5 gallons primary split into multiple secondaries

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woodsy

NewBee
Registered Member
May 24, 2014
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Maine
Trying to figure out the best way to make a variety of meads, melomels and metheglins from
my 5 gallons of traditional in primary right now(SG 1.100) so as not to put all my eggs in one basket so to speak.
I have a couple 1 gal glass jugs with stoppers,a 5 gal. plastic carboy, plus a 1.5 gal and 6.5 gal.plastic fermenter on hand.
Is air space and oxidation a concern in secondary ?
I will have some leftover mead for topping off. Probably buy a few more 1 gal jugs.
I am thinking 2 melomels, 1 metheglin and a couple traditionals and used 71 b yeast.

I have previously brewed about 15 5 gal batches beer, a couple 5 gal batches cider and 1 or 2 1 gal batches traditional mead.

Thanks for the help.
 
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Freeze your fruit first. It will allow the yeast to get to the sugar better. Usually 2 or 3 weeks is enough. Oxidation isn't really as much of a problem as many make it out to be. It's pretty hard to get oxidation. There are also additives you can put in to keep it from happening as well.
 
If your yeast is still active enough to ferment the fruit, CO2 will soon build up and gradually push any oxygen out through the airlock (assuming you don't have too much headroom in there). However, after the yeast finish and begin to drop out, they won't be able to displace oxygen anymore so don't open the jugs more than you have to at that point.
 
Just to be safe, I'd do the melomels in the jugs where you can manage head space to be a minimum. Meads containing fruit oxidize easier than traditionals.