Adding nucleation sites to carboy?

[gravityspiral]

I'm going to be brewing a mead soon and rather than degassing, I'm looking to experiment with adding something to it that will provide plenty of nucleation sites.

My first thought was marbles, but since they're so smooth I don't think they would do much.

My second thought was an empty hop bag, with a few marbles in it to sink it to the bottom.

Any other ideas?

 

[Yooper]

It depends on why you're degassing. If you're degassing at the very beginning, for yeast health, it's the stirring the brings in oxygen and gets rid of toxic c02, so the nucleation idea won't work.

If you have excess c02 at bottling, then something else might work- but it's so very rare to need to degas a mead at bottling time (since it spends some time clearing, and naturally degasses) that I have never done it. I have had one batch of wine in 25+ years that actually needed some degassing before bottling, so this isn't really a common problem.

 

[gravityspiral]

I've only done one batch of mead before, but I was under the impression that it needed to be degassed because the CO2 caused off flavors. I plan on aging this for at least a year so if all the CO2 will be out by then I'm not too worried about it. Thanks!

 

[WVMJ]

of course there is a youtube for that, reusable also

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehbaBiLUCD0[/ame]

WVMJ

 

[bernardsmith]

Stainless steel screws or silicone hardware that you sanitize? Oak chips?