Tamarack dry mead, part deux.

More mead time!

The dry mead for my lovely farmers and friends Amanda and Mike at Tamarack Hollow Farm has been bubbling away nicely for about a week, but it's calmed down now and it's time for some racking! To quote my cute little book All About Mead by S.W. Andrews that I got for $1 at a church book sale "The golden rule is to rack whenever an appreciable amount of sediment is observed on the bottom of the container." I think this batch qualifies now. Another good indicator for when to rack is if the fermentation has slowed down; less than a bubble per second from the airlock.

Racking is the act of using suction through a tube to pull the liquids you want off of the liquids you don't want. Yeast is wonderful and amazing, but too much of it doesn't make your mead taste good in the long run. Racking gives you a way of transferring the clearer liquid without shaking up the dead yeasties at the bottom. Be sure to sterilize your racking equipment; tube, the vessel you'll be racking into, other bits and pieces such as bungs, airlocks, funnel and cloth for straining, the hydrometer and its test tube.

Got some suction going! It's a good idea after sucking the liquid into the tube to dip the piece you put your mouth on in to some sterilizer before putting it into the other vessel.

Be sure to take a sample. ^ _^ it's still a little cloudy, but that's to be expected at this stage. As the batch goes through its second less vigorous fermentation it'll clear up nicely, so long as we don't jostle it too much.

Take a gravity reading, looks like this one is almost completely fermented!

Done racking! you can see I saved some of the liquid that was right at the bottom in some smaller bottles. Now I gotta lift that thing. -_ -

It's official when you transfer the label and update the gravity recording. ^ _^