Ok.. I am going to ramble a bit about my latest mead batches. In the "momentarily more than 1 gallon" post in the brewlog, I mention how I made a 3 gallon light honey must and then divided it into 3 x 1 gallon batches after 20 days of primary. One of the batches, I racked onto sassifras tea, which had potassium sorbate in it. Since the SG had dropped pretty low 1.030, I was expecting the yeasts to go for a day or so then slowly fizzle away from the K sorbate and low sugar levels. Almost a week later, the batch is going like gangbusters. Its actually out "glugging" both the jasmine flower and the red tea meads, which both had more honey added. Now the sassifras tea mead has a tendency for all the dark stuff to drop out(almost clear otherwise, but shaking redissolves it), but is fermenting very rapidly. I emailed the company that makes the tea to find out how much K sorbate is in there. They told me that their product contains 0.15% K sorbate as a preservative. Their product is 12 fluid ounces, so my math tells me there is about 0.018oz of K sorbate in a bottle. Hoping my math works, that says 0.018oz in a 128 oz gallon puts the K sorbate at 140.625ppm. If this were bleach or sulfate, the yeasts should be toast. I am not an expert on yeast, nor on sorbate, but shouldn't this level of sorbate slow the yeast down instead of urging them on?? The yeast are taking off like I put some mega-yeast vitamin in there, instead of a few roadblocks.
I will admit that the company said that many homebrewers use their product for wines with no problem from the sorbate. Some of the other things mentioned in the email lead me to believe that the others are using one bottle in bigger (5/6/12.5 gallon) batches. One bottle in 5 gallons puts the sorbate at 28.125ppm, which should be much less trouble for yeasts. Though they did say that if i wanted, I could buy a 5 gallon bucket of sorbate free sassifras tea. Though they said I would have to use it within a couple of weeks.
so what do you all think?? Am I expecting too much out of my sorbate? Or should I just shut up and enjoy the sound of happily glugging carboys?
hedgehog
I will admit that the company said that many homebrewers use their product for wines with no problem from the sorbate. Some of the other things mentioned in the email lead me to believe that the others are using one bottle in bigger (5/6/12.5 gallon) batches. One bottle in 5 gallons puts the sorbate at 28.125ppm, which should be much less trouble for yeasts. Though they did say that if i wanted, I could buy a 5 gallon bucket of sorbate free sassifras tea. Though they said I would have to use it within a couple of weeks.
so what do you all think?? Am I expecting too much out of my sorbate? Or should I just shut up and enjoy the sound of happily glugging carboys?
hedgehog