bagged fruit in primary

Paul,

Do you have a recipe posted? If not, we'll need an exact recipe along with the process used to make the mead, along with original gravity, current gravity, and any treatments made to the batch thus far. It's tough to really dial in advise with a recipe in absentia.

Thanks,

Oskaar

I am moving towards putting all of my fruit into steeping bags, not just because of cap management, but because of racking issues as well. I have found that the batch I made with 2 1/2 gallons of grapes ended up losing about 1/3rd volume when I racked because the "fruit" had not settled or compacted. So instead of 6.5 gallons, I ended up with around 4...

If you weigh down the bags as you suggest, then the bagging should have little or no effect on the end result and should be easier for you to manage. Anyway, that's the direction that I am moving with my own batches...

The question might be asked of the pros around here as to whether you want to wring out the contents of the bag(s) back into the batch when you rack or not. What do people think?

Good luck,
Pewter

Squeezing/pressing the fruit is an essential step in both winemaking (and in my opinion) good melomel and pyment making. The whole idea is to get as much of the fruit extract as possible. This is why you see so many different types of grape presses out there in the market. This is especially true for dark fruit (blueberry, currants, grapes, cherries, etc.) It gives you that last bit if character from the fruit, the tannin from the skins, the antioxidants from the skins (important for long term aging and color retention) and both soluble and insoluble solids that build body, character and mouthfeel in the finished mead. Over time the solids and other trub will settle out during long term aging.

I'm not a fan of bagging fruit, I don't feel that it allows for maximum extraction of color, tannin, fruit character or efficient fermentation kinetics since the fruit is not dispersed throughout the vessel. Mostly I don't like the idea of making the yeast work harder to get to the fruit sugars in the center of the fruit bag. Sloshing and swirling it around help, but it's still inefficient, and moreover the fruit cap does not get to form if the bag is submerged.

An alternative to sinking a fruit bag into a bucket is to get enough netting to cover the entire inside of the bucket and weight down the netting around the bottom/sides along the bottom of the bucket, then lay the netting over the rim of the bucket and hold it in place with a few large heavy rubber bands or tie it down securely with some waxed thread or cord. Add your fruit and stir slowly so as not to knock your weights all over the place on the bottom. Once you have had about four days worth of exposure (color extraction is done by this point) you can make a meadmaker's decision on whether to let the fruit sit longer, or take it out then and squeeze out as much as you can get into your fermenter and allow fermentation to complete. This way, you still get good fruit exposure in the must, you contain the fruit, and provide a simple way of extracting the fruit when you pull the netting out of the fermenter. Just an old winemaker's trick for those who don't have a chunky pump, but it applies well to melomels, meths or anything that may have some chunkies floating around in it!

Hope that helps,

Oskaar

Cap formation facilitates the rapid and thorough diffusion of pigments, tannic complexes, and some of the skin and pulp polysaccharides, without having to triturate. It is also important to the stabilization of the mead/wine's polyphenolic system and its aromatic profile.

Hope that helps,

Oskaar

I bag the fruit, for the racking reasons. A compromise is to buy the LD Carlson "Jumbo, Coarse" (18 by 32 inch size) bags, leave as much room in the bag as possible, and still do the cap management/good fermentation techniques as required. For larger amounts of fruit I just use 2 of the bags, but the fruit is always 'loose' in the bag during fermentation.

paulh said:

Oskaar said:

Cap formation facilitates the rapid and thorough diffusion of pigments, tannic complexes, and some of the skin and pulp polysaccharides, without having to triturate. It is also important to the stabilization of the mead/wine's polyphenolic system and its aromatic profile.

Hope that helps,

Oskaar

Click to expand...

ohhh... now I understand. Thanks for clearing that up for me.

Click to expand...

Happy to help.

Cheers,

Oskaar

Hi Paul,

Here's something I do when racking heavily-fruited mels: just tip the carboy or bucket over at a 45* angle so all the lees settles down to that end for a few hrs and then just rack from the top side. It eliminates alot of the lees getting sucked up into the racking cane.
What is left could be strained through a few layers of cheescloth inside a large funnel.
Just my .02 .

:cheers:

DD

How do you strain using a cheesecloth or funnel? I mean, when you rack you put the flexible tubing into the carboy right? So how do you bring any kind of strainer into this process :icon_scratch:?

I have a large funnel 14" and use a very fine mesh cheesecloth folded 4 times for straining. Line the funnel with the cloth and then dump rest of lees. I only do that when there's massive lees and berries. 6 gals becomes 3 gals real quick if you don't try to get it all.

:cheers:

DD

capoeirista13 >>>How do you strain using a cheesecloth or funnel? I mean, when you rack you put the flexible tubing into the carboy right? So how do you bring any kind of strainer into this process :icon_scratch:?

paulh said:

...SNIP...No more exposed fruit. No more worries. ;D

Click to expand...

Um, don't know who gave you that impression but that's definitely not the case. You'll still need to agitate the bag of fruit in order ensure that no bacteria, molds or other spoilage yeast take root at the center of the fruit contained in the bag. Agitate doesn't mean that you'll kick the snot out of it, but it does mean that you need to get the fermenting must circulating in order to normalize or get a close approximation of the pH, and yeast content of the must outside of the fruit bag. The swirling, stirring, agitating, or whatever you want to call it will get the must moving through the bag and get that nice concentration of fruit character, sugar, acid and tannin into the rest of the must.

Cheers,

Oskaar

So you are saying that after you rack as much of the mead as you can from one container to another, you pour everything that is left through the strainer into some precleaned container, and then pour the rest of the liquid contents into the container you were originally racking into?

Cap,

Nooooooooo....strained lees goes into the same carboy as racked mead. Rack mead off lees into carboy, strain lees into carboy. Of course there will be alot of minute particles but as a fine lees, it will settle down in a month to a 1/2" of much easier rackable lees for next time.
I rack every month or 2 for the first 4-5 months, checking SG, etc... and by the time it's stabilized, it's usually very clear and lees-free.

:cheers:

DD