Mead onto the next batch

[Angelus1752]

So my first Mead making adventures turned out decent from what I can tell and from my taste testing. I would like to back sweeten it next but first I'd like to ask what is everyone using to make molmol mead? Or what ever it is? Container wise because my small gallon carboys and my 6.5 gallon carboys all have small holes so there's no way to really push fermentor bag or sock filled with fruit in. Can I just shove small prices of fruit in or should I buy a bigger fermenter with a wide mouth or hole. I found a 3 gallon set up for 45 or so but it's plastic. I hear plastic isn't the best? Now for back sweeting how much honey should I add to 1 gallon based on your guys experience also can I add fruit to this as well or is that only a first and second fermenting thing? Curious if adding fruit for a few months before final racking into bottle will add more flavor and maybe a slight extra sweetness.


Thanks for the help guys still a noob Brewer but hope to before long to move up in my experience and knowledge

 

[Yooper]

For wines and melomels, I add my fruit in giant sanitized mesh bags for this purpose, but use a bucket for fermentation so I can take the mead off of the fruit at the appropriate time and rack to secondary (a carboy at that point).
For sweetening your finished mead, you can use however much honey you want to, depending on the level of sweetness you like. I have no sweet tooth at all, and would find something over 1.000 likely too sweet, while “sweet” generally is 1.020 OG or more. So you can see it’s a matter of taste, balancing the sweetness with acidity, etc.

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi Angelus, Better than a wide mouth carboy I would suggest that you look into buckets. For making wine and mead a bucket is far superior to a carboy during the period of active fermentation because often you will want to add fruit and a bucket allows that with absolutely no problem. You will also want to stir the contents of your bucket to keep fruit fully submerged and wet so that they do not dry out at the surface and introduce spoilage bacteria. You may also want to stir the wine or mead at this time to remove CO2 and to keep the yeast suspended. After active fermentation has ended is the time to transfer (or rack) the wine from your primary into a carboy (the secondary container). This you can then seal with a bung and airlock. The bucket can be covered loosely with a towel or a lid but there is no need to seal the lid because of all the CO2 the yeast produce. The gas forms a blanket that prevents oxidation and the like. The towel keeps out bugs and dirt and pets.
True , plastic CAN leach out all kinds of chemicals but food grade plastics suitable for alcoholic and acidic liquids won't. You can find suitable buckets in your local home brew store and while I cannot speak to this, others on this forum suggest that big box hardware stores carry food grade buckets too.
The other BIG advantage of using a bucket is that you can make a batch of wine that you intend to bottle by starting with a LARGER volume than will fit into the carboy you rack into. This means that you never have any problems with how to top up your wine after racking. You don't make 1 gallon, you start with say, one and a quarter gallon , or five and a quarter gallons etc. You can store the excess in case you need it but you start with a plan of how much you intend to bottle and not how much you intend to ferment... and using buckets with lots of excess space makes that very easy.

 

[Brett_Bellmore]

So my first Mead making adventures turned out decent from what I can tell and from my taste testing. I would like to back sweeten it next but first I'd like to ask what is everyone using to make molmol mead? Or what ever it is? Container wise because my small gallon carboys and my 6.5 gallon carboys all have small holes so there's no way to really push fermentor bag or sock filled with fruit in. Can I just shove small prices of fruit in or should I buy a bigger fermenter with a wide mouth or hole. I found a 3 gallon set up for 45 or so but it's plastic. I hear plastic isn't the best? Now for back sweeting how much honey should I add to 1 gallon based on your guys experience also can I add fruit to this as well or is that only a first and second fermenting thing? Curious if adding fruit for a few months before final racking into bottle will add more flavor and maybe a slight extra sweetness.


Thanks for the help guys still a noob Brewer but hope to before long to move up in my experience and knowledge

I've done melomels in glass carboys before. I run the fruit through my juicer. It deals with getting chunks of stuff through the hole, but I notice the color suffers a bit without the fruit skins.

I've also just run the fruit through a blender with the water at the start, and that works, too, but you get a lot more sediment and fruit cap that way.

 

[dwhite60]

Use a bucket. It makes a lot of things easier. Been doing in in buckets for many years with no problems. Like bernardsmith said stirring it to keep the fruit in solution is pretty important. Easier in a bucket.

All the Best,
D. White

 

[Seamonkey84]

+1 on buckets
Also allows you to make more than what you carboy can hold, so you have extra to top off with after racking off lees. Just transferred to the carboy (juice bottle bottle for extra) when you remove the fruit, before primary is actually finished. Just stir everything and transfer all the yeast during this first racking, that way it can finish in a carboy and you can watch it clear. Once cleared and stopped dropping lees, go ahead and rack as much as you can into secondary (topping off with the extra) to continue degassing, which also allows more lees to drop from the racking.