Sediment in bottles after 3 week

[Noe Palacios]

Hi everybody !

I use buon vino filter in order to obtain a shining mead, first I use the coarse pads, then I use the fine pads and when I bottle I use a 0.5 micron filter in the bottling line. Well, three weeks ago I bottled some mead, but now there is a sediment in the bottles, the sediment looks like yeast in the bottom of the bottles, but when I shake the bottle this sediment went darker, then I shaked again an it seems like it disolves, but after a few minutes it will be in the bottom of the bottles. What could it be?

Thank you

 

[Medsen Fey]

Hello Noe,

If your mead still smells and tastes okay, my guess is that you still have some yeast in the bottle forming the sediment (perhaps along with some protein complexes). I have found that filtering may still allow a significant amount of material to pass through. Unless I am mistaken, the buon vino filters are "nominal" filters. This means that they will remove around 75% of the particles at the stated size (in this case 0.5 microns), and will probably filter greater than 90-95% of particles at 1 micron size (the size of yeast). If you still have a very cloudy mead, and filter it in this way, you may still wind up with enough particles remaining to form sediment, or if there is residual sugar to continue fermentation (which will form sediment along with gas).

The ways around the problem may include fining to clear the mead as much as possible before filtering (or letting it settle and clear as much as possible). If you can reduce the number of particles going into the filter, you will retain a fraction of that smaller amount in the mead(but it will be a lot less). Another alternative is to use "absolute" filters. Absolute filters will remove 99%+ of the particles at a stated size - you will get a more complete removal of yeast using a 1 micron absolute filter than a 0.5 micron nominal filter. I am not sure if there is an absolute filter for your machine (but there probably is). Another factor is the rate of filtration - the faster you pull the mead through, the more particles will come through. Most nominal filters use electrostatic charges to help bind the particles, and the slower they are moving the more apt they are to "stick" - so using the slowest rate possible should improve your filter's performance - preferably less than 2 liters per minute.

I hope that gives you some help.

Medsen

 

[Kee]

I'm curious the history of this mead. How old was it when racked, how many times was it racked was it a show or other, and what kind of yeast did you use? Details please.

 

[Noe Palacios]

OSG-1.0980; after 6 week FSG - 1.0020. I made 60 gls conical fermenter similar to the V Vessel, so I don´t rack, I separate the sedimets by removing the lower collector, but I repeat this procedure 3 times.The used yeast is ICV-D47. The interesting thing is that the mead still clear after shaking the bottle, seems this sediment disolves when shaking. I had heard that sulphurs make this kind of thing in sodas, Could it be sulphurs?

 

[Kee]

I'm still a novice myself, but I think you bottled too early. It's probably still clearing and/or fermenting.

I'm a bit jealous of the 60g fermentor. Sounds nice!

 

[Noe Palacios]

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