/diy/ - Do It Yourself

I like to do my primary fermentations in a 6.5 gallon bucket like you would use for beer. They are a lot easier to clean than carboys and you can just dump in fruit and do "secondary" fermentation in the same bucket. Carboys are good for bulk aging. Just be careful with the glass ones.

If you do use a carboy be sure to leave plenty of head room. You can't do a 5 gallon batch in a 5 gallon carboy. Pic related.

One other tip with meads: the musts are very deficient in free amino nitrogen. The main reason your first recipe included raisins is for the yeast nutrients. Get some DAP and some yeast nutrient. DAP is just nitrogen, looks kinda like white sugar. Yeast nutrient is more beige and much finer powder and has other micronutrient shit. As soon as you see activity after pitching the yeast add 1g per gal nutrient and 2g per gal DAP. 2-3 days later and the same amounts again. This will keep the yeast healthy and give you a faster cleaner fermentation with less chance of off tastes and less time to age off any harsh alcohol tastes. It helps to stir up the lees for the first week or two. Use a long sanitized metal or plastic spoon.

If you want to get really crazy with it you can rehydrate your dry yeast with some Fermaid-K, but it's not strictly necessary.

MoreWine has a good short manual on making mead on their website if you want more details.