MEAD Ageing for Clarity

I get the older the better mead tastes. But is all the time in secondary just for clarity? How would this work out :: 3 weeks primary, 4 weeks secondary, bottle for 4+ months? Thought is if aging works as well in bottles why not free up the fermenters?

Yep, I know this has to have been covered before, but I'm looking for the latest thoughts.

The bottles might age differently, as opposed to bulk aging it all together in a Carboy, so you may notice 1 bottle tastes slightly different than another.

Aside from slight differences in taste from bottle to bottle, the other drawback to your plan is that if it clears in the bottle, you will get sediment on the side of the bottle that will all mix back into the mead when you stand it up to open it. This is purely a cosmetic problem though, shouldn't impact taste in a negative way.

Finally you will lose the ability to back sweeten if you find the final product is too dry. Once it's in the bottle you are stuck with it. If you bulk age and want to sweeten it, or maybe even blend with a different mead, you have those options available to you. You lose those options if you age in the bottle.

You would need to make damn sure it's done fermenting and not just stalled/stuck. If fermentation starts up again in the bottle there could be some obvious issues there.


My $0.02 is to get a couple more fermenters and bulk age in them. However, that said, it's your mead and you will ultimately need to weigh the cons vs. freeing up a fermenter early.....there is no universal "right" answer here.

Mead that's not clear yet almost definitely still has yeast in suspension and even if there isn't airlock activity it is still fermenting, so trying to bottle clarify will most likely leave you with hazy mead and shattered glass all over the floor, walls and ceiling.

Bottling should never be considered if the mead isn't crystal clear AND ferment is unquestionably stopped either by taking hydrometer readings for a couple weeks without any changes or stabilized with sulfate and sorbate.

It's possible to bottle right from primary, personally wouldn't recommend it, but there are some that succesfully prefer and do so. But only after it is cleared, verified to be done fermenting and often stabilized.

My $0.02 .....if it's still hazy or making sediment it needs to be racked again until you can say it is crystal clear, like can look through it and read a newspaper held up on the other side. then your ready to verify the hydro readings, bottle and age it.

I think that 3 weeks in primary is way too short...Most meads are just finishing up active fermentation at that point, and I think you'd be better served to leave the mead in the primary container for at least that same amount of time after to allow the yeast to clean up after itself. I generally have mead largely cleared before transferring (and occasionally bottle directly from primary after 3-4 months. Most yeasts tolerate this fine, and will not cause off flavors.)

Once the mead has been in primary for 6-8 weeks, I have a pretty good idea of what it will taste like, and what the OG is, and if I'm going to transfer at that point, I will make my stabilization additions and transfer a few days later, backsweetening as it goes into secondary. In a sense, my "secondary" is already at tertiary or bulk aging status...all I have to do it let it finish clearing, including the extra protein that got added if I did backsweeten. If I get impatient and/or need the carboy, all I have to do is add finings and I'm ready to bottle.

I've yet to have anyone present me with any definitive evidence of this, but yes, the party line is that bulk aging will result in a more consistent mead than bottle aging. I think this may be a bunch of hooey, but I have no proof either, other than that I've never cracked open a bottle of my mead and said, "gee this is really different than the last bottle"......

I'd think that by the time you are ready to bottle or bulk age it's had plenty of time and transfers to be as homogenized, ingredient and flavorwise as it is going to get.

The only way I could see having one bottle taste different than another providing that you opened them both at exactly the same time is if they were stored differently, put one in the sun and one in wine cellar conditions for 6 months and I'm sure it will effect the aging process.

Or if you opened one at 6 months and the next at 9 months and noticed the difference, that'd also be understandable.

Otherwise I think it's just personal preference. I like looking at the carboys to see the crystal clear colorful libations in bulk form, but if it ever came down to needing a carboy for something, I'm not gonna resist the itch to make a new batch just for aesthetic reasons, onto bottle aging I will go lol.

The mead I made in 2010 was in primary around 3 months, transferred to Secondary for another 3 months. I then (because I didn't know better at the time) assumed it must be finished and bottled it. I had made no additions after my initial recipe.

A couple of weeks later I was down in basement and noticed liquid under my wine rack. Upon further inspection I had 3 popped corks and several others that were somewhat pushed out.

I ended up uncorking all bottles, gently pouring into a bottling bucket, testing it at 1.005,
stabilizing with sorbate and sulphite and rebottling. No more popped corks!

roadymi said:

The mead I made in 2010 was in primary around 3 months, transferred to Secondary for another 3 months. I then (because I didn't know better at the time) assumed it must be finished and bottled it. I had made no additions after my initial recipe.

A couple of weeks later I was down in basement and noticed liquid under my wine rack. Upon further inspection I had 3 popped corks and several others that were somewhat pushed out.

I ended up uncorking all bottles, gently pouring into a bottling bucket, testing it at 1.005,
stabilizing with sorbate and sulphite and rebottling. No more popped corks!

Click to expand...

Which once again backs up the point that inactive airlocks, clarity and going based off timetables does not prove fermentation is done....Hydrometers... best $8.00 any brewer can invest in equipment.

Occasionally multiple times!

Adding a question: does cold crashing enhance flocculation?

I dunno if it enhances how solid the lees and yeast cake are packed but it sure as hell makes things drop out real fast.

The timings are bollocks........

Plus there are a few misconceptions.

All of the professional vineyards/wineries locally, bottle age. For economic reasons and the fact that they all have temperature controlled storage/warehousing. Yes, it stays in the fermenters until its clear, but then its bottled and stored in climatic conditions that are the same as a "proper" cellar/cave/under ground store....... The point of bulk ageing like we tend to do, is a trade off. We don't have the kind of storage that the pro's enjoy, so bulk storage is the best possible compromise, for consistency.

So for the OP, if time and fermenter space are at a premium, then it would probably be best to follow normal methods to complete the fermentation, then depending on the mead type, rack off the gross lees and stabilise, then back sweeten to the required level, then hit it with the 2 part "quick" finings to clear it in about 48 hours, sulphite then bottle.

By handling it that way, the quickest turn around is achieved in respect of fermenter space and any slight differences have to be tolerated.