bottle pasteurizing melomel

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

BWRIGHT

Supporting Member
HBT Supporter
Joined
Jan 17, 2008
Messages
404
Reaction score
11
Location
Indiana
I've had good luck backsweetening and bottle pasteurizing my ciders with no nocticeable change in the flavor profile; I'm wondering if I'll have the same luck with my strawberry melomel. I don't want to use anymore chemicals to stabilize before backsweetening, I'd prefer to just bottle pastuerize. Does anyone have any experience with this? I'm confident it will work. I'm just worried about degrading the strawberry flavor. I can definitely taste when a commercial cider has been stabilized with chemicals. It's quite evident to me and that's what I'm trying to avoid.
 
Are you stove top pasteurizing? I think it should be fine. Pasteurization takes away from the flavors a bit, but it does the job.
 
Yeah, I've been bottling and stove top pasteurizing. Honestly, I've never sorbated anything myself but I swear I can taste the difference between commercial examples and anything I homebrew. Maybe they are being overly cautious and using more than necessary but I'd prefer not to if I'll taste what's in those. I've also never pastuerized anything that's been corked, only capped.
 
Id be concerned that the pressure change from hearing them might cause the corks to shoot out... Maybe get the wire cages to hold them on if the will work on the bottles your using.
 
JFK said:
Id be concerned that the pressure change from hearing them might cause the corks to shoot out... Maybe get the wire cages to hold them on if the will work on the bottles your using.

This will only matter if you're planning on carbonating. If not, just pasteurize before you cork to release pressure. Leave minimal headspace. And personally, when doing a mead, I usually add enough honey to kill off my yeast, and sweeten from there. Saves time and effort.
 
I do like the idea of continually adding honey until the yeast dies off but I used KV-1116 on this and it tore through this melomel in 4 days. Went from 1.134 to .998 that quick. I don't really want it to go any higher than 18% to avoid a prolonged aging period. I am interested in using that technique to have a yest crap out around 12-14%. Any suggestion of a yeast to end around that ABV?
 
Back
Top