I have a LOT of spare time at work which I use to ponder various things. I spent most of last night discussing with myself the problem of clarifying the mead. The biggest problem with fining is that it's all guesswork. You put in one fining agent and it draws a certain amount of residue to the bottom, another agent draws more to the bottom. Too little fining will leave debris floating, too much will create it's own debris cloud. Then it struck me, all the fining agents work the same way, they attract oppositely charged particles into clumps that sink to the bottom. Why not use the exact same technology used in filterless air purifiers to purify mead?
Here's how it would work;
Disassemble two stainless steel kitchen strainers for the screens. Set the carboy of mead on one of the screens, on a non-metallic surface. The other screen would be rolled into a cylinder shape and attached to the bottom of a drilled stopper with a few of the wires protruding through the stopper to provide a connection. Insert the rolled-up screen into the carboy. A cheap battery charger can then be hooked up, one terminal to each screen. Turn the charger on the lowest setting. Theoretically this should be perfect. The electric potential created by the charger would draw charged particles to the screens just like a fining agent would draw particles together. The only difference is that the fining agents are hit-and-miss. It may take days, weeks, even months to get a clear product because you're relying on random chance to cause the agent to bump into the unwanted particulate matter. With the ionic field method the entire volume of mead is exposed to the charge, all the particulate matter would be effected right away. I could easily see this clearing a mead in a matter of hours, if not minutes. There is a bit of a shock hazard, but that just makes life interesting. You'd have to leave the power on when you pulled the screen out of the carboy to make sure none of the residue fell back in the mead.
No reason this shouldn't work as well in liquid as it does in air.
Here's how it would work;
Disassemble two stainless steel kitchen strainers for the screens. Set the carboy of mead on one of the screens, on a non-metallic surface. The other screen would be rolled into a cylinder shape and attached to the bottom of a drilled stopper with a few of the wires protruding through the stopper to provide a connection. Insert the rolled-up screen into the carboy. A cheap battery charger can then be hooked up, one terminal to each screen. Turn the charger on the lowest setting. Theoretically this should be perfect. The electric potential created by the charger would draw charged particles to the screens just like a fining agent would draw particles together. The only difference is that the fining agents are hit-and-miss. It may take days, weeks, even months to get a clear product because you're relying on random chance to cause the agent to bump into the unwanted particulate matter. With the ionic field method the entire volume of mead is exposed to the charge, all the particulate matter would be effected right away. I could easily see this clearing a mead in a matter of hours, if not minutes. There is a bit of a shock hazard, but that just makes life interesting. You'd have to leave the power on when you pulled the screen out of the carboy to make sure none of the residue fell back in the mead.
No reason this shouldn't work as well in liquid as it does in air.
