my first joam mead

I used the advice from this forum

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f30/joes-ancient-orange-mead-joam-45152/

Except i did 3 gallons

As long as you follow the recipe it will come out great. I've made a few batches and enjoyed them all.

Day 4

Yum. Seems like a fair amount of head space.

opus345 said:

Yum. Seems like a fair amount of head space.

Click to expand...

Its only 3 gallons of water in a 5 gallon carboy.

Is that bad? In a month when i rack to 1 gallon secondary there will be none

Shouldn't be to bad with the head space, as you'll have the co2 from fermentation keeping it from oxidizing. In secondary, you really don't want any head space. In primary though, it's usually not as bad as long as you still have the co2 blanketing the must.

Thanks

If you're following the recipe/method correctly, you don't rack to secondary anyway.

The only reason to, would be because bread yeast doesn't flocculate very well and its easy to disturb the lees and get some.of.it back into suspension, making it cloudy again.

The easiest way to avoid that, is probably to make sure the fermenter is moved to where you're going to tac from a day or two before, then carefully avoiding the sediment with the racking cane, siphon 2 gallons off into 1 gallon jugs, from the cleared part, then the last gallon, if you pick up a bit of the lees, you can the deal with it much more easily, and chill.it down to reclear it. Hell, you can even rack the last gallon into 2 litre pop/soda bottles, the first one should stay clear and any sediment would/should end up I'm the last one, which gets chilled and then you could cut the top off the bottle.and rack from above the pity bit of lees and you'd be minimising the racking losses as well.....