Storing Mead

[floydmeddler]

I'll be bottling my first mead soon and was wondering how others store it. I'm assuming most people use wine bottles? Also, is it like wine in that you need to drink the entire bottle within a few days due to oxygen destroying it?

Cheers

[floydmeddler]

Anyone?

[Wolfy]

I bottle my mead into 500ml Grolsch/Schwelmer type swing-top bottles, which means they are consumed individually in each session ... neither of which really helped answer your questions, sorry.

[floydmeddler]

Cheers Wolfy. Suppose I could store it in standard 500ml beer bottles.

[second2none]

Alcohol itself is a presevative,
Once most of the sugar has fermented out then there is nothing for "nasties" to feed on.
Wine and beer only really go stale if left open for a few hours or when you drink out of the bottle.
Mead takes an age to mature so I can understand that you dont want it going off,
but if you look at mead on sale in the supermarkets etc. then its always in 70cl screw top bottles

I'd put mead in wine bottles and drink the open bottle within a week or so
Hey after all it might improve the taste of your homebrew with a little breathing!
Im no expert just here trying to help,

[GrandMalt]

I'm currently aging my first mead. Brewed it from February onwards and racked it a few times. Bottled it in the middle of April into whatever we could get our hands on. The majority is in old gin bottles (70cl screw-top), plus a vodka bottle and a screw-top wine bottle.

Having never tried it before I don't know how long it will survive if we leave it open. I'm assuming it will need to be drunk within a week of opening, and I'll keep it in the fridge once opened. However we're planning on cracking it open at a party so I reckon it will all go on the first night!

[gti1x]

Erm, can't really help as we always drink a 70 cl bottle in one sitting!

GTI

[floydmeddler]

Cheers lads! Have screw capped wine bottles so will prob use those.

[fatbloke]

Cheers lads! Have screw capped wine bottles so will prob use those.

A lot seem to like bottling into standard 750ml bottles - cork type bottles, as they allow for very tiny amounts of micro-oxidation, but if you read up stuff from a few of the "greats" i.e. Charlie Papazian or Ken Schramm (especially Ken Schramm - Charlie P is more of a beer person, whereas Ken is purely a "Mead monster"), you'll see that they bottle into whatever's best i.e. if you want it to be served sold like wine, then wine bottles it's got to be, but equally, beer bottles irrespective of swing tops or crown caps - crown cap bottles are good as they're easy to seal etc and being generally smaller than a wine bottle means that you don't need to drink the whole thing at one sitting.

Don't forget, meads don't oxidate like grape wines, so you can find that if you had to put a part bottle into the fridge till the next day, then it's much less likely to degrade over night.

The only time a specific bottle type is worthy, is carbonated meads. Bottle conditioned meads can produce as much pressure as the best champagne so it you want to keep it for any length of time, use champagne/sparkling wine bottles and stoppers with wire cages.