Racking a second time?

[Medovukha]

24 days after the first racking of my small gallon batch of mead, I've gotten a good amount of lees on the bottom again- about 1/4 of an inch. In fact, lees began developing on the bottom of the container just 3 or 4 days after my first racking. I've read something about "fine lees" being less harmful to the flavor than "gros lees", and was wondering if it would be a good idea to try just leaving it to age sur lie. I'm kind of reluctant to let out the CO2 that's built up, since I'm afraid of it turning to honey vinegar like one bottle of mine did.

(Edit: Just want to add, the mead is 9 weeks 3 days old today.)

 

[MedsenFey]

If you provide the recipe details, we may be able to give more specifics.

Aging on lees adds some flavors that you may or may not want. Nutty, bready, yeasty things like you find in Champagne. During the aging time on the lees, you sometimes get sulfur odors unless you perform battonage - opening and stirring the lees to add a little oxygen to raise the redox potential and prevent an excessively reductive environment. Personally, I'm not a big fan of lees aging. When you don't want lees aging, it is typical to need to rack more than once.

Medsen

 

[biochemedic]

I'd add that if you really want to get it off sediment as completely as possible, before you rack again, consider fining the batch to really drop as much particulates, and if possible, you could also cold crash it first too...this can also help drop sediment (and if you have any chill haze proteins in solution, cold crashing before fining can help the finings drop some of this too...)