So I am at the start of week 6 of fermentation on my melomel. this is my first time trying to make this so I did a lot of reading and took what I thought was the best from all recipes and suggestions when jumping in. As I said tomorrow will be 6 weeks of fermentation. Im down to 37 seconds between burps. my question is this when, I rack to another carboy/pail do I need to add to the pail ot take up the airspace. I do plan on adding fresh frozen berries to the secondary for added flavor if needed. my OG was 1124 I wont check again until I rack.... any and all advise would be appreciated.
Raspberry Melomel Racking
- Thread starter DarrinVH
- Start date
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buzzerj
Well-Known Member
Yes I would try to limit the airspace whenever possible at this stage. What is the volume of your melomel? I'm at the same stage with my raspberry melomel one gallon batch. I have it in a clean and sanitize one gallon glass jug. I stabilized it and now need to back sweeten. I need someone to drink a little bit of it in it's dry state so I can have a bit more volume to add some honey. It's about 0.990 right now. One thing I was amazed with is that at 6 weeks you have bubbling at all. The best point to make with meads is to do staggered nutrient additions to force fermentation to efficiently happen. My meads are basically dry in a week and most of the bubbling is done in the second week. So I added potassium bicarbonate at must prep along with Fermaid K and DAP. I repeated the Fermaid K and DAP at the one third and 2 thirds sugar breaks. That provides the yeast nutrition needed for a fast and strong fermentation. I used Wyeast 1388 yeast so I made a BOMM. See https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=429241. I don't want slow fermentations because I don't want to wait a year for a batch of mead. But yes definitely limit airspace in a secondary. You can add metabisulfite or ascorbic acid to help prevent oxidation but the best rule is limit airspace.
Chris_The_Rogue
Well-Known Member
Darrin your plan sounds solid. The fruit should help fill up that space.
Ive never heard of a mead fermenting that fast. The shortest primary ive ever managed was three weeks, and that was a session mead with staggard neutrients and degassing.
Can you give more details on how you manage that? SG, yeast selection and such?
Ive never heard of a mead fermenting that fast. The shortest primary ive ever managed was three weeks, and that was a session mead with staggard neutrients and degassing.
Can you give more details on how you manage that? SG, yeast selection and such?
I added 3/4 tsp each of nutrients and energizer at the beginning . . I didnt add any more after that since i didn't want air added to the carboy. It is currently in a 6.5 gallon carboy and ill be racking into a 6 gallon carboy..
I added 3/4 tsp each of nutrients and energizer at the beginning . . I didnt add any more after that since i didn't want air added to the carboy. It is currently in a 6.5 gallon carboy and ill be racking into a 6 gallon carboy..
I didnt think 6 weeks to ferment was fast i thought it was lengthy .
Chris_The_Rogue
Well-Known Member
Sorry Darrin, The comment on fermentation length was aimed at buzzer. Sorry if i didn't phrase it clearly, replying from my phone is a bit more difficult than at my pc.
My average primary time for mead is about a month, longer if its a higher starting gravity. Some yeasts ferment slower than others, and It can also take longer if the temperature of your carboy is on the lower end of the yeasts tolerance. Based on your OG of 1.124, if you fermented dry it would be about 15% ABV. That kind of ABV will take about a month in my experience. I Made a lingonberry melomel a couple months back that took almost 7 weeks to finish primary. That recipe however had a rather high OG of around 1.163 and stressed the yeast out like crazy.
Now as for buzzer's post. Everything Ive read says that staggered feeding and degassing helps to speed up the aging process not the actual fermentation time. One to two weeks to finish primary leads me to assume hes making a session mead. If hes making a higher ABV mead that quickly then either hes got a really good method for speeding things up or Ive missed something in my reading and experimenting. In either of those cases id love to know more.
My average primary time for mead is about a month, longer if its a higher starting gravity. Some yeasts ferment slower than others, and It can also take longer if the temperature of your carboy is on the lower end of the yeasts tolerance. Based on your OG of 1.124, if you fermented dry it would be about 15% ABV. That kind of ABV will take about a month in my experience. I Made a lingonberry melomel a couple months back that took almost 7 weeks to finish primary. That recipe however had a rather high OG of around 1.163 and stressed the yeast out like crazy.
Now as for buzzer's post. Everything Ive read says that staggered feeding and degassing helps to speed up the aging process not the actual fermentation time. One to two weeks to finish primary leads me to assume hes making a session mead. If hes making a higher ABV mead that quickly then either hes got a really good method for speeding things up or Ive missed something in my reading and experimenting. In either of those cases id love to know more.
buzzerj
Well-Known Member
My meads are usually geared to about 12% ABV. I still ferment my meads for the same amount of time you do but most of the serious fermenting is through in the first week. I do add Fermaid K and DAP at the 1/3 and 2/3 sugar breaks to reduce the total aging time and stirring in the first few days is completely allowed to provide more oxygen and remove CO2.
Chris_The_Rogue
Well-Known Member
OK now were on the same page. I misunderstood what you said in your previous post.
buzzerj
Well-Known Member
C'mon over Jen. I'm in Downtown San Jose, CA. I also have a pomegranate melomel, an Orange Blossom honey mead, an Avocado honey mead, Mango Wine and a Pear Wine. All dry and ready for you. Taste away. I did back sweeten my T'ej but that's supposed to be sweet.
Ok, so I racked the melomel into the secondary fermenter and added the frozen raspberries into a bag weighed down with glass beads. The gravity on this one has me a bit off.. it was 1.000..... do I need to add more yeast or did I mess something up ? ended up racking 4 gallons over to the bucket.
buzzerj
Well-Known Member
You are ok Darrin. On mine I had added pectic enzyme at the start as I knew I was adding raspberries to the secondary for a week. The yeast ate them up. I will stabilize and add more honey at the end to sweeten.
