I'm planning on a cinnamon/pecan mead. I did a little research and understand that I need to extract the oils from the pecans by roasting them. My question is, should I had the nuts to the primary or the secondary?
Roasting the nuts doesn't extract the oils, that would only happen if the nuts were pressed (it concentrates it as it just tends to evaporate any water content in the nut/oil).
So I'll give you this to think about.......
Using fruit as an analogy, you can put it in the primary, but you'd often find that there's not enough "fruitiness" in the batch as a lot of the flavour/aroma is blown out the airlock by the first part of the ferment, which tends to be the most vigorous.
You can put it into secondary, as you tend to end up with a greater level of fruitiness, as it's not gone out the pipe into the atmosphere, but still most of the fruit sugars are turned into alcohol.
You can put it in tertiary i.e. when the ferment is complete, because that way, you end up with the greatest amount of the flavouring/aroma compounds left in, as it's not been blown away and there's a likelihood that if you rack the batch onto it (the fruit, that is) then most of the yeast has been left behind so there's less to try and much the fruit sugars.
All you have to do is consider that lot, and try and work out where the nuts will fit in. I understand that the alcohol can dissolve the nut oils, but I believe that it often just leaves a weird scummy mess floating on top - how much flavour is extracted is anyones guess.
And no, I wouldn't use nuts in a mead. Most nuts are best consumed plain or in savoury recipes (with a few exceptions when the kernel is included whole/chopped, but otherwise unprocessed).
Dunno if any of that helps.....
regards
fatbloke