do you need to secondary?

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pujiman

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I'm have my first batch of mead going in primary. Would i be able to go from primary straight to bottling and let it age a few months in the bottle? I hear mead oxidizes easily and i don't have any co2 to fill the secondary with
 
Yes you can if you are careful enough. The JAOM recipe even mentions to bottle from primary. I don't bottle from primary in most meads but I have done that with wines. The only problem I find with it is that when siphoning off the clear liquid I keep the racking cane a good half inch above the yeast to help make sure I am not sucking much up.

So long story short it can be done but you run greater risk of transferring sediment into the bottles.
 
You may want a secondary depending on which yeast you used. If using lalvin 1122 its a good idea to get it off of the lees, if you are refering to your chablis mead, then I'm not sure if that sweet mead yeast has issues with lees aging or not...
 
In my experience, mead does not oxidize any easier than wine. The key outside of pH maintenance is in the handling: to keep your carboy topped up, avoid splash racking, keep racking to a minimum and consider using k-meta for its antibacterial/antioxidant properties. You really need to rack your mead a few times do you are going to have to rack it into preferably a fresh carboy as you typically want a 60 day window in which there is no sediment ('lees') fallout from your clear & degassed mead before you consider bottling. Even with a mead made from the basics, no fruit component added, you will almost always drop lees for 4-6 months.
 
Are you planning on using beer bottles or champagne bottles so that when it ferments a little more it wont blow your bottles? WVMJ

I'm have my first batch of mead going in primary. Would i be able to go from primary straight to bottling and let it age a few months in the bottle? I hear mead oxidizes easily and i don't have any co2 to fill the secondary with
 
I'm still trying to decide which would be the best bottle type, I'm not sure about the process of getting corks into bottles so i was probably gonna stick to beer bottles. I saw some blue ones i thought might be cool. I'm doing this for my friends wedding so i definitely wanna do it right, i think I'm gonna invest in another carboy for secondary.
 
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