Reducing loss at racking.

[Insomniac]

Hi all! My Melonomel has just finished fermenting, so I took it the melon at the bottom and topped up with one more melons worth of juice (filtered this time to get as little pulp as possible).

Before this it was still very much not cleared, though much of it had fallen out so it looked alot different from when it was fermenting. Adding the juice however seems to have acted like a clearing agent, pulling the rest down with it.

My issue is that it takes up about a 5th of the carboy! I'm hoping that it will compress down a bit more over time, but if not whats the best way of maximising the amount of mead I can get out of it? Cheese cloth on the racking cane and just stick it in there?

 

[Robusto]

Cheese cloth on the racking cane and just stick it in there?

if you go this route, you will still suck up a lot of sediment or you will just clog the cheese cloth and have to change it out every two seconds


What I did on my last batch was to very carefully siphon off the clearest mead- I find that using a very small siphon tube (like fish tank air line) reduces the vacuum effect that you can get from larger tubes, so you suck up less sediment. Then what I do is to strain everything (fruit, lees, etc) through a very fine kitchen strainer and then pass the resulting “liquid” through a coffee filter or two… or three. I just keep the “good stuff” separate from the filtered stuff. This seems like a lot of work… and it is, but you keep a lot more of the mead, even if the filtered stuff isn’t as good, it still is very drinkable- especially after you cool it until you almost freeze it.

 

[fatbloke]

What I do is to siphon carefully down to the sediment, into the racking carbon. Then the last bit of the liquid is siphoned, again carefully, into a tallish, slim container. If I can find one, conical shaped at the base. Which is then placed in the fridge for a couple of days. That allows any sediments to settle and for a more accurate final siphon off the lees.

If you made the error of crushing the fruit too finely (yes I've also done that before), then you should search for Luc Volders "Wijnmaker" blog (scroll down for the English translation) and search it for his "bucket strainer" as its up to you how fine the straining material is and its easy to use for larger quantities of pulp sediment.

 

[Insomniac]

Coffee filter sounds like a good plan, I guess I can then safely out the resultant mead back in with the rest?

While i'm here, as you can see in the pick theres still a bit of head space and i'm clearly going to end up with more after all this. Should I go juice another melon or just use water? Currently I've not used any water in this batch.

 

[fatbloke]

Coffee filter sounds like a good plan, I guess I can then safely out the resultant mead back in with the rest?

While i'm here, as you can see in the pick theres still a bit of head space and i'm clearly going to end up with more after all this. Should I go juice another melon or just use water? Currently I've not used any water in this batch.

Coffee filters sort of work but can take a long time and logically expose the batch to potential oxidation.

Luc Volders blog current post might help (scroll down for the english translation if you don't speak/read Dutch). You could easily rack off the cleared part of the batch and then use his technique to remove the pulp. Or he also has his "bucket strainer", which would work with reasonably fine material for the straining cloth part.

So either way, you should be able to complete the pulp removal.

regards

fatbloke

 

[oldmate]

You could always sit it in the fridge for a while to compact the lees. That's usually what I do.

 

[Insomniac]

That picture is it in the fridge! It might already be realy compact, I will rack off it, try to filter out tanything left and then juice another melon to top up with, after that i will just have to use water or it will never clear properly

 

[oldmate]

It doesn't look like it is compact, more like it is still floating around a bit. When I put mine in the fridge it settles then compacts into something that looks almost 'hard'. Good luck!

 

[Insomniac]

Yup, all of mine in the past have too, but its been in there at 5c for a good week and it still looks very much like in the pic, what we realy need it a cafetiere filter for carboys!

 

[Insomniac]

Have now racked this off stuff at the bottom... twice actually, first time i topped up with more juice and tried to filter the bottom, just ended up with even more.

So today I had another go, this time I topped up with water ( 750ml of the stuff ), and put the "sludge" part into a wine bottle with a vacuvin on top. I guess I will either just drink the stuff to see how much different the watered down stuff tastes or wait for it to settle, and clear etc and use it for topping up during the rest of the racking process.

 

[BoxMan]

So how'd it turn out?

 

[Insomniac]

I don't quite remember the whole process, but after what already been said I remember putting the sludge stuff in both a bottle and pouring off the liquid and then into my measuring cylinder and doing the same. Then, once I felt I had saved all I could I stabilised and back sweetened with honey to 1.02 with honey and topped up with water.
I can't say exactly how it turned out, I've opened one bottle so far and it was still very much harsh, we didn't finish the bottle and it's now sat in the fridge under a vacuum, will taste some of it soon to guage progress, but I would say I was panicking over nothing really, the added water was probably an improvement!