How to backsweeten naturally?
How to backsweeten naturally?
I'm following a simple video on YouTube which covers yeast starting, sanitization and setting up the mead.
My question is, if I back sweeten my Meade after a few months... Won't that just wake up the yeast and get them producing more alchohol? I saw somebody say something about a chemical to stabilize it but what if I don't want a chemical in my Brew?
Is there an alternative?
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Your options to backsweeten are as follows;
- Increase the alcohol content past the tolerance of the yeast. This will result in a beverage of 12% or higher ABV.
You can do this by starting with a higher initial gravity (this is my approach for sweet meads), or adding sugar until the fermentation stops restarting, or adding neutral spirits to bring the abv up, then backsweeten.
- Ferment to dry, then add sulfites to prevent the yeast from reactivating, then backsweeten as desired.
Warning! This doesn't always work, and it's hard to predict how much sulfite is necessary, if you add too much it can negatively impact the flavor.
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Ferment to dry, then use filters down to 1 micron to filter out the yeast, then backsweeten as desired.
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Ferment to dry, then backsweeten just before consumption.
Most commercial producers filter and add sulfites.
Having recently tried the filtering thing, it's still a roll of the dice unless you're using the much more expensive professional grade filters.
It does get your mead clear as hell though, and removes a ton of off flavors.
Yeah, if you're filtering for yeast you gotta go pro.
I'd love to do so, but the price seems to jump up by an order of magnitude and it's difficult to justify. I'll probably be trying a combo of filter + sulfites going forward.