First Racking, Top Up?

[turtlescales]

Getting everything sanitized to rack my Raspberry Melomel for the first time. First racking, I've been practicing with my auto siphon in the sink. There is a good bit of sediment at the bottom, and I expect that I am going to lose a fair amount of volume.

Recipe-

3.5 Lbs Clover Honey
Juice of 2 small oranges, 1 lime
10 oz frozen then mashed raspberries
1/2 tsp pectic enzyme
Spring water to 1 gallon


We decided after tasting some commercial Raspberry Melomel that we wanted to go for something more subtle, and added the berries in primary to see what the ferment does to them. I made the mistake of not using a mesh bag for the berries, so this is going to be fun.

Should I top up if the jug is low? And if I should, I have a couple options... I could make a honey/water mixture to use, but I also have some must left over from a clementine cyser I started about 5 days ago in my fridge. I left 4 clementines sitting in a jug of apple juice overnight (with a campden tablet) and when I started adding the honey ran out of room in my jug. This one I sort of slapped together and it is even less precise than my others, but smells delicious. Awful tempting to stick it in with the raspberry mead. Thoughts?

 

[BoxMan]

I guess it's all in your preference. I've racked and topped off with water/honey a few times now, and I haven't noticed too much of a difference. Although honestly, I don't have enough experience to make that call.

Purists will say "never top up with water", and others say it's no biggie.

I guess it's all up to preference. If you don't mind potentially throwing off your abv calculations, then a water/honey mix should do the trick. Just make sure you don't water it down. (I kind of did with my strawberry melomel, but thankfully the fruit I racked on to balanced it all out- plus fermentation started up again).

The left over cyser, on the other hand, won't pose as much of a risk when it comes to watering down the flavor. (Damn my grammar is bad at 2 am). But it might throw the flavors "off", or just guide them in a different direction.

So, on one hand : keep the same flavor, small risk of watering it down.
on the other: won't water it down, but might change the flavor.


I've heard of racking onto sanitized glass marbles, and I even bought some for my next racking.

 

[turtlescales]

Thanks for the input. This is my first mead, I am not even sure I took the SG reading properly and am not terribly concerned about knowing the ABV. I have this and 3 other "experiements" going, getting a feel for the process. I'm taking notes, sure... but mostly just having fun and satisfying curiosities. I think I'll use the leftover cyser must, I'm sure it won't be terrible tasting. When I get ready to do batches above a gallon, I'll be more inclined towards precision. And when I get my refractometer :rockin:

 

[truckjohn]

Going forward - The other thing you can do is to start out in a 4L jug... Then, rack into a 1gallon jug, then rack into a 3L jug on the next round....

Another thing I have done is to make a bit larger initial batch and do a primary of 1 gallon + 1 750ml wine bottle (Drill a hole in a poly wine cork and stuff an airlock in it.)

Then - you will have enough make up a full 1 gallon jug when you rack off that 1st time...

You will find there's a whole bunch of sludge on the bottom... Maybe just go find a 3L wine jug and use that to rack into.... I find them for free all over the place (The local recycling centers are great places to look!)

Thanks