Mead Lover's Digest #0367 Mon 28 November 1994

 

Forum for Discussion of Mead Making and Consuming
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor

 

Contents:

Sorbates (MEADMSTR@aol.com)
MEAD LOVER`S DIGEST #366, (Lee Bussy)
wine/mead stabilizers (Gordon L. Olson)

 

Send ONLY articles for the digest to mead-lovers@eklektix.com.
Use mead-lovers-request@eklektix.com for subscribe, unsubscribe, and admin

requests. When subscribing, please include your name and a good address
in the message body unless you're sure your mailer generates them.

There is an FTP archive of the digest on sierra.stanford.edu in pub/mead.

If you have email access but not ftp, it will accept "listserv" requests.
Send email with message "help" to listserv@sierra.stanford.edu.

 


Subject: Sorbates
From: MEADMSTR@aol.com
Date: Fri, 25 Nov 1994 11:10:20 -0500

Sorbic acid / potassium sorbate is like other agents, pH and alcohol

dependant. The pKa is at pH 4.7, thus decreases in pH from 4.7 yield
proportionate increase in the active "dissociative" form. The primary use for
sorbic acid is as a fungicide. sorbates do NOT kill yeast, but if used
correctly, can be used to inhibit yeast growth. It has little or no effect on
acetic and lactic acid bacteria. At pH 2.8 almost 99% is dissociated, at pH
4.8 50%.

As for alcohol dependancy…
EtOH % Sorbate / mg / L

 


10 -11 150
12 100
14 50

 

A characteristic odor of the use of sorbates is "geranium.", formed by
2,4 hexadien-1-ol and lactate esters, and some acetates ( noteably ethyl
acetate, caused by oxidation of EtOH)

Wassail and happy brewing,
meadmstr@aol.com

 


Subject: MEAD LOVER`S DIGEST #366,
From: Lee Bussy <leeb@southwind.net>
Date: Fri, 25 Nov 1994 12:12:24 -0600

To: mead-lovers@eklektix.com

Hi All!

I posted this once before but never got an answer:

I'm interested in knowing anything anybody can say about anti-foam
agents such as referenced in Acton & Duncan's book.

Seems like it might be a good deal. Comments?

Also, I'm organizing a competition in Wichita, Kansas on March 25th.
I'm just getting my mailing list together just now but I would like to
hear from those of you interested in competing.

I'll add you to the list and you will get the packet when it's done
(next week I hope).

# Lee C. Bussy #
# leeb@southwind.net #
# Wichita, Kansas #

* RM 1.3 * Eval Day 1 *


Subject: wine/mead stabilizers
From: glo@beta.lanl.gov (Gordon L. Olson)
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 1994 08:05:46 -0600


People have mentioned potassium sorbate for stabilizing meads.
I have been using sodium benzoate with good success in killing
off the yeasts in my meads. I have never noticed any flavor
changes due to using sodium benzoate.

Does anyone have any information about the pros and cons of
these two stabilizers? Is one better or worse than the other?

Thanks for the info.

Gordon


End of Mead Lover's Digest #367