Help! Racked. Does it look correct?

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MichaelJ909

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I just racked into my glass carboy and it's extremely cloudy. Is this correct? I plan on not bottling it till about November around Thanksgiving. I had it in the fermenter for the passed 17 days. This is my first mead I am making so any tips and helping advise would be awesome. Thanks!

View attachment 1435517178852.jpg
 
I have had this happen to me while racking as well, I could be wrong but it looks like things just got a little rattled up. Since you have a long way to go before bottling I would just give it the old wait. Keep an eye on it and see what it does in the next month or so.
 
How do you keep the beer inside the carboy at that angle?

Seriously - it looks great! It will settle out in a month or two.

Meads take a while.
 
I'll keep a eye on it. Thanks.

I live on the side of a cliff. Hahaha I'll repost in a few months with a update
 
since you plan (very appropriately) on aging your mead I would look for a way to minimize the headroom. Most wine makers I know try to fill their carboy up into the mouth of the jug. That may mean transferring the mead into smaller containers or finding ways to fill the headroom with something other than air. It's one thing to have that amount of headroom while the yeast is busy producing CO2 but when the yeast has stopped CO2 production and when the CO2 in the mead is slowly dissipating you want to do everything you can to minimize oxidation...
 
I think there's still yeast in suspension and it will floculate eventually.
 
bernardsmith said:
since you plan (very appropriately) on aging your mead I would look for a way to minimize the headroom. Most wine makers I know try to fill their carboy up into the mouth of the jug. That may mean transferring the mead into smaller containers or finding ways to fill the headroom with something other than air. It's one thing to have that amount of headroom while the yeast is busy producing CO2 but when the yeast has stopped CO2 production and when the CO2 in the mead is slowly dissipating you want to do everything you can to minimize oxidation...
Click to expand...

+1^

Now finding the best way to eliminate excess headspace is the bigger issue. Aside from re-racking to a smaller vessel(s), you could use a couple pints of glass marbles, but don't just drop em in, they can crack the carboy. I've been thinking about this for a while and some sort of inflatable bladder that fills the void would be ideal.

You could also purge the headspace with CO2 if you have it available.
 
The head room that's in the carboy right now. Will it make a big difference in the end result of the mead?
 
Yes, it's not optimal. That looks like a 6 gallon carboy. If so, you can rack to a 5 gallon after it drops some more lees for bulk aging.
 
One option to fill the head space would be to fill it with fruit and turn it into a melomel.

I did that with a coffee and vanilla homebrew I made, filled it up with raisins until the head space was filled up. I did that straight after racking, though, when the demijohn was recently sanitised. It's probably gonna make future racking more difficult with all that fruit in there but at least there's no head space.
 
Or brew up some more must and top it off with that. Target the same original gravity and it shouldn't change the characteristics of the batch by much. It is a similar technique to "feeding the mead" or krausening except that you are not hanging on to the generated co2.
 
I think will rack down to a 5 gallon in due time and also rack the left overs into another small glass bottle. With that being said. I shall try and experiment with fruit on the smaller container with the leftover must any recommendations. I've seen a lot with raisins and oranges but has any one done with mangos?
 

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