Making a carbonated session mead. Any need to degas?

I am planning to make a session mead with a starting gravity of 1.050 or less. After proper fermentation time and aging I will transfer to a keg, carbonate and serve.

Is there any need to degas during fermentation? I've heard degasing is for two reasons. 1. to make sure the final product is still. (I obviously don't care about that) 2. To scrub out the C02 which can be harmful to yeast and cause them to crap out early (the gravity here is so low I can't imagine that would be an issue)

What do you think?

Not sure if the issue is truly "degassing" but you may want to stir the mead while the fermentation is in the active phase. That will remove some of the CO2 but what it does is aerate the mead and during the active phase the yeast benefits from aeration.

bernardsmith said:

Not sure if the issue is truly "degassing" but you may want to stir the mead while the fermentation is in the active phase. That will remove some of the CO2 but what it does is aerate the mead and during the active phase the yeast benefits from aeration.

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Do I need to open the lid and actually stir it, or can I just swirl the bucket? Opening the lid that many times would make me nervous.

It would be a good idea to degas before carbonation. For some reason unknown to me, it makes the finished product taste better.