Mead headspace question

[ErinRae]

I'm aging a cranberry/ blackberry mead that's in the secondary right now. I racked it off the fruit and dead yeast about a week ago and now I have a pretty good headspace. Maybe about a litre of fluid or so in size. Last gravity was at 0.996...so I'm thinking the fermentation is more or less done. Will this amount of headspace affect the mead long term??

If so maybe a solution would be to add more fruit? Or extra honey-water?

 

[sonofgrok]

I am kind of in the same boat with my watermelon mead. I have been watching the top like a hawk since moving it to the secondary though and a week into the secondary, I see no signs of bacteria, mold, or microbes of any type. Still looks good. I just hope it isn't oxidizing to acetic acid unbeknownst to me.

 

[BobJ]

You need to minimize the headspace and use campden to avoid oxidation..... Lots of different ways to do it but I use a honey solution.... Water will work but it will dilute.... Some folks have successfully used sterilized marbles......

 

[fatbloke]

some do the obvious i.e. move it to a smaller container(s) with the last bit going into bottles for it to clear.....

 

[fun4stuff]

I've successfully used marbles before.... kind of a pain. They were a little bigger than marbles- actually the glass beads/marbles meant for fish tanks. The pain is cleaning them before and after... and it dropping them in one by one. Takes a lot of marbles, even if you get the bigger ones like I did. If you don't want to dilute, I would get a couple smaller carboys- like a 3 gallon and a 1 gallon... or a few 1 gallons, and put the remaining amount in a bottle.

Now I always make at least 1/2 gallon more than intended in the primary because I usually lose some with gravity readings and after racking off yeast and fruit. Any extra I have left, I put in bottles.

 

[ErinRae]

I'm going to stuff some more cranberrys and honey-water mixure in...figure id might as well make more then less. How long can fruit stay in the secondary?