gravity reading has been consistently stable over a few days.
I would absolutely not do this, it’s a fast way to paint your ceiling.
Could you clarify for me?
the finings will clarify for you (lol)
in all seriousness, you can’t count on 12% to be where yeast dies due to alcohol. Some yeast tolerates up to 20%, and even strains that are marked to 12% could overperform a bit. What that means is, if you follow these directions, you very well could wake your yeast back up and end up building pressure in the bottles. This could cause them to explode and fling mead everywhere (hence, painting your ceiling). The only ways you can count on to be able to backsweeten without risk of reactivating the yeast culture are chemical (potassium metabisulfate and potassium sorbate) or pasteurizing before backsweetening. Since you said you don’t want to go the chemical route, pasteurization is the best way to go.
Ah good tip, I’ll look into how to pasteurize
Following that principle you could also stop the fermentation early by adding ethanol to your mead and the taste will be sweeter.
By ethanol do you mean like everclear? Can consumers buy that in all states?
Ethanol is the regular alcohol, yeah. You can use vodka too, that’s just ethanol with water.
I had to look-up what everclear is, it sounds like some kind of industrial solvent, haha
Ethanol is alcohol, I don’t know what everclear is. If you don’t have access to pure alcohol (which is often banned) you can replace it with a strong alcohol : vodka, rum, eau de vie, absinthe, … until you reach your desired alcohol content (generally ~15° ABV)
