worlddivides
Well-Known Member
So... Up until now I've brewed all of my beers, ciders, and a mead in a glass carboy (and another glass carboy when a secondary was necessary). Racking was super duper easy, whether to the bottling bucket or to a secondary. As I mentioned in a few other threads, my primary glass carboy broke, so I bought a Speidel. I love the Speidel, but I hate the spigot. Before my mead, I did a beer in the Speidel and everything went well except racking. It took over an hour to rack 5 gallons of beer when it used to take under 10 minutes. With the mead, it was much, much, much, much worse. It took 15 minutes to rack about half a gallon of mead, then it just stopped. I rocked the thing back and forth, raised it to an EVEN higher level above the secondary, but it still came out as a trickle. Out of desperation, I tried my racking cane. Obviously that didn't work. I considered using a rubber band to hold the hood in place, but it just didn't want to work.
The method that EVENTUALLY did work got the mead into the carboy at a decent pace, but it splashed it all over and introduced TONS and TONS and TONS of oxygen. The reason for this being that I didn't have the right size tubing for this method.
Before I racked, I stabilized it with 3 campden tablets (about 7-8 days ago), but I have to imagine that the effects of those campden tablets must have mostly lost their effectiveness in all the splashing around and bubbling oxygen that occurred in the racking today.
Since this is my first mead that has survived into a secondary (my last mead went down the drain because the carboy broke), I have no idea whether this will turn out to be the most oxidized mead in history or whether it'll be just fine.
Help?
The method that EVENTUALLY did work got the mead into the carboy at a decent pace, but it splashed it all over and introduced TONS and TONS and TONS of oxygen. The reason for this being that I didn't have the right size tubing for this method.
Before I racked, I stabilized it with 3 campden tablets (about 7-8 days ago), but I have to imagine that the effects of those campden tablets must have mostly lost their effectiveness in all the splashing around and bubbling oxygen that occurred in the racking today.
Since this is my first mead that has survived into a secondary (my last mead went down the drain because the carboy broke), I have no idea whether this will turn out to be the most oxidized mead in history or whether it'll be just fine.
Help?