First time Meadmaking-a little confused

Hello,
So I decided to brew some mead this weekend. I used 13 pounds of orange blossom honey in 5 gallons of water with Red Star Cuvee yeast. Everything seems to be churning along happily, but I am a little confused.

The recipe I am using is Charlie Papazian's "Chief Niwot's Mead" from The Joy of Homebrewing. I had intended to carbonate this mead by bottle conditioning. So, my questions is this: Do I need to do a secondary fermentation? The book doesn't explicity mention doing so--it merely says to bottle when fermentation is complete with the addition of priming sugar, then let clear. Should I just take readings and see when fermentation is done, then age it in the bottle? Or should I transfer the must after fermentation is done, wait for it to clear, and then bottle. Thanks in advance.

Chandrasekhar said:

Hello,
So I decided to brew some mead this weekend. I used 13 pounds of orange blossom honey in 5 gallons of water with Red Star Cuvee yeast. Everything seems to be churning along happily, but I am a little confused.

The recipe I am using is Charlie Papazian's "Chief Niwot's Mead" from The Joy of Homebrewing. I had intended to carbonate this mead by bottle conditioning. So, my questions is this: Do I need to do a secondary fermentation? The book doesn't explicity mention doing so--it merely says to bottle when fermentation is complete with the addition of priming sugar, then let clear. Should I just take readings and see when fermentation is done, then age it in the bottle? Or should I transfer the must after fermentation is done, wait for it to clear, and then bottle. Thanks in advance.

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Don't know the recipe, so can't really say.

The premier curvee is a champagne yeast I believe. Champagne yeast tends to go to 18% ABV, but I doubt you'll get that, certainly not with 2 and 1/2 lb of honey per gallon.

Whatever you do get, it'll probably be as dry as a buzzards arse...... Even if you upped the honey some to allow 3lb per gallon.

Don't get your terminology mixed up though. Secondary fermentation is the term often used whereby, you run the ferment, when it gets down to a certain level gravity-wise (level often depends on the mead maker), the ferment is moved from a primary type container (bucket or something like that) to a carboy type container of an appropriate size so to minimise air space and finish the ferment.

Of course, if you've made the batch in a carboy type container and it's full up, then you're doing the primary and secondary processes in the same vessel.

I'm thinking, that you're referring to "bottle conditioning" i.e. the actual carbonation process. That's normally done last, after all the clearing, racking and ageing is done.

It probably doesn't matter if you want to bottle age it, as long as you're happy that you've got it completely cleared first as you don't really want to have to take it out the bottle, so you can clean/rinse any sediment that's dropped out of it.

Plus, you can always (presuming that it's properly cleared) just bottle age it but using crown caps to secure the bottles while it's ageing. As long as you haven't used too much sulphite during the clearing and you haven't sorbated it, you should be able to get away with just bottle ageing and then adding the priming sugar, putting plastic stoppers and wire cages on the bottles and then putting it somewhere warm enough to encourage the yeast to do it's thing.

That way, the only sediment will be the tiny amount produced by the yeast cells when they're working their magic on the priming sugar.

It's actually quite hard (damn near impossible) to do a full "methode champenoise" in a home brew environment......

regards

fatbloke

Yes, wait till fermentation is done. This is not a beer time scale though, it could take awhile to finish. Definitely add some energizer and nutrient. Definitely check gravity twice over a week to make sure it is not fermenting before bottling. I'd also think it would be helpful to rack to a secondary container after 3 weeks in the primary and let it bulk age for 6 months at least. You can bottle it in beer bottles, but drink them within two years.

Hmm, so what you guys are saying is that I should allow this batch to ferment to completion, and then transfer it to another vessel where I will let it sit for a while (until clear?). Then, I can add some priming sugar (do I have this right?) and bottle.

yes basically.

ferment it till its just done, then transfer it to a carboy and let it sit. need to let it sit for as long as possible! need to use a carboy as you want to let it age in something that won't give bad flavours (like plastic) and in something with a small neck to minimise surface in contact with the air.

trouble with ageing in bottles is each bottle can end up being slightly different.

Hmm, so what you guys are saying is that I should allow this batch to ferment to completion, and then transfer it to another vessel where I will let it sit for a while (until clear?). Then, I can add some priming sugar (do I have this right?) and bottle.

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That is what I would recommend.

Thanks for the help so far. I have one last question though. When I transfer it to the new carboy, would it be too terrible of me to temporarily transfer it to a plastic bucket while I wash out my glass carboy, then put it back in the same cleaned and sanitized carboy? I only have one.

If that is all you have, then not much choice. However, this is going to expose the mead to oxygen, and you are going to have a lot of head space when you rack back in. If you have the means, might be a good time to get a second (slightly smaller) carboy. Plus, this mead is going to tie up your carboy for awhile, how will you make anything else? LOL