Headspace question

[phil74501]

I'm going to make a batch of mead. Should be about 5.5 gallons. My secondary is 6 gallons. Since I will probably lose some going from carboy to secondary, which is a plastic bucket, I will probably have about 5 gallons. How much headspace should I have? If there's too much headspace, what do you do?

 

[dnslater]

This should be fine.

 

[jrgtr42]

Wait a second - are you secondary-ing in a plastic bucket? Ususally the order is the other way around. primary in plastic, secondary in carboy.
IN any case, mead and cider is less sensitive to oxidation than beer, so 5 gallons in a 6 gallon carboy / bucket should be fine.

 

[Yooper]

I'm going to make a batch of mead. Should be about 5.5 gallons. My secondary is 6 gallons. Since I will probably lose some going from carboy to secondary, which is a plastic bucket, I will probably have about 5 gallons. How much headspace should I have? If there's too much headspace, what do you do?

A bucket, even if filled to the top, has a too-wide headspace.

For a 5 gallon batch, you need a 5 gallon carboy and it needs to be with very little headspace.

 

[phil74501]

Wait a second - are you secondary-ing in a plastic bucket? Ususally the order is the other way around. primary in plastic, secondary in carboy.
IN any case, mead and cider is less sensitive to oxidation than beer, so 5 gallons in a 6 gallon carboy / bucket should be fine.

Should I do it the other way around? It really doesn't matter to me if I bucket first then carboy. If I put 5 gallons into a 6 gallon carboy, I'll have quite a bit of headspace left over.

 

[phil74501]

A bucket, even if filled to the top, has a too-wide headspace.

For a 5 gallon batch, you need a 5 gallon carboy and it needs to be with very little headspace.

Should I just make a bigger batch? I have 6 extra pounds of honey. Make 6 gallons in the plastic bucket, then move whatever is left after fermentation to the carboy? Keep in mind I'm new to this and have no idea what I'm doing.

 

[Yooper]

Should I just make a bigger batch? I have 6 extra pounds of honey. Make 6 gallons in the plastic bucket, then move whatever is left after fermentation to the carboy? Keep in mind I'm new to this and have no idea what I'm doing.

Yes, or get a smaller carboy! Either way is fine.

You can generally "top up" with a little water or already made mead if you have a tiny bit of headspace to fill, and some folks use sanitized marbles to raise the level of the mead or wine a bit- but for over a gallon, you'd need an awful lot of marbles.

Generally, the carboys hold a bit more than exactly 5 gallons anyway, so commonly if you want to fill a 5 gallon carboy, you'd make 5.5 gallons of mead. I do that with wine all the time, as each time you rack you'll "lose" a bit of wine or mead. So make extra, and keep it in wine bottles or a growler or a gallon jug or something with a bung and airlock, and use that for topping up. You can always top up with a similar finished mead, so you don't water down the batch, but if it's your first batch of course that won't work.

For wine, I sometimes will use a similar commercial wine if I don't have a homemade one to use. For example, I may use pinot grigio to top up a dandelion wine or mead. But that's only in small amounts, like a cup or two, and not gallons.

 

[phil74501]

Yes, or get a smaller carboy! Either way is fine.

You can generally "top up" with a little water or already made mead if you have a tiny bit of headspace to fill, and some folks use sanitized marbles to raise the level of the mead or wine a bit- but for over a gallon, you'd need an awful lot of marbles.

Generally, the carboys hold a bit more than exactly 5 gallons anyway, so commonly if you want to fill a 5 gallon carboy, you'd make 5.5 gallons of mead. I do that with wine all the time, as each time you rack you'll "lose" a bit of wine or mead. So make extra, and keep it in wine bottles or a growler or a gallon jug or something with a bung and airlock, and use that for topping up. You can always top up with a similar finished mead, so you don't water down the batch, but if it's your first batch of course that won't work.

For wine, I sometimes will use a similar commercial wine if I don't have a homemade one to use. For example, I may use pinot grigio to top up a dandelion wine or mead. But that's only in small amounts, like a cup or two, and not gallons.

If I make 5.5 gallons in a 6 gallon bucket, would there be enough space in the bucket so it doesn't overflow?

 

[bernardsmith]

There should be enough space in the bucket if the volume of the bucket is 6 gallons and you are making 5.5 but you really don't want to have 4 pints or more of headroom in your carboy. I strongly agree with Yooper. The fact that mead is less susceptible to oxidation than beer does not mean that it is not susceptible and if you age beer two weeks or a month then you are going to be aging your mead 6 months to a year or more. You really want the liquid in your carboy to be inside the neck and not a few inches below it. Can only speak for myself here, but when I make a wine I try to make a slightly larger volume than the volume I need for my carboy (and five and six gallon carboys need more than 5 or 6 gallons of liquid to reach into the neck). This for two reasons: one, racking six gallons means that typically I am left with less than six (the lees take up some volume) and two, as I tend to rack every two or three months I need something to replace the missing volume that comes with racking. My technique is to rack from my primary to fill my secondary and then fill a half gallon or 1.5 L bottle with the excess. I treat those containers as part of my batch although unless the yeast itself calls for racking (some yeasts autolyse in problematic ways more readily than others) I may not rack from these bottles just as frequently although when I use them to top up my large carboy I look for smaller jars and bottles to store the remaining excess in. (I prefer not to dilute my wines with water simply to fill a carboy and you need a lot of marbles to make up for the volume after racking).
That said, once you have been making wines and meads for a few years you may have bottles of similar wines that you can use to top up the carboy too but in the early days of wine making that may not be a viable solution.

 

[phil74501]

The bucket is marked on the outside for each gallon. It goes up too 5. I measured from the the 5 gallon mark to the top of the bucket. Going by the distances between 4 and 5 gallons, the bucket should hold 6.5 gallons filled too the top edge. If I make 6 gallons in it, will that be enough extra space, about 2 inches, to keep from overflowing the airlock? If I put 6 gallons, minus the loss moving over, that would be about 5.5 gallons into a 6 gallon carboy. I don't mind watering it down a little bit the first time around.

One other question, when I move to the carboy for secondary, do I put an airlock on it? Or just a solid plug?

 

[bernardsmith]

One other question, when I move to the carboy for secondary, do I put an airlock on it? Or just a solid plug?

An airlock. You want to provide some means of escape for the huge amount of CO2 that the yeast produce. Half the weight of the fermented sugar is CO2 gas. Half the weight is alcohol. That wine or mead will not be able to keep all that CO2 absorbed and if the weakest way out is through your bung then the gas will take that route. Of course, if the walls of your carboy are weaker then they will find and take that route... an airlock filled with water is designed to act as a safe way for the gas to escape.

 

[phil74501]

An airlock. You want to provide some means of escape for the huge amount of CO2 that the yeast produce. Half the weight of the fermented sugar is CO2 gas. Half the weight is alcohol. That wine or mead will not be able to keep all that CO2 absorbed and if the weakest way out is through your bung then the gas will take that route. Of course, if the walls of your carboy are weaker then they will find and take that route... an airlock filled with water is designed to act as a safe way for the gas to escape.

Ok. I need to get another airlock. Thanks for the info.

 

[slcalex]

I ran into a similar issue when I transferred a mead to a glass carboy.

My LHBS sells wine saver in an air can. I sprayed some in there to remove the excess oxygen. Hope it does the trick!


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