Last week we talked about metabisulfites and how one uses sulfite compounds to stabilize must or other fermented beverages. These we we talk about another compound SORBATE! Sorbate is a commonly used preservative found in many products that are high in sugar. You’ll see it a lot in fruit juices to keep naturally pressed juices from fermenting on store shelves. The combination of these two products can be applied to manny aspects of brewing wines, ciders and meads.

Unlike Metabisulfite which can be found with a fancy name like Campden tablets; sorbate usually simply comes as…sorbate. Most all sorbate you’d find is usually a potassium salt because it is made from reacting potassium hydroxide with sorbic acid.

Sorbate can penetrate into the cellular spaces within mold and yeasts, lower the pH and disrupt the metabolism of the cells themselves. Sorbet does not directly kill cells, but like metabisulfite it prevents the cells fro dividing. We say that these compounds are microbial-static.

Sorbate can be applied in two ways. Prior to the start of fermentation you can use sorbate (dosage generally is formulation dependent and indicated on the bottle) to stabilize the presence of wild yeasts, molds and some bacterium in your must. You then add a sizably larger pitch of your favorite cultured yeast to ferment. This process works because while the sorbate may slow down some of your pitched yeast there is generally too many live cells to be effective. In this example, one must adhere to the idea that less is not more. Enough to stave off the growth of wild microbes due to lower population numbers is good. Too much sorbate will then begin to inhibit even your pitched culture.

The second use of sorbate is to assist in back sweetening a wine, mead or cider. When fermentation is complete many of these products under go an extensive aging process and or a cold crash. This causes reduction in cell counts in suspension of your pitched yeast. Adding sorbate at this point will limit the future activity in the yeast. Once inhibited you can add fresh sugars, juices or must to back sweeten your product; then bottle. One the home-brew scale this is easier said than done. I’d have never heard of too many folks that don’t get some referment in the bottle even when using sorbate. So its vitally important to watch out for over carbonating bottles as a precaution.

When using in conjunction these two preservatives help to create long lasting versions of your favorite non beer product. We tend to not use these in beer making because beer making involves a long boil sterilization process that eliminates the concern of wild microbes. Beer is also not generally a long lived shelf stable product. Most beers are meant to be consumed fairly soon and packaging contamination generally doesn’t have much time to show its effect.

BREW ON!