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sparkling confusion

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penguin5b

NewBee
Registered Member
Mar 14, 2013
29
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Harrisburg, PA
My recipe, (so far):

10 lbs peaches, 14 lbs orange blossom honey.
batch size will be about 4 gallons.

My ultimate goal is for this to be a sparkling peach mead. I know that I will be adding additional honey to the bottling bucket before I bottle in order to carbonate it.

So my question is this: If I use a low alcohol tolerance yeast, say 12%, and that yeast eats through the sugars to the point where the alcohol level makes yeast life untenable, how is it possible to achieve carbonation in the bottles if the yeast are then dead?

This aspect of mead-making has always been the most confusing for me.

Any help/suggestions are welcome.
 
I generally ferment to dryness well below a yeasts alcohol tolerance, then add the exact amount of honey or sugar at bottling to reach the appropriate carbonation level. Do not exceed 3 ATMs for regular beer bottles or 4 ATMs for champagne bottles.
 
For example, EC-1118 or DV10 are rated to 18% ABV. I would make a must that ferments to a max ABV of 13% (SG - 1.1, FG - 1.00). Once it reaches FG of 1.00, I would add an appropriate amount of sugar to each bottle to carbonate to my desired pressure and bottle my mead. The yeast will ferment dry again in the bottle, but have only enough sugar to carbonate and not enough to create a bottle bomb. Amounts of priming sugar to add depends on desired ATMs, bottle size, and sugar type (cane, corn, honey, etc.) Use a calculator for that.
 
Or of course, just make it how you want, dry, medium, sweet etc

Then buy a corny keg and ancillary kit, put the finished batch in it, pressure it up, chill it and serve.....

After all, the hard part isn't so much getting bubbles into it, its getting the bubbles in and then the liquid into bottles without having sediment in the bottle. ........
 
I remember that when I started making beer I would put one cup of corn sugar into one cup of water, stir it up boil it and add that to 5 gallons of beer. That would assure good carbonation for the entire batch of 50ish give or take bottles.

How that translates into honey I don't know, BUT...seems to me you don't need a whole lot. Or just get a corny like fatbloke said.. I tell ya, I bottled beer for about three batches before I just got a corny and Co2 kit. Now my capper is only used for making "rum and Coke" Cokes to take to the beach.

Nothing like opening up a nice cold Coca Cola legally..in public...in my Speedo. :o
 
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I've had good success using this calculator for figuring out dosage amounts.

On another note, be sure to add the dissolved sugar of your choosing to the entire batch, not to individual bottles. You can wind up with a massive amount of variation if you add a measured amount to each individual bottle...sometimes with explosive results.
 
YogiBearMead726 said:
I've had good success using this calculator for figuring out dosage amounts.

On another note, be sure to add the dissolved sugar of your choosing to the entire batch, not to individual bottles. You can wind up with a massive amount of variation if you add a measured amount to each individual bottle...sometimes with explosive results.
Click to expand...

Yeah we had a great beer mentor here in Miami that owned a little shop called "Wine and Brew by You." If you listened to what he said, you made great beer from the start! (kind of like you guys and mead) Anyway, he had a whole song and dance when he sold you your first kit about adding the priming sugar to the BUCKET not the bottles...
 
My grandpa used to make beer and he'd add sugar to the bottles, and the first few times I carb'd something up so did I because I had no idea how to figure out how to prime and I knew my grandpa's stuff never exploded with 1 tsp sugar per beer bottle... now I do know better, so I add to the bucket.
 
Most cuvees for sparkling wines ferment dry to about 11-12%. You want to be very sure it gets dry, and 1.000 is not dry enough. You're looking for more like 0.985-0.990. This way only the priming sugar contributes to carbonation.

If you want it to be sweet, check out "methode champenoise". You can add a sweet dosage after disgorging the yeast.
 
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