Fermentation is an anaerobic process - it doesn't need air or oxygen as it progresses.
Aeration is needed at the beginning to allow the yeast to generate enough sterols to allow maximal growth and to be tolerant of the the harsh conditions as alcohol increases. 2 saturations of the must in the first day is more than enough, and you don't need any more aeration after that. You are welcome to do all the stones, and bubblers , whisking, whipping and degassing that you like but none of it is necessary. If it makes you happy, or if it makes you feel more relaxed about your mead, then there is no harm in it.
Hi Medsen
I'm not challenging you here at all. But I am asking because I want to learn and need some help. In the book, I spoke about down below. I passed on info in the Book called Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation. In the book, I read that a sufficient O2 add would be consumed entirely in 1 hour's time. And that yeast wants and needs O2 before they go into the fermentation phase. And that was why he added that it would be good to feed a beer wart an extra dose of O2 between 12 to 18 hours so the newest spawn could get their O2 as well. And in the same section, that was why he said to wait until the 12-hour point for the first dose because it was worthless to ad O2 before the yeast had duplicated.
So it seems that he feels it necessary to feed all of the generations of newly propagated yeast their dose. As we know. Higher gravity meads take longer to move out of the lag phase. So this then would/could push back the place for the appropriate timing of doses or ask for a third dose. This was then why I thought it was good to continue to dose with O2 for a little longer based on a longer lag time.
I know all yeast strains are different. But I just felt like one could see the difference between the growth phase and what the fermentation looked like after they do indeed go anaerobic.
I know your background and know you understand these things better than I so I was hoping you could comment on this.
He also wrote in a different place that once two days have passed, then it's time to warm up the beer wort to 70F. To make it easier for the yeast to finish out the ferment. They were speaking of beer, not mead. This confuses me. I think that part of my confusion at times is when reading different publications. Some are about beer, others about wine, and even some about mead.
I'm asking about causing of flavors or aromas during fermentation.
And I suppose some of this comes from trying to read from the dark, not necessarily from the text. I learned somewhere (and I can't remember where now). I can't remember a thing now after I almost died of covid and then lived with long covid for 15 more months. At this point, I expect the leftover stuff I still contend with might very well stay with me to my death. Anyway. Can we deduct that once a beer wort moves beyond the growth phase, it should no longer make off flavors? Otherwise. Why would Mr. White say you can let your temps rise to the high seventies? Or is that a poor conclusion? By the same token. If a beer wort can take an extra dose to ensure the beer's yeast gets their O2. Can we also consider it fair to give the last of the generated yeast prodigy a dose of O2 in a batch of mead if more yeast is reproduced after the 24-hour mark? He did say that extra O2 will go towards making flavor compounds.
In a similar fashion. I came to a conclusion by this means in a different scenario. We stop feeding yeast when they are at 9% ABV with DAP and 10% with Go-ferm because they can no longer assimilate the YAN. It has also been said that we can stop cooling our must once it moves beyond the same break without issue if everything is made correctly. Can we then say that yeast does not create off flavors once they stop eating? And that's why we can turn off our temp controllers after that point. I wonder why they add food at the 1/3rd break in winemaking when this is far short of the nine and ten percent that we need to watch for in mead. Especially if they say to subtract half of the amount of food you would need to feed a mead if it is made with grape must. As that wine juice should add half of the YAN that type of mead needs. And I don't even see how they can say that when some high-proof meads ask for over half of the yan a 10 percent a red wine would ask for.
I made a test batch once with two of the exact meads in every way. Except one was kept at 62 F. and the other at room temp average of about 80 degrees. The strain was not temperature sensitive at this point. I kept each mead separate for two years as they aged. In the beginning, there was a pretty fair difference between the two in many ways. But over time. As the months moved on, the disparity between both was less and less after two years time. No one could tell the difference in a blind test of the two batches. So at that point, it seemed like a waste of time and effort even to bother running with temp control. Yea. It matters if you plan to consume them early versus after two years. But you don't save any of what we generally perceive as benefits from cold fermentation over a period of time.
This is the suck part of what we, mead makers, have to try to figure out when there is almost no written textbooks for mead.
