If I’ve hit my FG reading in my primary can I bottle and store right away? Why sit in the secondary ?
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FG .994. I checked it every other day for a week now . Could I add Potassium sorbate and bentonite at the same time ? Should I ? Thank you for your help .
I'd recommend doing the bentonite first and then stabilization second once it's as clear as you want it to be, right before you bottle it, because the sulphites you need to use along with the sorbate can degrade over time. If you're happy with the clarity you might not need bentonite at all, I personally only add it if there's a problem. Then again, I tend to leave stuff in secondary for a long time and most stuff settles out by the time I get around to bottling. If I were going to bottle something at this SG unstabilized, I'd want to leave it a few months in secondary just to be sure, a week isn't long enough to make sure it's actually DONE... (ask me how I know, and I will gesture vaguely towards the sticky spot that's still under the middle of my chest freezer where I can't reach, thankfully only popped corks and not broken bottles).
The higher your SG was, the lower your FG can go below 1.000 (within reason, subject to yeast abilities, because ethanol has a lower specific gravity than water so there can still be sugar left in the must even below 1.000, I think the lowest I ever got was 0.990). If you DO want to rush into bottling it quickly (perhaps to make room for making more mead? which I completely understand), I'd recommend stabilizing it and putting it in something you can unseal, like swing-top or screwtop bottles so you can crack the seal now and then just to make sure nothing exciting is going on.
Why sit in secondary? A few reasons, as rb2112br suggested, letting lees settle out, also you get more consistent results than letting it bulk age in bottles, You also want to make sure it's absolutely done fermenting, and also you want to make sure that it has a chance to degas. Carbon dioxide produced by the yeast can stay in solution for a while after fermentation is complete and if you don't stabilize (like I used to not do) you can end up with prickly-feeling meads and sometimes it works, and sometimes it's unpleasant. Fining supposedly works better when it's completely degassed as well, though I read that a long time ago and don't have anything to back it up but if you think about the particles of your fining agent like bentonite being held up in the solution because they've become nucleation points for carbon dioxide, it makes it more difficult for those particles to attract other particles and settle out quickly. The agitation of mixing in fining agents and stabilization chemicals should theoretically get most of the carbon dioxide out.
Another thing, if you stir it up so everything is all cloudy a couple times a day, not only are you encouraging the carbon dioxide to escape but it will actually clear faster. Seems counterintuitive but there is science behind it, check out how fast things clear when people use stir plates for the whole fermentation.
The higher your SG was, the lower your FG can go below 1.000 (within reason, subject to yeast abilities, because ethanol has a lower specific gravity than water so there can still be sugar left in the must even below 1.000, I think the lowest I ever got was 0.990). If you DO want to rush into bottling it quickly (perhaps to make room for making more mead? which I completely understand), I'd recommend stabilizing it and putting it in something you can unseal, like swing-top or screwtop bottles so you can crack the seal now and then just to make sure nothing exciting is going on.
Why sit in secondary? A few reasons, as rb2112br suggested, letting lees settle out, also you get more consistent results than letting it bulk age in bottles, You also want to make sure it's absolutely done fermenting, and also you want to make sure that it has a chance to degas. Carbon dioxide produced by the yeast can stay in solution for a while after fermentation is complete and if you don't stabilize (like I used to not do) you can end up with prickly-feeling meads and sometimes it works, and sometimes it's unpleasant. Fining supposedly works better when it's completely degassed as well, though I read that a long time ago and don't have anything to back it up but if you think about the particles of your fining agent like bentonite being held up in the solution because they've become nucleation points for carbon dioxide, it makes it more difficult for those particles to attract other particles and settle out quickly. The agitation of mixing in fining agents and stabilization chemicals should theoretically get most of the carbon dioxide out.
Another thing, if you stir it up so everything is all cloudy a couple times a day, not only are you encouraging the carbon dioxide to escape but it will actually clear faster. Seems counterintuitive but there is science behind it, check out how fast things clear when people use stir plates for the whole fermentation.
THANK YOU SO MUCH ! I can’t wait to make more mead . It’s like an addiction LOL . I’ll definitely wait awhile in the secondary . Should I rack a third time to better clarify it than add my bentonite?
I'm honestly not sure what the science says, my instinct is to say the more big particles you have in there when you add the bentonite, the better, because the way it works is that it encourages the smaller particles to stick together into bigger particles so that they all fall out of suspension faster, and more particles and more agitation causes more exposure to more particles which means they stick together more efficiently and fall out of suspension even faster. I'd definitely suggest stirring it up gently a few times and making it all cloudy, every time it clears it should drop more clear than the last time. You might not even need the bentonite.
