YAN levels in Honey

[Rice_Guy]

@m_kluch
I normally see a carbonated cider read 0.1 or 0.2 higher than the non carbonated product. I would expect the buffering on your finished to be fairly close to your start.
Infection requires a carbon source. This can be residual acid as malic feeding wild lactic bacteria. Honey is not a typical source for malic acid so folks can ignore several families of bacteria. Many of the sugars in honey are unusual, not readily metabolized so sugar based infections are less likely.

All in all trust the folks who have done meads. Have you looked at Meadmaker: by Ken Schram? He does good explanations of what the rules are.

 

[m_kluch]

@m_kluch
I normally see a carbonated cider read 0.1 or 0.2 higher than the non carbonated product. I would expect the buffering on your finished to be fairly close to your start.
Infection requires a carbon source. This can be residual acid as malic feeding wild lactic bacteria. Honey is not a typical source for malic acid so folks can ignore several families of bacteria. Many of the sugars in honey are unusual, not readily metabolized so sugar based infections are less likely.

All in all trust the folks who have done meads. Have you looked at Meadmaker: by Ken Schram? He does good explanations of what the rules are.

Thanks for the response. I haven't read his book but I have watched a number of podcasts featuring him. I believe that he has said he does not add any preservative or stabilizers to his meads.
I wonder if traditional mead is not as susceptible to oxidation/flavor change due to oxygen compared to wine. One of my main purposes for adding k-meta to wine is to prolong it's good flavor due to the anti-oxygen properties of k-meta.
In the case of fruited meads, I suspect that one should follow much of the same principles as a wine maker does when it comes to pH/K-meta and acid levels.

 

[Rice_Guy]

I also have wondered how (& why) resistant a straight mead is. I don’t remember anything in Schram which delves into that type of chemistry.
The implied conclusion in Schram and others is that there are molecules in honey that are antioxidants which isn’t too surprising since it is a natural product exposed to air.