Sulphates

[bquiggerz]

Just a quick question, can I stop fermentation in a mead with cold crashing and stabilising with sulphates once I've reached 1.01 to keep some sweetness?

Thanks,

Ben.

[oldbloke]

Yeh, yeast is yeast, whatever it's in.
But you need the sorbate& sulphite combo to stabilise.

[bquiggerz]

Thanks old bloke. I added a Camden tablet to each gallon. Now it's the waiting game.

[fatbloke]

Sulphites don't stop fermentation. They will stun the yeast. Equally, sorbate only stops yeast cells from "budding" (reproducing), not stopping ferment.

Cold crash needs to be just above freezing, like for about a week or longer to put the yeast into hibernation and help most/all of it drop out, then to rack (while still cold) onto the stabilising chems.......

Generally it's just easier to let the batch finish it's ferment, then rack it off the lees once all fermentation activity has stopped. I find it easiest to then stabilise and back sweeten while it's still cloudy - by the numbers i.e. the fermentation has stopped, say for example at 1.000 - so I then rack onto the stabilising chems and off the gross lees, leave it a couple of days for the stabilising chems to do their thing (not necessary but WTF). Then I back sweeten to somewhere between 1.005 and 1.015 - a little tasting to get the level of sweetness I like - with honey. I do that at this stage, because I like to use honey and in itself, it can cause some hazing in already cleared meads, so I back sweeten to the numbers as above and then do the clearing thing (I sometimes add any oak that I'm intending to add while it's clearing too - though sometimes I'll do that once it's clear).

Then I just leave it to clear naturally. Any hazing caused by the sweetening honey drops out with the yeast lees.........

[bquiggerz]

Thanks for that fatbloke, I've got it in the fridge sat at 1.5°C and my melomel is still showing signs of fermentation... Malolactic possibly?