It will clear and it will mellow.
People often make JAO as a first mead, then promptly break the first rule, which is often the hardest to learn.
The rule of patience.
The sediment drops, doing the time honoured thing of gravity.
Equally, the CO2 developed by the yeast munching the fruit sugars, will also move out and up, the fruit then also doing the gravity thing.
There is no secondary stage as is normally understood. But you're facing the hardest part of making JAO........the racking.
The nature of bread yeast is that it doesn't flocculate very well. Just moving the fermenter to where you're gonna conduct the racking, is enough to bring some of the sediment back into suspension.
I move the fermenter 2 or 3 days, sometimes a week, before I intend conducting the racking. Then I rack to a bucket with great care, only the clear section, down to about an inch above the sediment and fruit. The racked part is usually ready for bottling.
Then, the remaining part is racked to a 2 litre plastic bottle that has been sanitised and the top cut off. The bottle can be cut so its about 1 inch above the top of the liquid and then its covered with cling wrap and placed into the fridge for a day possibly 2. The cold is enough (usually) to settle any sediment and reducing the size of the bottle reduces both its size (and fridge space required) and the air space above the liquid.
That allows me to rack the rest of the liquid off the sediment and I use a cup based racking cane with 6mm tubing. It minimises the racking loses..... I get 5 bottles per gallon (imperial a.k.a. 4.55 ltr - you should get/aim for 4 from a US gallon).
