I experimented a bit with slow pasteurizing. I say slow because it takes some time on the stove to bring a gallon of mead up to 160F. After doing that, I capped it and let it sit at room temperature to cool off. Unfortunately, it didn't clear, even after subsequently cold crashing it, so I had to clear it with bentonite.
I don't have the equipment to do a proper flash pasteurizing (as is done with milk), but I did try to approximate it and got better results than with the slow pasteurizing. What I did was this: I pasteurized 500ml at a time. This allowed it to heat up much faster on the gas stove. Then, immediately after hitting the pasteurization temperature and time, I cooled it down rapidly in an ice bath. I used a borosilicate beaker as the holding vessel for the 500ml mead so that the glass wouldn't crack. Long story short: it both tastes better and it cleared on its own without needing bentonite. It requires a lot more work on my part than the slow pasteurizing method does, but that's the trade-off. Perhaps there's an easier way to do a fast pasteurizing? I know that the beer people have some pretty elaborate chillers for rapidly cooling down their wort. Perhaps their setup could be adapted.
The mead for both the slow pasteurizing and the fast pasteurizing came from the same 5 gallon batch of M5 traditional mead that I recently made.
Of course, just being patient and letting the fermentation self-terminate would be easier than all this work, but it would also take longer. So, that's the trade-off I chose to make in this particular case, where I'm going to redo the M5 gallon batch as soon as I finish running some small batch test ferments to prove it out in advance.
I don't have the equipment to do a proper flash pasteurizing (as is done with milk), but I did try to approximate it and got better results than with the slow pasteurizing. What I did was this: I pasteurized 500ml at a time. This allowed it to heat up much faster on the gas stove. Then, immediately after hitting the pasteurization temperature and time, I cooled it down rapidly in an ice bath. I used a borosilicate beaker as the holding vessel for the 500ml mead so that the glass wouldn't crack. Long story short: it both tastes better and it cleared on its own without needing bentonite. It requires a lot more work on my part than the slow pasteurizing method does, but that's the trade-off. Perhaps there's an easier way to do a fast pasteurizing? I know that the beer people have some pretty elaborate chillers for rapidly cooling down their wort. Perhaps their setup could be adapted.
The mead for both the slow pasteurizing and the fast pasteurizing came from the same 5 gallon batch of M5 traditional mead that I recently made.
Of course, just being patient and letting the fermentation self-terminate would be easier than all this work, but it would also take longer. So, that's the trade-off I chose to make in this particular case, where I'm going to redo the M5 gallon batch as soon as I finish running some small batch test ferments to prove it out in advance.
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