Pasteurized Tea?

[fmacgahan]

Hi all, as a new beekeeper, I used half of my first season's honey harvest to make 3 batches of mead, first just plain mead with 5.25% alcohol based on starting and final gravity, next a batch of melomel that started as half the plain honey batch with almost 2 Kilograms of dried cranberries and goji berries I re-hydrated and pasteurized in bottled water before adding, and finally I am working on a sack mead with an 18+% ABV target with tea I pasteurized in bottled water and put in a pre-boiled hop bag before adding. From what I am reading on blogs, I should not leave the tea leaves in the mead for more than 2 weeks. Can anyone confirm how long I can keep tea with mixed rosehips and spices in my secondary without ill effects? I thought it would help to pasteurize it first, so I heated it to 70 degrees Celsius for over 5 minutes to Pasteurize it, then put the base of the saucepan in the sink with cold water until it cooled enough to keep it from killing my yeast before putting in the secondary. I wonder if this is the best method? I'm sure 5 minutes at 70 C pulls a lot of flavor out of the tea, but maybe there's a better way to make sack mead with tea infusion?

 

[Squatchy]

Hi all, as a new beekeeper, I used half of my first season's honey harvest to make 3 batches of mead, first just plain mead with 5.25% alcohol based on starting and final gravity, next a batch of melomel that started as half the plain honey batch with almost 2 Kilograms of dried cranberries and goji berries I re-hydrated and pasteurized in bottled water before adding, and finally I am working on a sack mead with an 18+% ABV target with tea I pasteurized in bottled water and put in a pre-boiled hop bag before adding. From what I am reading on blogs, I should not leave the tea leaves in the mead for more than 2 weeks. Can anyone confirm how long I can keep tea with mixed rosehips and spices in my secondary without ill effects? I thought it would help to pasteurize it first, so I heated it to 70 degrees Celsius for over 5 minutes to Pasteurize it, then put the base of the saucepan in the sink with cold water until it cooled enough to keep it from killing my yeast before putting in the secondary. I wonder if this is the best method? I'm sure 5 minutes at 70 C pulls a lot of flavor out of the tea, but maybe there's a better way to make sack mead with tea infusion?

I never add any flavor adjuncts into a mead without being able to pull each one at the precise time I want to remove them. I would also suggest not to add all of them at once. You will have a hard time trying to judge a moving target that is made up of several parts. Unless it's required to make the style of mead, you want to make. I never add any of the other ingredients until after the primary is over, stabilized, and has set at least long enough that you can rack off most of the garbage in the mead. If all you want to add is spices. Add them once you are at that point. Too much happens in the early part of a mead's life for you to know where it will end up. So how can you know what is appropriate? Especially when you are young.

Example. A pyment is made of honey, yeast and grapes. You can add the grasp after you have fermented the honey if you want. Or you can add the juice upfront or half and half. I would let it ferment and age before adding any types of wood adjuncts you can add for the tannins they create. You can't know how tart or how "not tart" the grape is until after you figure out what sweetness you are looking for.

If you are going to add spices. Please wait until you have a clear and aged traditional, and then add one spice at a time and pull the one you have in it before you add the next one. You are looking at this as if mead is made from a recipe. I guess you could make a recipe once you have done the above as many times as is needed to know you have it dialed in.

In my opinion, based on experience. You don't have much luck tossing a bunch of this into a bucket and hope it all works out. You have no control over that. If you add one at a time and pull it out where you like it before adding something else. At least you have control over that and can contour your finished profile a step at a time.

 

[fmacgahan]

Thanks! My goal is to get strong flavors of signature Syrian Spice Tea, so I started the sack mead on on 10 May 2023 at 1.41 starting gravity for a target ABV of 18+% and waited to add spices/tea to the fermenter until 23 May 2023 (about 2 weeks later) so primary fermentation had slowed down to nearly stopped. As of today, the tea leaves/spices have been in the hop bag in the carboy (held under the surface by a long thermometer I sanitized with Star-San) for 12 days. The question I have now is how long is too long to leave the leaves/spices in the fermenter? I heard 2 weeks is about the longest to leave them in, but maybe if I am keeping the hop bag submerged, it is safe (and advisable?) to leave them in longer to get the strongest tea/spice flavor I can? Thanks again, and thank you in advance for any additional advice

 

[Squatchy]

Thanks! My goal is to get strong flavors of signature Syrian Spice Tea, so I started the sack mead on on 10 May 2023 at 1.41 starting gravity for a target ABV of 18+% and waited to add spices/tea to the fermenter until 23 May 2023 (about 2 weeks later) so primary fermentation had slowed down to nearly stopped. As of today, the tea leaves/spices have been in the hop bag in the carboy (held under the surface by a long thermometer I sanitized with Star-San) for 12 days. The question I have now is how long is too long to leave the leaves/spices in the fermenter? I heard 2 weeks is about the longest to leave them in, but maybe if I am keeping the hop bag submerged, it is safe (and advisable?) to leave them in longer to get the strongest tea/spice flavor I can? Thanks again, and thank you in advance for any additional advice

I would usually say two weeks. You can always add more. Like I said. How do you know whether or not it might already be too strong? Your mead is so you you don't even know what it tastes like. And won't for a good while. If you started at 1410 you probably won't reach 18 % unless you did a few things that are only normal for super high starting gravities. That high can kill as much as 50% of your yeast at pitch. And can run short of getting to 18%.

One way to look at how long your additions might fair. is look how tea just a couple of days old in your dinner glass starts to get funky. That's going on in your mead. And maybe even worse due to how alcohol can leach flavors out of things so much faster in some instances.

This is a great place to start learning about making mead, friend.

 

[fmacgahan]

Oops, I mean my starting gravity was 1.141 and now it's 1.048 (according to Meadmakr ABC calculator, that means it should be 12.6% ABV now and I'm going for 18+). I tasted my mead and it seemed overly-sweet, so I put a bit in a sanitized saucepan and created a new slurry with a second packet of the champagne yeast I am using for this sack mead (Lalvin K1-V1116). I removed the tea leaves and spices and shook well to oxygenate the new batch of yeast before topping off a few inches from the neck and sealing with an airlock filled with Star-San. I hope I am correct in thinking the yeast weakened, sickened, or died before eating all the sugar, because I think my final gravity is supposed to be closer to 1 or even less? I will check the airlock tomorrow morning to see if the yeast is creating bubbles Thanks again for your advice; the brew already tastes a LOT like tea, so I'm glad I listened to you and took out the leaves and spices!

 

[Squatchy]

I doubt your new yeast can survive trying to start in the condition you have placed it. Try this

 

[fmacgahan]

Ugh, okay. If I don't see bubbles coming from the airlock tomorrow, I'll go out and buy some yeast hulls and nutrient. I already threw away the lees. I can go through the steps shown by gradually transferring my must into another carboy to be the mother restart tank.

 

[Chevette Girl]

Live and learn Before I started using more than just DAP (what was available when I started almost 20 years ago) I didn't often get anything to get much past about 15% no matter what the yeast said it could do.

When I go for a high ABV mead I like to do staggered honey additions, I'll start no higher than 1.125 or so, give it a really good start with an acclimated starter and staggered nutrient additions, and check the SG daily, and every time it gets below my lower sweetness threshhold, I add more honey up to my upper sweetness threshhold, then wherever it stops at least I know it won't be TOO sweet.

 

[Squatchy]

Ugh, okay. If I don't see bubbles coming from the airlock tomorrow, I'll go out and buy some yeast hulls and nutrient. I already threw away the lees. I can go through the steps shown by gradually transferring my must into another carboy to be the mother restart tank.

You're gonna be in Strugletown now. You tossed away all your soldiers

 

[fmacgahan]

Miraculously, I checked the carboy yesterday and it was bubbling every 15 seconds, so I guess the second packet of LALVIN K1-V1116 yeast survived, even in a 12.6% ABV environment I added 5 grams of Nutravit yeast nutrient to the 5 liter carboy today to make sure the yeast has enough materials to reproduce. Crossing my fingers that this sack mead will reach a final gravity around 1.0 or less with 18% or more ABV. Any additional advice is welcome; for example, with my airlock bubbling every 15 seconds, do I still need to go through the full procedure to restart a "stuck" fermentation?

 

[fmacgahan]

Ugh, again I added the correct dose of yeast nutrient according to instructions from my brewing supply store (5 grams Nutravit in a 5 liter carboy). I boiled the nutrient in bottled water in a sanitized pot for 2 minutes, then cooled it to 36 degrees C by holding the base of the pot in a larger pot full of cold water before I poured it in my carboy. I checked it about 30 minutes later and the airlock was bubbling every 13 seconds, but now it totally stopped again. Should I wait 24-72 hours to see if it starts bubbling again, or just start a full procedure to restart a "stuck" fermentation now?

 

[fmacgahan]

From what I am reading, my airlock could have a leak. I will ensure it's sealed, and, since this is a sack mead that will take a year to finish aging, I'll give it a week before doing anything drastic. If it's not bubbling by next weekend, I'll go through the entire procedure to restart the "stuck" fermentation, maybe even add packet #3 of LALVIN K1-V1116 yeast to make sure it has the best chances to reach final gravity around 1.0 or lower to achieve my 18% ABV target. Any other advice is certainly welcome

 

[fmacgahan]

Well, I shook the carboy and checked it again an hour later and the airlock is back to bubbling; now every 12 seconds

 

[fmacgahan]

I added all the sugar I should need at the beginning of primary fermentation SG 1.141 and am going for FG 1.0 or less. I'd rather not add honey as long as the yeast is still eating ... carboy is still bubbling every 12 seconds as of this morning I hope I still reach 18% or higher ABV.

 

[Squatchy]

Bubbles don't mean a thing. It will give off gasses for a long while after the fermentation is over. Only a gravity reading with your hydro means anything. Also. Once a mead reaches 9% ABV. They won't eat anymore YAN. So your add did nothing for the yeast. I'd be willing to bet you have nothing here that will save this batch except the protocol I sent your way.

Get a pen and paper and start here. https://gotmead.com/blog/gotmead-live/9-5-17-ryan-carlson-modern-mead-making-yeast/

 

[fmacgahan]

Oh well. I am in no hurry. Just to make sure, I will monitor daily until bubbling slows significantly (still bubbles every 15 seconds after 2 more days). When it's bubbling less than once every 5 minutes, I'll take another gravity measurement with a wine thief sanitized in Star-San. If the gravity is still stuck at 1.048. If it is, I know without any doubt that it's stuck, so I'll do the whole restart procedure. However, from the last comment in this thread, I don't think adding more Nutravit (yeast nutrient) will do any good, since it's already at 12.6% ABV. Any other modifications I should make to the restart procedure? I can't really change the temperature since it's our coolest room (and I'm in Portugal) so it's a pretty-constant 76 degrees Farenheit, but I am able to keep it in constant darkness, which I think helps? Thanks for all the advice!

 

[Squatchy]

Don't feed it anymore. Dark rooms make no beneficial difference. Only once you bottle do you want to keep it out of sunlight

 

[fmacgahan]

Thanks! I am keeping the room dark because the first session meads I bottled are also stored there. They turned out pretty good I started with a plain old mead with only honey as the sugar source and it reached 5.25% ABV at final gravity. I used half of it to make a melomel with a 1.8 kilogram mix of mostly cranberries and few goji berries that I hydrated and pasteurized at 70 degrees Celsius before adding to the must. I ended up only filling one 5 liter carboy with melomel due to my inexperience. I should have santized my hands and wrung out the hop bag filled with berries before removing from the primary fermentation bucket because it absorbed A LOT of melomel I have no idea what final ABV it has, but it's whatever sugar the yeast ate out of the berries, over and above the 5.25% it would have had with just honey

 

[Squatchy]

If you can eat something straight to your mouth or on a plate. Then there is no reason to pasteurize it.