Is it done ?

[RightOff]

So I'm struggling to determinge if its the right time to bottle my first 2 gallon batch of mead. It's been fermenting for about 5 months...at this point its totally, absoloutley clear, and I can no longer see any small bubbles rising through the wine itself... however, there is still some erattic airlock activity. I have a two piece airlock on my carboy, and for a long period, the cap sits atop the little tube which rises through the sterile solution without budging. Then, out of nowhere, it clibs, climbs, climbs, untill BURP! it bubbles. Then, nothing for a long while.
The thing is, I didnt take an OG, and dont exactly have the extra scratch to run out and buy a hydrometer at this point. So, what would you do in my shoes? Im really excited to bottle, and honestly need the carboy space for beers I have planned out on a "schedule" of sorts. It LOOKS ready... its just that damn airlock... I dont want exploding bottles... what would you say, fellow mead makers?

 

[fatbloke]

I'd rack it, then sulphite and sorbate it, then de-gas it.

Then bulk age it.

 

[Medsen Fey]

I'd say spend the $12 on a hydrometer before you try making anything else. Whether you are making mead, beer, or wines, you need to know where it is and when it is done. Unfortunately, you can't tell just by looking at the airlock even if it isn't bubbling detectably - leaks happen and really slow fermentation occurs. If your gravity is stable that's a good sign, and if you have reached the ABV tolerance of the yeast, that's a good sign. Without a hydrometer it is hard to be certain.

When you see it still bubbling however, you have to assume it isn't done.

If you can give us the recipe details and a gravity reading, we might be able to help you figure out where things stand.

Medsen

 

[AToE]

Yeah, it's not worth the risk without a hydrometer. Look at it this way - yes it might take a while to get the money for a hydrometer if you're tight on cash, BUT, that mead isn't going to go bad, it'll get better and better while you wait, so just get a jar that you can toss your spare change into and eventually it'll add up to your hydrometer money!

It's the single most important tool in meadmaking.

 

[Loadnabox]

Might want to check online too then, they're only $6.95 at my LHBS (Just bought two of them when I broke one :-/ )

 

[AToE]

I'm sure they can even be found for free on kijiji or craigslist.

 

[Chevette Girl]

I got three of mine from batches of equipment from people who were getting out of winemaking...

And if the airlock is still gradually building up and releasing like that, it's probably not done.

 

[RightOff]

Eh...

Suppose I should have explained. Im really without cash or transportation due to hardships that occured since I began brewing the mean in january. I simply can't afford anything extra. I already have the bottles, and equip. for bottling... besides the airlock only gave one gradual burp all day yeasterday, and today the airlocks little internal cap is sitting flush atop the tube that leads into the carboy (that the co2 flows up). The water level outside that little mushroom cap device is very low, while the level around the tube the co2 flows through is alarmingly high-almost high enough to spill into the mead!
Im just thinking about it like a barometer.... wouldnt that be an indication that pressure outside the carboy is far higher than inside? Wouldnt that mea it would be safe to bottle?

It has been fermenting for over 5 months at this point.... and is completely clear. I'm planning on bottling in 12 oz. beer bottles, and leaving space as someone bottling beer would do.
I guess my real question to begin with was, even if the mead yeast is somehow still slightly active, even though this carboy is now littered with lees, the wine is clear enough to read through even in dim lighting, and the airlock seems to be almost totally inactive....like, maybe one burp in 48 hours...
Am I really at risk for exploding bottles?
I've read alot of bottle bomb stories, but they all seem to be from folks who bottle after two weeks or a few months of fermentation, before mead has truly cleared.

Also, Don't some folks carbonate mead, afterall?
If my mead seems totally cleared and inactive to the eye, isn't it likely that the worst thing that could happen is my still mead is a bit carbonated?

One airlock burp in 24 hrs followed by no airlock activity for another 24... could that really be enough CO2 to burst a not quite filled beer bottle?(afterall, beer is very carbed)

I dont mean to ask the same annoying questions, but could someone please give me advice based on the questions I've actually outlined, rather than just reccomend I get a hydrometer? The brewmaster at a local brewery here told me he dosent even take gravity on his homebrews anymore, and he also makes mead.... so I know there must be a good rule of thumb by which someone here could judge weather or not im at risk for explosions. There MUST be haha.

As I said, I just cant afford to buy/find a hydrometer. A free one on CL is a nice idea, but here I am on a public computer that I had to walk a few miles to wait in line to use. Rough getting around Jax FL without a car.
So please, I don't care about the hydrometer option.

It's only about 1.25 gallons of mead, and after about 5 months... im going to just bottle it in a few days, unless based on my description of the situation, someone can give me a real reason not to..... like I said.... even if it's still fermenting it must be at SUCH a slow rate... how could it ever possibly build up enough to blow a bottle? Wouldnt that amount of pressure take weeks/months? And by that time, with continued activity, would the yeast just reach its alcohol tolerance/ run out of sugar and die?? Over 5 months in.... how much sugar can even be left in 56 ounces of honey???

 

[AToE]

wouldnt that be an indication that pressure outside the carboy is far higher than inside? Wouldnt that mea it would be safe to bottle?

Unfortunately no. It does mean that fermentation has stopped, but yeast can wake up again, even years later, due to the liquid being agitated, temp changes, and things I don't understand.

Am I really at risk for exploding bottles?
I've read alot of bottle bomb stories, but they all seem to be from folks who bottle after two weeks or a few months of fermentation, before mead has truly cleared.

That is indeed generally when it's dangerous, but any time you're bottling a sweet mead (that hasn't gone totally dry) even after aging there is still some amount of risk. After bottling keeping it in the fridge (always) can help prevent any refermentation. Also, you can open one to drink (or even to re-cap) every week or two and keep an eye on it. If it starts carbonating that means fermentation is alive and well - so you'd better drink them soon!

Also, Don't some folks carbonate mead, afterall?
If my mead seems totally cleared and inactive to the eye, isn't it likely that the worst thing that could happen is my still mead is a bit carbonated?

The worst that could happen is that it's too carbonated and explodes! Remember too, while stronger bottles can take more pressure, if pushed past their breaking point they will also create an even more powerful explosion.

Carbonating beer is a very controlled process. You let it ferment as fully as it possibly can (and since beer is almost always below the ABV tolerance of the yeast, it's much safer to assume it's done without a hydrometer than mead is, because mead is much higher ABV and may have just put the yeast to sleep before they were done eating) and then you add a carefully pre-planned amount of new sugar.

If your mead has more than that amount of sugar left it could potentially explode.

5 months in.... how much sugar can even be left in 56 ounces of honey???

Lots, if the yeast stalled due to low nutrients, temp problems, etc. Or if there was just too much sugar for it's normal performance even. Fermentation generally takes no longer than 2 weeks, so everything after that doesn't necessarily count. Of course, it could have completely eaten every bit of sugar, and you could have a totally dry mead - which would mean you'd be safe to bottle, but there's no way of knowing without a hydrometer.

3.5 lbs in 1 gallon is a decent amount of honey, you're likely still looking at a fair bit of sugar left. What yeast did you use?

The problem isn't always that fermentation is continuing slowly, the problem is that it can come to a dead stop, stay there for ages, then start right up again later.

----

Now, I don't recommend it, but I have bottled sweet meads without stabilizing them before. I keep them cold though, and they're in thick glass with corks, not caps, so if fermentation does start up I sort of have a pressure release on there (one that could fail easily though, corks doesn't mean it's safe).

Here's my advice if you're decided you're going ahead and bottling: if you can, rack that mead one more time to get it off the sediment (this will help prevent you from sucking up sediment when bottling later), wait at least a couple weeks then bottle.

If you have flip tops, that's the best, easy to open many times to make sure it hasn't started up fermenting. If not, then cap or cork or whatever you're planning and put them into the fridge immediately - this is where they live now. Drink them often (shouldn't be a problem!) and if there's just a tiny bit of bubbles that can just be left over from fermentation, but if theres new sediment AND a fair bit more bubbles, you'd better drink em all soon!

I would just tell you to wait and get a hydrometer, but it sounds like based on local advice you're getting that you're just going to go for it. So if you're gonna do it, I'd rather have at least minimized the risks (if you drink them all fairly soon and keep them cold, the risk is in my opinion very low).

 

[wayneb]

The brewmaster at a local brewery here told me he dosent even take gravity on his homebrews anymore, and he also makes mead.... so I know there must be a good rule of thumb by which someone here could judge weather or not im at risk for explosions. There MUST be haha.

Well, I'd like to be able to simply tell you that the risks are minute, but that wouldn't be correct. Even though a mead looks from all outward signs like it is forever through and done with fermentation, if there is any residual sugar in the mead (and that is most easily determined with a hydrometer), the very act of racking the mead from your fermentation/aging vessel over to bottles might be enough to stir up enough dormant but still alive yeast cells from the top of the lees layer up into the liquid. Then, the act of racking can release just enough dissolved CO2 in the liquid to make the mead just inviting enough to rouse those dormant cells from their slumber, and get them actively fermenting again.

Does that mean you will inevitably end up with bottle bombs? No, because the degree of pressurization resulting from the renewed fermentation will be a direct function of how much sugar remains in the mix. That's only something that you can determine via testing. That's why folks were recommending you get a hydrometer.

Does that mean you absolutely must have a hydrometer and take a reading before you bottle? No, but if you don't, you are going to be assuming some risk.

If I were in your situation, would I wait until I had a hydrometer before continuing? Yes, because I've seen far too many bottle bombs during my 30 years of experimentation with mead. Thankfully, most were not mine, and also thankfully, nobody was ever seriously hurt, but hearing the explosion of bottles in a room in the basement isn't something that I ever want to experience again.

Tell you what - if you are willing to share your mailing information with me in a PM, I'll send you one of my spare hydrometers. It is that important. As far as what the brewmaster does in his spare time with his home brews, that's his approach - I wouldn't recommend that it be anyone else's.

 

[Medsen Fey]

I understand money is tight, but if you have the means to brew more batches of beer (which is why you need to bottle the mead) perhaps some of those funds could be used for the hydrometer.

When you see slow bubbling, it often means a stuck fermentation not a complete one. You really may not be able to tell the difference without some numbers. There's an old winemaker's joke that says the best way to get a stuck fermentation going again is to bottle it. When you do, that sometimes stimulates the yeast, and certainly bottles are often left in places where they warm up again which can trigger the yeast start up in the bottle.

If the yeast do wake up and start perking again, it doesn't take much to create more pressure than a beer bottle can tolerate. Beer bottles aren't meant to take pressure above about 60 PSI. Yeast in a sealed container can produce 120 PSI (I've tested it personally). That only requires the gravity to drop about 12 gravity points which isn't very much. .

If that weren't enough, I've seen meads with no bubbling at all for months start fermenting again when the mood hit them. It has been described as occurring up to two YEARS later in some cases. So even though you think a mead is done it may still have a long way to go, even if you don't see any bubbling.

What's more, airlocks leak (they can have small cracks) and the stoppers leak. You can have a roaring fermentation and no visible bubbling so bubble rates are notoriously inaccurate. When you don't think any bubbling is occurring, fermentation can still be proceeding very slowly. When you do see bubbling, take it as a sign that the fermentation is not yet done.

It is not safe to bottle a mead that is still fermenting when you don't know when it will stop. I have created bottle bombs which, fortunately blew when I wasn't anywhere nearby. I hope you will believe me when I say that is something you don't want to do.

What you should consider doing is putting this mead away and let it stop bubbling completely, then make sure it sits in a warm room for a few weeks to make sure it isn't going to start again. If you then add sulfite and sorbate, you can be comfortable that it shouldn't restart and you can bottle.

As an alternative, if you bottle it and then immediately pasteurize the bottles in a pot of 160 F water, you can be sure they won't restart. The pasteurization won't help the flavor any, but it may not hurt it much. It will certainly be better than having a bottle blow in your face.

Folks here at GotMead really do care about safe mead making. There is no mead worth getting injured over and so appropriate caution is warranted.

I hope yours works out OK.

Medsen

Geez, I'm slow today....

 

[Chevette Girl]

Im just thinking about it like a barometer.... wouldnt that be an indication that pressure outside the carboy is far higher than inside? Wouldnt that mea it would be safe to bottle?

Actually, what it means is that your local atmospheric pressure has dropped faster than your yeast activity is building up pressure. Pop the airlock off enough to let some air back in if you're worried about the liquid being sucked back into the mead. The fact that it bubbled yesterday worries me.

Am I really at risk for exploding bottles?
I've read alot of bottle bomb stories, but they all seem to be from folks who bottle after two weeks or a few months of fermentation, before mead has truly cleared.

Yes. And there's even one recent thread about activity after a year.

I dont mean to ask the same annoying questions, but could someone please give me advice based on the questions I've actually outlined, rather than just reccomend I get a hydrometer? The brewmaster at a local brewery here told me he dosent even take gravity on his homebrews anymore, and he also makes mead.... so I know there must be a good rule of thumb by which someone here could judge weather or not im at risk for explosions. There MUST be haha.

Three ways to be safe if you can't measure the specific gravity to make sure it's not changing - start with less sugar so it will fement all the way dry (yes, I realize this does not apply in this situation), leave it in secondary fermentation under airlock for a year or two to make sure, or use chemicals (campden tablets along with potassium sorbate is what's recommended) to stabilize it. I hope that's what your brewmaster is doing if he bottles anything with residual sugar or else he's taking risks. I've been resistant myself for a long time to using chemicals but I've also had at least four corks blow in my basement and I count myself lucky that the corks gave before the bottles did.

It's only about 1.25 gallons of mead, and after about 5 months... im going to just bottle it in a few days, unless based on my description of the situation, someone can give me a real reason not to..... like I said.... even if it's still fermenting it must be at SUCH a slow rate... how could it ever possibly build up enough to blow a bottle? Wouldnt that amount of pressure take weeks/months? And by that time, with continued activity, would the yeast just reach its alcohol tolerance/ run out of sugar and die?? Over 5 months in.... how much sugar can even be left in 56 ounces of honey???

You would be surprised. Seriously. A teaspoon of sugar (about 4 grams) is enough to fully carb a beer bottle. A couple low-cost options for testing - if you've got a plastic screw-top water jug, "bottle" your mead in that, or bottle some of it in a pop bottle, cap 'em tight and check for two weeks by giving a squeeze, if it gets hard, it's still fermenting and not safe to bottle unless you keep it refrigerated and drink it fast, or as AToE suggested, if your beer bottles are flip-top caps (like Grolsch bottles) so you can check now and then to see if there's a hiss, and if there is, let off the pressure in the other ones every so often.

Oh, when you bottle in glass, make sure the mead is thoroughly degased (rack it off any sediment and then stir it well without splashing, a few times a day for a few days, to make sure all the dissolved CO2 gets out), that will probably give you a little more time before things get catastrophic.

Good luck, and watch your bottles closely.

 

[AToE]

Their advice is better than my advice, especially since Wayne will send you a hydrometer!

 

[Chevette Girl]

Wayne, you are awesome.

 

[Loadnabox]

I was going to suggest making a home hydrometer.

Got some clear plastic tubing of some kind, I think the clear casing from a ballpoint pen would do the trick. Weight the inside (One end only) of it somehow (BB's or solder would probably work)

Print a graduated scale on a piece of paper preferably with a computer to keep them consistent. Glue this on the inside of the clear tube.

This won't tell you what the real SG is, but it will give you an indication if the SG is changing.


P.S. tell me your name is Kasiorek and I'll have heart failure.

 

[kudapucat]

I was going to suggest making a home hydrometer.

Got some clear plastic tubing of some kind, I think the clear casing from a ballpoint pen would do the trick. Weight the inside (One end only) of it somehow (BB's or solder would probably work)

Print a graduated scale on a piece of paper preferably with a computer to keep them consistent. Glue this on the inside of the clear tube.

This won't tell you what the real SG is, but it will give you an indication if the SG is changing.


P.S. tell me your name is Kasiorek and I'll have heart failure.

Hydrometers are an Engineer's tool (read - gets the job done, is easy to use but is not the highest accuracy)

All the chemists I know will pour an amount of liquid into container with a known volume (usually 100,500 or 100ml to aid in calculation)
then weigh the liquid (the scale should be zeroed with the empty beaker on it first)

then devide the weight(g) by the volume(ml), voilla you have your SG!
You can't get cheaper than that... everybody has scales... if your scales are crap, weigh a larger amount, it will decrease the error.

 

[Echostatic]

Hydrometers are an Engineer's tool (read - gets the job done, is easy to use but is not the highest accuracy)

All the chemists I know will pour an amount of liquid into container with a known volume (usually 100,500 or 100ml to aid in calculation)
then weigh the liquid (the scale should be zeroed with the empty beaker on it first)

then devide the weight(g) by the volume(ml), voilla you have your SG!
You can't get cheaper than that... everybody has scales... if your scales are crap, weigh a larger amount, it will decrease the error.

Wait, that works too? Shoot, I have an accurate scale... Once the sample has been weighed, can it be returned to the carboy or is the risk of contamination too great?

 

[AToE]

Wait, that works too? Shoot, I have an accurate scale... Once the sample has been weighed, can it be returned to the carboy or is the risk of contamination too great?

I always return my hydrometer samples back to the main batch. As long as everything has been sanitized (part of why I prefer no-rinse sanitizer, use iodophor myself, because you dunk/spray it, shake it off and go. No real worry about whether it was contaminated after being sanitized) you should be fine.

In coming up on 50 batches I've never had a problem.

 

[wayneb]

I think that the risk of oxidation outweighs the risk of contamination, provided you sanitize your container first (and keep it covered with a sanitized lid if it is a wide mouthed thing), but if you are careful with handling the sample, you should suffer no damage from returning it to the main batch. NOTE: I'm a bit of a heretic with that advice, since most of the meadmaking "greybeards" will tell you to never risk potential contamination by returning a test sample to your main batch, but I have to confess that I will as often as not pour a sample back, if I know I have taken care not to introduce contamination.

OK - now you know (one of) my dirty little secret(s)!

 

[kudapucat]

Hmm, I didn't state it, but my idea was to weigh the fermenter, and know how much by volume was in it...

Even if you don't know the volume the weight will tell you how the batch is changing.

23+ litre carboy on a set of batroom scales works quite well. 1 gal jugs are getting a bit small for bathroom scales, and a touch big for your average kitchen scale.