Bottling Mead

In the next month or so I'll be ready to bottle my 1st mead. I planned on using all of my flip top bottles I got lying around but I don't have enough for 5g. The rest I was going to use 12oz bottles as I'd rather not do wine bottles.

Two comments/questions. I'm thinking I'd be better served to go almost to the top of the bottle to minimize O2. Good or bad idea? Second should I get the oxygen type of bottle caps? I'd like to keep some of these around for 1+ years to see how it ages. Any other hints/tips on bottling mead appreciated.

if its a still mead (no bubbles) then sure you can fill the bottles more full, but I've never had a problem with headspace. Mead doesn't oxidize quite like beer will, less risk involved.

never bothered with the special O2 caps either.

I have 12oz bottles with normal bottle caps in my brew stash that were bottled in November of 1999. They are still tastey

Thanks Malkore. Good enough for you, good enough for me! Normal headspace and normal caps it is.

Last batch of mead I made, I filled the bottles to the top. The batch was split among three people, my mead went directly to the basement and stored at 60 degrees. The other two people left the mead on a kitchen table during 90 degree weather. Three bottles exploded. The conclusion I had was that the headspace also cushions any temp fluctuations on the bottle.

well, depends too if you're going for a still mead or a sparkling mead. a still mead shouldn't be able to burst bottles, unless it wasn't done fermenting, or it got an infection and could ferment other types of sugar that yeast can't deal with.

I have corked mead that was sparkling, without using those wine cage things, and had no issues. granted it wasn't meant to sparkle...there just happened to be enough sugar left and racking must've kicked enough O2 in to finish fermenting.

It was a still mead with the only carbonation present from pushing it from keg to bottle. However, it was in Panna bottles. Nice clear 30 oz bottles that I can pick up easily from restaurants in the area. But also, I suspect, with very thin walls. I've done other meads with the same bottles, but this was the first batch with no headspace.

We found that the 8oz clear champagne split bottles worked well for meads and cysers. The first mead I tried was very alcoholic and we decided that smaller containers would be best when we made our own. Now we divvy up the 5 gallon batches into 20 of the 8oz and a mix of 12oz and wine bottles.

Besides the fact that the champagne bottles are made to handle higher pressure, I like that I can see the great colors in our meads and melomels(the raspberry looks especially cool). They also take regular bottle caps so no corking needed.

Ann