Beer Forum

Hi all,
I'm making a dry sparkling mead for my brother's wedding. I've been reading about using priming sugar, but it seems like there could be a lot of problems associated with this (like exploding bottles), so I've been thinking about just carbonating it myself. Can anyone offer any suggestions/tips in doing this (pressure, etc.)? There is one or two posts stating that it should work fine (some people said at 10 or 20 psi), but I wanted to get more people's input. Thanks a lot!

Really depends how sparkling you want it. What was the OG and FG? If you want it like champagne then 25-30 psi would do the trick.

Just check the carbonation charts and proceed exactly as you would for beer. I've never done it any other way and had great results.

Wayne

i would also say that the lower the FG the higher the volumes of co2.

Hi All,
Thanks for the tips. FYI..OG is 1.075 and FG is 0.995. I want to get it as close to champagne as possible, and it seems from the beer carbonation charts that pressures in the mid 20s would work well for highly carbonated ales, so maybe I'll try that. Thanks again!

Just chiming in my two cents, but I've made sparkling mead once by doing secondary fermentation in the bottle after six months of primary. Never really had a bottle rupture except for one that was plastic with a screw-on cap. I was just asking for a failure there.