We've Got Bubbly...Accidently.

[wildoates]

Very accidently. We opened up a bottle of a semi-sweet trad we'd bottled several months ago and were surprised to hear a POP as the cork came out, followed by a rush of bubbles. It was carbonated, and I don't mean a little carbonated, but champagne carbonated. How those bottles didn't go kaboom is quite beyond me, I guess the mead gods were smiling down upon me. The dangerous woman's methode champenoise?

So we spent the afternoon yesterday carefully opening each bottle (a whole 5 gallon batch of 750s and 375s), gently pouring the carbonated mead into beer and champagne bottles, and crown capping the lot. It was so awesome we didn't want to lose the fizz, so we'll see how it goes.

As an aside, my Mother's Day gift was a Buon Vino filter, looking forward to using it on my next batches. If anyone who has used one has any tips I'd appreciate it. I haven't made anything but beer for months, but hopefully can this fall.

 

[Chevette Girl]

I have one, I don't use it much, I heard some folks complain about how much they lost due to leakage around the filters but I didn't find it too bad once I tightened the bejeebus out of it... Oh, and run a gallon of water through before you start or it might taste papery.

Congrats on a non-lethal accidentally sparkling mead, that's what happened with my first one Still tasty that way!

 

[Guinlilly]

We've got one. Use it for everything to make it sparkle! If you tighten 'em down enough there is no leaking. Can't say we ever get a 'papery taste' either by just running it through. You want to make sure the mead is CLEAR though, the filter is really just to make it sparkle or the pads clog super fast.

 

[Guinlilly]

Too late to add! We do soak the pads in a bit of water and I do believe J runs sulfited water through it before every filter.

 

[wildoates]

Do you run it through all three sizes?

 

[Noe Palacios]

I have Buon Vino SuperJet Filter. I use to filter each time I "rack" my mead. I start filtering year after fermentation, first coarse, 2 month later - fine, the I skip sterile ones because I use another filter with an absolute filter element.

Last sunday filtered 120 gallons in 2 hours. It took me 2 hours to prepare my filtering room. Almost forget, the leakage was only 0.5 liter.

Saludos

 

[Demolitron]

First of all I'm glad to hear no one lost an eye. Second, it makes me wonder about using bottle pasteurization. I want to try it out for good insurance against bottle bombs and I've read a number of posts about using it to make bottle conditioned sweet hard cider. Heating capped carbonated bottles sounds dangerous (or FUN).

I would image a safe process would be:
1) Bottle but don't cork the mead
2) Immerse the bottles in a 170F hot water bath
3) Wait until the internal temperature reaches 160F
4) Cool the bottles in an ice-water bath then cork.

Just a thought...

 

[wildoates]

This batch was stabilized before bottling, but it's proof positive that sometimes it takes a lot to shut down the yeasties.

 

[Chevette Girl]

I would image a safe process would be:
1) Bottle but don't cork the mead
2) Immerse the bottles in a 170F hot water bath
3) Wait until the internal temperature reaches 160F
4) Cool the bottles in an ice-water bath then cork.

Just a thought...

That would work fine for a still mead but I think using a pressure-cooker or pressure canner to pasteurize it would be a better bet if you want it to hold carbonation (leave the conditioned bottles sealed, it keeps the pressure outside your bottle high enough to keep the bottle from breaking from pressure inside the bottle), if you take the caps off something carbonated and then heat it, all the carbon dioxide will come out because warm must can't hold as much CO2 as cold must. You can't do this before it's bottle-carb'd or else there's no yeast alive to carb...

And I've heard of super-yeasties that survived pasteurization... nothing's EVER 100%...