instant sediment during bottling...

[dputt88]

I made a mead with 3 gal of tart cherry juice from one of our trees as well as 2 gal of diluted honey from my hives. Obviously this is something that I desperately wanted to turn out well given this mead was made entirely at home. its definitely not my first go at mead/wine making either.

however, I had this mead sitting in a carboy for several months, there was no new sediment at the bottom and the mead was crystal clear, well beside being a deep red. so I decided it was time to rack it.

I racked it in a unique way given i recently bought a stainless steel filter called "the clarifier" which i mostly intended to use for beer. anyways i racked the wine into a keg, added potassium metabisulfite and potassium sorbate, and forced it through the filter into another keg. (next time i will have it go straight from the filter into the gun). then once in the second keg i used a bottling gun to fill my bottles.

once filled, all of the bottles were a little cloudy and this all settled over night. its ugly... and after months of settling i have no idea what could have caused this. this is a lot more sediment than normal. any thoughts on what could have cause so much sediment?

 

[bernardsmith]

If memory serves me aright - and often it doesn't - Ricky, the meadmaker (over at Groennfell Meadery) recently explained that sometimes the proteins in honey can cause mead to clear in unexpected ways and so drop sediment when you don't expect it. Might the filters have been less than spotless so providing the mead with added compounds that allowed tannins or other material to drop out of solution?