hello! so i'm on day three of primary fermentation of my first mead, and I noticed a few little black spots floating around on top. Should I be concerned? I covered the top of the carbon with a not-so-fine cheesecloth to allow oxygen in, but just attatched an air lock thinking fruit flies might have gotten in? thanks in advance.
-
Love Gotmead and want to see it grow? Then consider supporting the site and becoming a Patron! If you're logged in, click on your username to the right of the menu to see how as little as $30/year can get you access to the patron areas and the patron Facebook group and to support Gotmead!
-
We now have a Patron-exclusive Facebook group! Patrons my join at The Gotmead Patron Group. You MUST answer the questions, providing your Patron membership, when you request to join so I can verify your Patron membership. If the questions aren't answered, the request will be turned down.
Black Floaties
- Thread starter derekwaste
- Start date
Can you get a photo maybe? Or suck one up with a sanitized turkey baster (or even some racking hose or a drinking straw) if you don't have a wine thief? It would be helpful to know whether it's fruit flies or mold or something random that made its way in...
If you've got a nice vigorous fizzy fermentation going, you probably don't need to worry too much but you might want to get some campden tablets to keep on hand so you can stabilize it as soon as fermentation's done.
If you've got a nice vigorous fizzy fermentation going, you probably don't need to worry too much but you might want to get some campden tablets to keep on hand so you can stabilize it as soon as fermentation's done.
Welcome to GotMead
Like CG said, if you have a good strong ferment going you probably don't have to worry until fermentation finishes (SG~1.000) but you should get them out of there ASAP and definitely stabilize it with Campden and K sorbate when fermentation is done.
Like CG said, if you have a good strong ferment going you probably don't have to worry until fermentation finishes (SG~1.000) but you should get them out of there ASAP and definitely stabilize it with Campden and K sorbate when fermentation is done.
is the potassium sorbate really all that necessary? I was thinking about throwing in some extra honey around the time the mead starts to majorly slow down, and let the yeast go at it for a bit longer, unless this is foolish? On another note if you guys wouldn't mind offering some input, I plan to shoot for aging my mead in secondary for around six months or so.. D you think degassing will be necessary? Thanks much!
The sorbate just stops the yeasties, foreign or domestic, from reproducing and they will die of old age, the main reason is to prevent fermentation from starting back up in the bottles thus turning into bottle bombs, especially if you back-sweeten before bottling.
If you had a foreign substance in there, K-meta/campden is necessary to kill off any bacterial contamination, especially the dreaded acetobacters.
There is really no reason you can't let your Mead degas naturally, most of us degas manually so we can bottle sooner and use our carboys for the next batch.
