JOAM - Fruit hasn't dropped

I started 2 1 gallon JOAMs on or about August 28th, and the fruits are still floating, and they are still slightly cloudy. I will wait as long as it takes, but was wondering if it is common for the fruit to still be floating after about 4 months.

Well it would normally have dropped by now but there's a number of reasons why it might not have dropped yet.

I'd suggest that if you can, try cold crashing it for a week by putting it in a chiller/fridge as that usually encourages it to drop.

Or if that doesnt happen you could carefully rack it out from under the fruit leaving most of the sediment with the fruit. You'd have to make sure the receiving container is big enough to be full to just below the stopper.

Or maybe rack it into a bucket then hit it with 2 part/24 hour finings which should allow you to get it cleared and bottled in about 48 hours...

Or just leave it a bit longer......

Fruit is floating simply due to CO2 in solution. Just give it time, they will drop and then you should start to see clearing from the top down. This, like all meads, do improve with age. No rush.

Thanks for the replies. As I said, I'll wait as long as it take. I just wanted to make sure something wasn't going wrong with it.

I had the same problem a couple weeks ago and so I bought a little hand pump and sucked some of the CO2 out. As I pumped I could see the gas bubbles rising to the surface. This clouded the mead up quite a bit but after a few days all the fruit had dropped and I'm planning on racking it today or tomorrow.

Could it just be its not dropping because the mead is sweet? Just like your hydrometer floats beater in sweet mead?

I have the same problem. I started mine on 9-08-12 and fruit has not dropped yet. It has started to slightly clear which I am happy about. I am worried that if it does not drop soon the fruit and cloves will over whelm the honey as I have heard from other people. I did add 1 extra pound of honey to the 5 gallon batch and a Madagasgar Vanillia bean.

Going to give it another week and will probably rack it over to be safe.Let me know whats happens to yours. If the fruit drops over night or little by little.

Temperature was a biggie for me.

My JAOM fermented at 67-69F degrees. The fruit kept floating well past the 2 month mark. Then...we had a bit of cold weather which dropped the temperature of the room that the mead was in down to around 63-64 degrees. That is at the max only a 5F degree drop, but it started the fruit to dropping slowly and started clearing the mead up greatly. Of course when I racked it off the fruit/lees it clouded back up (got greedy). ...but it'll clear back up.

Follow falbloke's suggestion to cold crash it, or simply put it somewhere that's several degrees cooler than what it has been aclimated to.

Ed

The fruit in my first JOAM never did drop and I left it for about 3-4 months. Didn't know or think about the C02 issue BUT it came out really nice after bottle aging for 6-8 months.

'Course I had to keep checking it and only ended up with 2 bottles by then but..... A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.