Ideal temperature for mead storage and aging

[phtsantanna]

I have been a bit concerned about the conditioning of my recently bottled mead (and my upcoming batches). Weather in my city is mild compared to other parts of the country. Still, I can't count on the temperature being mostly below 25º C (77º F) throughout the year. And since I don't have a cellar or proper storage room, I decided to buy a wine cooler to store my mead bottles. I also buy some good wines from time to time and saw this as an opportunity to improve their aging as well.

My question is, what would be the ideal storage temperature for most meads? I assume this depends on each mead's characteristics, whether it's a melomel, show mead, etc. But I would like your insights in order to find a golden mean. I currently have a Medium Sweet Mead and will soon bottle a Dry Blueberry Vanilla Melomel. I thought that setting the cellar to 12º C (54º F) would be a good idea, since it's considered by many as the optimal for wine storage. Also, this would allow me to include a few wine bottles. What would you say?

Thanks

 

[Bob1016]

I store my meads at ambient which runs 70-77F for the most part (21-25C), and don't see any downsides. I guess the 54-57F range recommended for wine will work best if you have the ability to keep it there. Temp fluctuation is more detrimental than warm storage, so just make sure it's stable in temp.


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[mannye]

I store my meads at ambient which runs 70-77F for the most part (21-25C), and don't see any downsides. I guess the 54-57F range recommended for wine will work best if you have the ability to keep it there. Temp fluctuation is more detrimental than warm storage, so just make sure it's stable in temp.


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What is the fluctuation range that gets into a problem? I'm noticing between 4 and 5 degrees F in my storage freezer... the alternative is 80 to 90 outside.

 

[Bob1016]

Gradual change is considered ok, but 10F in a day or 5F in 1hr would probably be the limit. I'll have to dig up some papers for specifics.


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[phtsantanna]

Thanks guys. This helps.

I will set the cooler to maintain 12º C (54º F). If I happen to run out of space I will just leave some bottles out and avoid significant temperature fluctuations.

Cheers

 

[icedmetal]

I'd be curious to try leaving a few bottles in controlled storage, and a few bottles out, then try them in blind tests over a period of years. Yet another experiment to add to my backlog

 

[Stasis]

I think I already saw such an experiment done somewhere on the forums icedmetal. The ones in a cooler, controlled setting ended up tasting better. You can find a comment here made by wayneb which indicates that at a cooler cellar temp he seemed to get better results:
http://www.gotmead.com/forum/showthread.php/16120-Effects-of-temperature-on-bulk-aging?
Also, a different post by Oskaar seems to indicate that storing in a storage freezer at 4-5F might not be the ideal storage conditions either because of vibrations. Although 80-90F might not be ideal either so you might need to choose the lesser of 2 evils:
http://www.gotmead.com/forum/showthread.php/10319-Aging-Temperature

So, depending on what is your controlled storage, unless it is a nice cool wine cellar you might not get that big of a difference in your experiments unless you age for a couple of years.. Both might be somewhat worse than cellar aging

EDIT: By the way I've noticed that in the rules section for posting comments in threads it states that links should be cropped using maybe something with bit.ly when they are long. However, I've also noticed that these forums also automatically crop the link by introducing some elipses in the middle of the link (...). So do you guys think I don't need to bother with going to other sites to shorten my links? thanks