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How clear should a traditional mead be?

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floridian

NewBee
Registered Member
Nov 6, 2013
19
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Orlando
My Recipe: 6lbs of Walmart clover honey, 3lbs local farm unprocessed(raw) honey(wildflower), yeast: Lalvin EC-1118, 2.75gallons of water. Approximately one month of aging has occurred in a dark closet avg air temp(74degrees F); I have good amount of settlement on the bottom but mead still fairly cloudy. How clear should it be? Also bubbles have slowed down to 1 bubble every 26 seconds.
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You should be able to easily read average newsprint through the carboy.

You will want to be able to use the terms; crystal, brilliant, transparent.

Relax, the hardest part is yet to come...waiting. :)
 
You can never go wrong with buying another carboy. :rolleyes:

You will want to rack off of the gross lees at some point, except for sur lie aging. Then let it rest until perfectly clear. Rack off of sediment onto your bottling chemicals. Then you can bottle.

For more details on these steps read through the newbee guide. The link is on the left.
 
Another note, a lot of people let their meads bulk age in a carboy for a year before bottling.

Another reason for buying more carboys. ;)
 
floridian said:
Is it worth buying another carboid to rack it in? would that clarify it faster?
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Yes and Yes.

But be aware

Racking will remove the protective blanket of CO2 so you want to make sure you have no airspace (or as little as possible) in your next vessel.
Make sure you still have an airlock until you're CERTAIN it's stopped.

I tend to rack from a 5 Gal into my 2.5 gal and a couple of 1 gal carboys. This is because I don't have a 4.5 gal carboy.

It's really handy to have a couple of different sizes to rack into for this reason.

(Forgive my maths - I work in metric and did an on the fly conversion)
 
kudapucat said:
I tend to rack from a 5 Gal into my 2.5 gal and a couple of 1 gal carboys. This is because I don't have a 4.5 gal carboy.

It's really handy to have a couple of different sizes to rack into for this reason.
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Truly....am working on upping my collection for that very reason...just getting back into it after a 15-ish year break, I have a 6.5 gal primary bucket, two 5 gal carboys, and a 3 gal carboy. Am hoping I can swing a couple of 1 gals, and at least another 3 gal or two without disturbing SWMBO. :)
 
In reality, I've taken to doing the primary in a 10 gal. Brute. I aim for 7-8 gal.,then rack to a 6 gal. carboy. Leaving a few quarts for topping off after samples and such.
 
MMC, your SOP is just like ours. We have a small stack of 10 gal Brutes, drop a drill mounted stirrer in there and put it on high speed and no honey stands a chance of not being stirred and whipped into submission.

Foridian, No, you want to get another couple of carboys. For this batch when you rack to your next carboy you are going to have some empty space on top, you need to fill this space with something, since its young if you mix up a little more honey and water together you can top it off, it will ferment a little more but not nearly like it already has, or you can top it off with another bottle of wine or mead. When making a must we aim to make extra, when done the primary fermentation in a bucket it gets transferred to a carboy, the extra gets left behind with the spent yeast on the bottom, if there is enough extra it gets put into a smaller jug, gallon jugs, half gallon jugs and even wine bottles work well to keep the extra to use to top off following the first racking. We typically rack again in about a month or so because a lot more stuff will fall out after its been placed in a carboy, we then use those little jugs to fill up the next carboy so we dont have a big headspace. WVMJ
 
Hi,

I've brewed a traditional, and my yeast doesn't have great flocculation, so I racked mine off of the lees some months ago and it still looks like dishwater from my perspective, with time, it should all drop out which isn't a bad thing I guess, since traditionals require more ageing, than perhaps other things do to get the full benefit.

So from that perspective everytime I pass by my mead and my OCDness makes all the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, I simply remind myself that it looks unappetising because it's still maturing and it'll let me know when it's closer to being ready by everything dropping out of suspension. Whenever I get frustrated I simply look at my signature line on here.

Cheers

Tony.
 
I've got a blackberry honey traditional that's been aging for five months and although it is mostly clear now it still has a bit to go yet before it will be what I would consider totally cleared but I don't intend to drink any until it has aged a year.
 
ive often thought about purging the headspace within a carboy with co2 after racking.. seems overkill though. just bubble some co2 from a sanitized 1/4" air line into mead. It will displace the o2, then pop on the airlock.
 
UKTony said:
Hi,

I've brewed a traditional, and my yeast doesn't have great flocculation, so I racked mine off of the lees some months ago and it still looks like dishwater from my perspective, with time, it should all drop out which isn't a bad thing I guess, since traditionals require more ageing, than perhaps other things do to get the full benefit.

So from that perspective everytime I pass by my mead and my OCDness makes all the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, I simply remind myself that it looks unappetising because it's still maturing and it'll let me know when it's closer to being ready by everything dropping out of suspension. Whenever I get frustrated I simply look at my signature line on here.

Cheers
Quote]

I wonder if the lack of clarity may be related to the amount of CO2 still in the mead? If you degas using a vacuum pump then I suspect that the particulates in the mead will drop out of suspension fairly quickly. The CO2 in the mead will likely keep fine particles in suspension... While I agree that we are not in control I think we can negotiate with the mead and thus adopt a role of active agency in the wines we produce than the role of passive bystanders.
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Mate, thats what they make carboy covers for! It can take a while for the proteins in a mead to settle out, even if its degassed. WVMJ

UKTony said:
Hi,

I've brewed a traditional, and my yeast doesn't have great flocculation, so I racked mine off of the lees some months ago and it still looks like dishwater from my perspective, with time, it should all drop out which isn't a bad thing I guess, since traditionals require more ageing, than perhaps other things do to get the full benefit.

So from that perspective everytime I pass by my mead and my OCDness makes all the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, I simply remind myself that it looks unappetising because it's still maturing and it'll let me know when it's closer to being ready by everything dropping out of suspension. Whenever I get frustrated I simply look at my signature line on here.

Cheers

Tony.
Click to expand...
 
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