Picking up 10 gallons of mead this weekend (bottling question)

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LoreleiHI

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Aloha,

I'm picking up up 2 5-gallon containers of mead this weekend (a meadery went out of business a couple years ago, and they want to get rid of the leftover stock). It's too bad I can't handle the 55-gallon containers! :p

I'm wondering if there should be any special consideration when bottling it? Or can I transfer it directly to the bottling bucket and fill? (Yes, I'll be asking when I pick it up, but I love a variety of opinions.)

Thanks in advance!
 
Aloha,

I'm picking up up 2 5-gallon containers of mead this weekend (a meadery went out of business a couple years ago, and they want to get rid of the leftover stock). It's too bad I can't handle the 55-gallon containers! :p

I'm wondering if there should be any special consideration when bottling it? Or can I transfer it directly to the bottling bucket and fill? (Yes, I'll be asking when I pick it up, but I love a variety of opinions.)

Thanks in advance!

I'm not exactly sure what you are asking. Are there special considerations when bottling mead? Compared to what? If you're bottling still mead, it's whatever. You just bottle it. Questions on corking vs. capping or bottling carbonated mead might bring about a different discussion.

You can transfer to a bottling bucket to bottle, or you can also just hook up your bottling directly to your auto-siphon (if you have one...if you don't, GET ONE). It's really about your preference. I use my auto-siphon to bottle when doing anything smaller than 5-gallons. Revvy developed a copper tube that attaches to your bottling bucket spigot to ensure you get the most out of your 5-gallon bottling bucket.
 
Find out if they've put any additives in it, in particular campden tablets or similar antioxidants. If you transfer it to your bottling bucket try not to aggressively pour it in, minimize sloshing and aerating it to help prevent possible oxidation.

What kind of mead is it? 10 gallons could get you about 40 375ml bottles so you could take some and play around with flavors if you wanted to give yourself a variety, if its like a traditional just honey and water mead you have a nicely aged blank canvas (basing off the post saying the meadery closed a couple of yrs ago). If you have some gallon jugs/carboys you could make yourself some melomels and or metheglins. Make sure you taste it before bottling as well, even if you don't want to make drastic changes it could be a real sweet or real dry mix that you may want to add some acid blend or backsweeten to accomidate your personal tastes.
 
If you have some gallon jugs/carboys you could make yourself some melomels and or metheglins

To footstomp a point made by TheBrewingMedic, if you do alter their meads, do it only to a couple one gallon batches, no more. You very likely have some amazing mead that already has some good age on it. It would be a shame to ruin years of work with experimentation, especially if you are fairly new to meadmaking. Personally, I don't think I could bring myself to alter the product. Not when you only have 10 gallons. But, to each his own.
 
To footstomp
:rolleyes:


Footstomp away my friend, the only damage it'll do is to your foot. You may have noticed I said taste the mead first. There is a reason the meadery went out of business....financial perhaps, poor marketing maybe, misappropriation of funds, mishandled ledgers, family issues.....or maybe their product wasn't very good.

It could be the most amazing thing the OP ever tasted and they'll just want to throw a straw in the bucket and have at it til they think they are seeing Dionysus himself hovering over them....


Or it will be just an ok or overly sweet or overly dry mead that while already nicely aged just isn't great on it's own.

The point is the question of bottling and what to do with it was asked and options given.

I say good luck and yeah, I am a little jealous.
 
Thanks, all!

It was a divorce that led to the meadery closing. Before I bought it, several people had chimed in about how damn good this place's mead was.

I was hoping to pick up 5 gallons of the simple dry mead, and 5 gallons of the Winter Spiced, but there was only Winter Spiced available. He had us taste it before we bought it, and it is *good*. However, there is no playing around with the flavor, since it is spiced.

He also threw in a bottle of the dry, since he had some of those left (the 5 gallons of dry left he was extremely possessive of, lol). We could have gotten several more 5 gallon containers of the WS, but that would have been overkill. :p

I ended up bottling one container directly, no transfer. It worked great. The other will get to age some more in our very cool basement (55°F).

I'm sipping away at a glass now. Out of season? Maybe, but I really don't care. Om nom nom.
 
Before I bought it, several people had chimed in about how damn good this place's mead was.
QUOTE]

It's a shame they had to close and couldn't work out an agreement to keep the doors open or sell it if they made good stuff, it's a lot of work and A LOT of paperwork to open a commercial meadery
 
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