Making Mead Continued- Racking

Making Mead - continued (racking)

Okay, so we have created our must and we have let it ferment for about two weeks. Now it is time to move it into a glass container so it can ferment more slowly and we can keep a close eye on it. (This glass container is called a carboy).

Rule of thumb for how long to let it sit in your must bucket. Generally about two weeks is good but there is another indicator and that is the rate of the bubbles inside the air lock. After you mix your must and put it in the plastic bucket it will start to ferment and in a day or two the air lock on top will be bubbling at a vigorous rate. This means the ferment is going well. Over the course of time this process will slow down and the bubble rate will be somewhere around 1 bubble every 30 seconds. This means it is ready for the carboy.

airlock on fermentation bucket

This picture is a close up of the air lock that will bubble as the fermentation process gets underway. Once this slows down to about 1 bubble every 30 seconds you are ready to move the brew to the glass carboy.

Siphon the Mead

Remove the cover from your fermentation bucket and siphon the mead into your carboy.

Carboy

Doesn't look much like mead at this stage, well , because it isn't! But you should be able to smell and taste the alcohol content. This is why you put it in a glass bottle. You will be able to watch it as the fermentation process develops and it clarifies into a honey wine.

Mead in carboy fermenting

Here is the Must in the carboy with an airlock in place. It will continue to bubble for quite a while and over time it will clarify.

Now is the waiting game and depending on how much honey you added to your water it could take anywhere from several weeks to several months.

The next stage of this tutorial on mead will cover the process of bottling. But we will just have to wait until the Mead is ready! Until then I am going to cover a few other things like how to use a wine thief, recipes and more.

Sanitize your equipment

An Important note about Brewing mead.

It is a food product and it uses live yeast. You have created a batch of honey and water that is a breeding ground for bacteria and other living organisms. You don't want any of this to contaminate your next batch of mead so you need to sanitize everything. I don't mean clean everything with some type of cleanser. I mean "sanitize" everything with something that is designed to kill bacteria and living organisms.

This picture above shows our mead brewer wearing safety goggles and gloves. The sanitizer is very potent and all precautions should be taken to protect yourself.

sediment in mead carboy Here is a look at the batch of Mead after it has been setting for a week. The clarification process has slowly begun and there is a small amount of sediment on the bottom of the carboy.