Homebrewing - Beer, Mead, Wine, Cider

2730 readers

1 users here now

A community dedicated to homebrewing beer, mead, wine, cider and everything in between. If it ferments, bring it over here.

Share recipes, ideas, ask for feedback or just advice.

Some starting points for beginners:

Introduction to Beer Brewing

A basic mead primer

Quick and diry guide to fermenting fruit - cider and wine

Brewing software

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

SpiderShoeCult@sopuli.xyz

plactagonic@sopuli.xyz

Probably n00b Question - Mead Brewing (self.homebrewing)

submitted 3 days ago by DahGangalang to c/homebrewing@sopuli.xyz

4 comments fedilink hide all child comments

For context, I've dabbled in home brewing. I've made ~4 successful batches based on online recipes. I wouldn't call myself an expert, but also not a complete amateur.

So what happens if you don't rack your mead/wine? I suppose the notion I have is to let it set in primary (assuming there's no fruit/spices to remove after initial fermentation) until its fully clarified before going straight to bottling?

I guess I've assumed there is some problem in the clarification step if you don't "get rid of" the dead yeast that precipitates, but I've never seen anything exploring that as a method.

Can anyone offer their experience?

top 4 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] MuteDog@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

That's fine. The old advice for racking off the yeast is because that's what the big professional brewers/winemakers do. The difference being yeast sitting on the bottom of 5 gallons of beer/wine vs yeast sitting on the bottom of 100,000 bbls. The massive weight crushes the yeast and then lets some undesirable flavors into the beverage. At the homebrew scale this just doesn't happen.

The only thing to be wary of without racking off the yeast is that it's easy to stir a bunch of the sediment back up if your racking cane moves around during bottling.

[–] alzymologist@sopuli.xyz 4 points 3 days ago

Right, "professionals" care about autolisis, they filter the stuff afterwards anyway or sell musty immature stuff. Neither is cool for mead - but waiting is not cool for business.

[–] BlueEther@no.lastname.nz 4 points 3 days ago

As @MuteDog@lemmy.world said, but I'd add just one other thought.

Most of my 15 or 30 l batches seem to clear much faster after the first rack

[–] alzymologist@sopuli.xyz 3 points 3 days ago

I don't rack clear mead. It settles perfectly after a year or so, wait till laser beam goes through without any scattering, don't agitate the bottle and give it time, mead really gets better on the long run.

Also, the more yeast you have, better is precipitation. Any rush makes imperfectly clear mead that would seem clear but would just settle in bottle later. This is a bad shortcut, don't rake it.