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Another NewBee.

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Khyber

NewBee
Registered Member
Aug 19, 2009
19
0
0
A friend of mine and I are assembling the proper equipment for making mead. We got a really good deal on some 7.5 gallon glass carboys, so we figured 'hey.. lets use these'.. also seeing as we don't have any other glass containers, we are kinda locked in to using them. So..

What would you guys recommend we do as far as a recipe with this kind of volume. Are there any special considerations, or do we just brew 5 gallons and then rack it into the glass after a few days? (seems a shame to waste all that space though.

I've also lined up a good source of honey, and a LHBS or two in the area will have some different kinds of yeast.

Thanks in advance, you guys seem great !
 

wayneb

Lifetime Patron
Lifetime GotMead Patron
Scale up the ingredients from any of the 5 gallon recipes to around 8 to 8.5 gallons. Then, for primary fermentation you might want to consider using a food grade bucket (of about 10 gallon capacity) rather than your carboys, since the must will need some headroom for potential foaming or cap production (if you add fruit) during the first part of primary, when the yeast are most active. You'll also have a layer of lees on the bottom when primary is finished, and you don't want to keep the gross lees once you move to a secondary vessel. You can then rack to your carboys for secondary fermentation, and airlock them.

you'll want to have as little headspace in the secondary as possible, to minimize the chances of oxidation in your mead.

Welcome to Gotmead, BTW!!
 

Khyber

NewBee
Registered Member
Aug 19, 2009
19
0
0
Thanks! Soon as i know what kind of honey it is and what kinds of yeast i can get I'll post said information.
 

Khyber

NewBee
Registered Member
Aug 19, 2009
19
0
0
So have any of you scaled up a recipe thusly, and if so, which one, and what other changes did you make to it when you did?
 

wayneb

Lifetime Patron
Lifetime GotMead Patron
I generally make up my own recipes to suit, so I haven't bothered with scaling others' but it is a simple process. Just take the ratio of the volume that you'd like to make, to that in the original recipe, and apply that as a multiplier to every ingredient in the original recipe. For example, to take a recipe that makes 5 gallons of must and scale it to 8 gallons, multiply every ingredient in the original recipe by 8/5, or 1.6. Since spices don't tend to scale linearly, you'll often see advice by some folks to not use quite as much of a strong spice (like cloves) as the simple ratio would recommend. But it works well for honey, water, fruit, etc. ingredients.
 
Barrel Char Wood Products

Viking Brew Vessels - Authentic Drinking Horns