Mead Lover's Digest #109 Fri 02 April 1993

Forum for Discussion of Mead Brewing and Consuming
John Dilley, Digest Coordinator

Contents:

Sediment, Aging (Andrew W.J. Toler)
Racking Mead (Paul Ray)

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Date: 1 Apr 93 09:31:43 EST 
From: Andrew.W.J.Toler@Dartmouth.EDU (Andrew W.J. Toler) 
Subject: Sediment, Aging  

What is an acceptable level of sediment at the bottom of the bottle? Does
mead dislike sitting on a thick bed of goopy sludge and get off-flavors, as a
result?
And one last thing; I am wondering what would be the best way to store my
aging mead, what temps, what position the bottles would best be in, etc.
Happy days,

Andrew

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Date: Thu, 01 Apr 93 18:04:14 -0800 
From: Paul Ray <paulr@delilah.ccsf.caltech.edu> 
Subject: Racking Mead 

Hi,

I was wondering what people's feelings were on racking mead. I am
brewing my first mead (Chief Niwot's Mead from The New Joy of Hombrew).
It is basically a 5-gallon, plain honey mead with 13lbs of honey.
It has been fermenting happily for two weeks now and the airlock is
still bubbling. I only have one glass carboy and the mead is in it.
So, my question is: Should I rack the mead now or sometime before bottling?
Or, should I just do it like beer and let it settle and then rack into
my priming container? In order to rack, I would have to sterilize my
priming bucket, siphon the mead into it, then clean and sterilize the
carboy and re-siphon from the priming bucket into the carboy. Does the
risk of contamination from this procedure outweigh the benefits of racking?
What are the benefits of racking?

Thanks for your help,

– — Paul

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End of Mead Lover's Digest

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