Lemon zest is blocking the top of my little carboy.

UpstreamBear · 01-18-2012, 10:04 PM

I'm making a lemon ginger mead and just put it in secondary. I decided to do the augmenting in secondary since I'm making two different types (other one is tamarind and lemon grass). I hadn't really thought that the lemon zest would all float to the spout and kind of get all stuck together from the foam and such. It's making it a bit hard for the gasses to get out and I'm afraid that may affect the flavour. So far I've been punching the zest plug down a couple times a day but I'm afraid that this is oxygenating the mead too much. Is there something I should do? The gas manages to get past it but slowly.

turtlescales · 01-18-2012, 11:23 PM

I came home to this just the otherday, my orange cyser did the same thing. I just got a dish of sanitizer together, wiped down the carboy to clean the dribble, rinsed out the airlock and stopper, sanitized them, and popped them back in. I think I will make sure to have a spare airlock on hand for if this happens again in the future.

Keep us posted how this turns out though, this sounds fantastic.

Sorry, I thought this was in the airlock.... just keep punching the "cap" down a couple times a day, I've done that with my raspberry melomel and it fermented quite nicely.

Tw0fish · 01-19-2012, 02:29 AM

I've found that if you've an S-type airlock you can just swirl it back in (and yeah, you're gonna have to do it a few times daily til the gas dies down if you didnt leave quite enough headspace!)

If you've a three piece, just leave a plastic chopstick sitting in some bleach.. once in a while pull it out, give it a rinse and poke the cap

UpstreamBear · 01-19-2012, 03:10 AM

Thanks guys. By the way, Tw0fish, you read my mind with the chopstick thing, that's exactly what I've been doing.

**huesmann** · 01-19-2012, 01:12 PM

Or in the future, stitch a small bag out of some poly chiffon and put your zest in it with a marble or two to weight it down (all sanitized, of course).