Racking mead to a bigger carboy

Hey all,

My mead is just about ready to be racked for the first time. My mead is in a thee gallon carboy and I have an empty 5 gallon carboy that can be used. My brew shop is currently out of 3 gallon carboys and they have no eta on when they'll be getting a new shipment. Would it be a bad thing to rack ~3 gallons of mead into a 5 gallon carboy?

You don't want to do that. If it's in secondary, very little fermentation is taking place and you shouldn't have headspace in secondary. You could just wait to get a 3 gallon carboy, or you could very carefully without splashing rack into the larger carboy, clean the 3 gallon, sanitize it and rack it back without disturbing it much. I would only do that if it desperately needed to be racked with very thick gross lees. Otherwise, I would just wait until I had the right size carboy.

Thanks for the advice. I guess I'll hold off on that. Another question: Would doing 3 gallons of primary fermentation in a 5 gallon carboy also be a bad thing?

No, that's ok. Mead really needs oxygen during primary and it'll use up the oxygen in there and release co2 to displace any remaining oxygen. I primary in 7.5 gallon buckets all the time.

My mead experience is pretty limited, though- I prefer wine and beer. Still, the same principals apply. There are quite a few more mead lovers around here that can give you more expert advice.

Cool, thanks for your help!