: > True: Warm fermentation does produce what distillers refer to as heads and : > tails (pure ethanol does not give hangovers), and reduces the yield that a : > yeast gives. A better quality product is arrived at using lower ferment : > temperatures which is why sake breweries produce their stuff during the : > Winter months. : >
: > Having said that, though, a lot of character is derived from the impurities : > that are produced in a ferment and so a compromise is often best for meads! : >
Perhaps that ... or the fact that they are expected and someone paying $100 a bottle for wine may look at a synthetic cork and decide it isn't worth that much. Not saying that is definitively the case... but it may be part of it.
No. Aging in a barrel is part oxidative. Bulk aging in a carboy is part oxidative (oxygen was reduced when you previously handled the wine, as in racking). Aging in a bottle is reductive -- no oxygen is desired.
I've just made my first batch of melomel which is still conditioning. When the time comes to bottle, I had just planned on bottling it like I do my beers in brown beer bottles with crown caps. Since I've never even tasted a mead, I don't know if I'm going to like this and so I don't want to invest in a corker. Will it be okay to just use crown caps, or does the cork itself somehow contribute something to the mead?
Bob, if you don't mind, I'm going to take your recommendation one step at a time:
I assume that you are speaking now about letting it clear after the final racking for bulk conditioning. I originally fermented in buckets, and then racked to carboys after about 10 days or so. There was some initial signs of bubbling after I did that -- whether it was outgasing or additional fermentation after I roused the yeast by racking -- but there is no kraeusen at all now, nor signs of bubbling, so I moved both carboys into a quiet corner of our bedroom where they won't be disturbed.
Questions: I'm almost positive that there was some yeast transferred to the carboys with the melomel; how long should I let my melomel sit on it while conditioning, or should I plan on racking again at some point into a third fermenter for additional 'bulk' aging/conditioning?
If I rack again, should I be adding some tannin or tea (for tannins) or possibly some clarifier of some sort like maybe gelatin, etc. ... or will that remove stuff that is needed for body/mouthfeel/flavor?
How do I outgas without aerating (risking oxidation)? Is there a special tool? ... And what is the "etc" that you indicated?
Others have said that crown caps are okay, so that's what I plan to use.
Well, I had made this for _this_ Christmas, hoping that it would be drinkable then, so I may have a few at that time, and then maybe I'll try one bottle each month, trying to note how it changes along the way. I should be able to bottle about 80 bottles or more, so I should be able to spread this out over a few years, even if I share a few with others each Christmas.
I let it sit in the primary fermenter with an airlock on it til it is absolutely clear and still. Zero bubbles from the airlock. This takes about
6 months. I then add one campden tablet per gallon and wait til it is clear =again=.
After the mead has completely finished fermenting and the cloudiness from the campden tablets is gone, and the lees are clearly all packed tight at the bottom, I rack it into a carboy that has 5 cloves per gallon. I love the flavor of the cloves and it also seems to really help clarification in the final stages too. At this point I add one sodium benzoate tablet per gallon and wait for it to achieve crystalline clarity again! For me, I am sure a wine is no longer fermenting, and has outgassed enough when the water levels in the double chamber airlock are even. NB: After adding anything that impairs clarity by virtue of floaters, I rotate the carboys 1/8 turn daily, till the ones that are going to sink have done so, and the ones that never will still remain. This takes a few weeks. At this point, it is ready to rack directly from the carboy. The entire procedure usually takes me just about a year.
I never add anything except enough honey =initially= to make sure it will still be sweet (and strong!) and a few cloves. I =never= go for .990 dryness; personal taste. I believe in gravity and ionic attraction. All the times I've used finings like gelatin, it makes a larger mass of lees at the bottom, hence I lose wine. This is not good.
Like I said, I just let the airlocks go to a point where the level on both sides is equal; temp changes and weather changes will make it flop around, but it will settle to even eventually. This really takes time.
I've had mead begin refermentation (years ago, not since I developed my current procedure) and shatter all the bottles in a cascade of foam from the kitchen cabinets. I like corks, you can see a bit of leakage if by some chance it happens, you just drink those bottles first! :-)
I started mine 3/23/04 and I am trying as hard as I can to get it bottled before Christmas!
whether you rack, how many times you rack and whether you fine or not is really dependant on the recipe and your own preferences. If you do fine your mead with gelatin, make sure you add some tannin to the batch 24 hours before you add the gelatin, or you might end up with jellyfish floating in your bottles a few years from now (you might anyway, even with the tannin). Generally speaking, all fining will strip some of the body and other good stuff, but if you do not go nuts with it, you won't destroy the batch.
Usually you use a long handled spoon and just stir it, right around the time the yeast are ceasing activity. I just shake the primary (6.5 gal carboy) about a week before racking to secondary...but that probabally is not the best way to do it.
You can make your mead sparkling, like you would a beer or by not stabilizing and bottling before it ferments to dryness (a much riskier way to go).
You can make "quick" meads that are ready to drink in a few months....generally you cut some of the honey with sugar...and use light flavored honeys. Even then they improve vastly with age, just like nearly every wine worth making. Crown caps are fine for meads that you plan to drink within a short peroid of time...but I personally wouldn't let anything sit under a crown cap for 20 years and expect it to be any good. Besides, is 12 oz of mead really a single serving?
I made a melomel by combining honey with apple and grape juices (something like 10 pounds of honey added to about 6 gallons of combined juices, plus yeast nutrient and spices), then pitched two packets of yeast -- one was for ale and the other for wine (what I had on hand). Do you think that the 'sugars' in that much juice, which I assume is mostly fructose and sucrose, will be enough to 'cut' the honey and possibly make this drinkable by Christmas (three months after making).
Well, with rare exceptions, I guess that most meads, etc., are consumed with 5 or 6 years, aren't they? If so, are crown caps likely to be good for that length of time?
I have never had a mead, cyser, perry, melomel, etc., so I don't know what a 'single serving' size would be. Are you suggesting that I should be able to re-cork the bottle after pouring a small glass? If so, I guess I could still do that with some sort of a small cork or cap, even with a small bottle. Either that or split the bottle with someone or else _force_ myself to drink the whole thing. ;-)
Um, yes. Even winemakers who've done or read the research will tell you that crown caps (twist-off, in their case) actually give a much better seal than traditional corks. It's no secret. If you've ever had Thomas Hardy's Ale, you'd have experienced a very wonderful ale that really needs 5 years of age, and can continue to age gracefully for 20 years. OTOH, I've had bad experiences with corked beer like Gales Prize Old Ale getting completely flat, corky, and oxidized after a few years.
It depends on how much you want and how much alcohol is in the mead. Twelve ounces of what I view as a standard mead (12-15 pounds honey in 5 US gallons) would be two "glasses" of mead, and fine for a mild evening.
I tend to bottle in a variety of sized bottles, from 6 ounce nips to 22- and 25-ounce bottles. If I know (or strongly suspect) the whole thing will not be consumed at a sitting, I'll carefully decant the portion that will be left over into a smaller bottle-- from a 22 into a 12, fo example-- filling it to the rim and crown-capping it. The problem with recorking an open bottle of mead is that you
*will* get oxidation, just like with wine. Capping a very full secondary bottle will leave less air in the headspace.
Just remember to take free advice for what it's worth. I've read some doozies out here in cyberspace. ;-)
I though the main reason that crown caps were thought, by some, to be superior to corks is because of TCA. And for my 2 cents, twist off crown caps give a horrible seal.
And I was joking on this point. I bottle all my meads in 750 ml bottles, if there is some left over I just re-cork and finish it in a day or two.
After I wrote that post I realized I had missed a good explanation for this. Yes, it gets the floaters gathered on the surface of the wine, but also, most carboys have that design in the side that is square ridges every
10cm/4" and the slight indentations inside the bottle sometimes act as ledges for accumulating yeasts. It makes sure spare yeasts AND wax/fillers from campden/benzoate/sorbate tabs go down too. HTH, Bob<
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