BobJ

Recipes 

This is a good thread..... I have a number of meads currently in secondary since late January.... All have cleared nicely on their own except for my show and the strawberry pizazz.... Am thinking that it might be time to try the hot mix sparkelloid......

TheBrewingMedic

Recipes 

Just be careful if you want your show mead to stay a show mead, adding any fining agent I am 99.9% sure (unless there is something I've missed in the fineprint) takes it out of that category. Think you just have to rely on racking techniques and patience for it to clear....

DrVertebrae

Recipes 

OK then. Stabilize first, then back sweeten and lastly clear. Exactly the info I was needing. Now I just need patience.

DrVertebrae

Recipes 

Since there was still fruit on the pineapple/mango which is essentially in its secondary, I racked it to a clean three gal carboy and topped it off with about 2/3 of a gal of 3lb honey/gal-fnlvol mix. I did the same with the original JAOM. It took about 300ml to top that one off to decrease the air space above the mead.

I guess that since I have added new honey and diluted the alcohol a bit that the fermentation will start up again, but they aren't bottled, just racked into tertiaries. I suppose the type of yeast will limit how far they will go. I'll have to give'em a taste before I do the stabilization. The yeasts are D47 and EC1118 (I think). One finishes at about 14% and the other at about 17% or more. Basically I was worried about oxidation and didn't have any marbles and didn't want to top off with wine.

I need to be more exact and follow the SG more closely but I hate to spend so much of a one gal batch monitoring the SG. I need to get a refractometer. At about 50 bucks I think it might be worth it.