Degassing

Other Fermentables
1

It seems odd to me that for days 1-7 I need to degass my melomel twice a day, but on day 8 and beyond there is no need.  More specifically I am curious why the instructions are not a taper off - like on day 8-10, once per day, then day 12 is the last one.

Does everyone stop on day 8?

2

There’s a lot of mead protocols out there.  Which or whose are you using?  I won’t be able to give you any help, but I’m interested in answers for the next time I make mead.

3

http://www.meadmaderight.com/recipe-guide.html

And other places as well.  This one seems to be the most up to date as well as to-the-point.  I love instructions that are not overly wordy.

4

I do taper off. I do it twice a day for a few days then maybe once a day then a couple times over the second week or so. My thinking is as fermentation slows down I’m getting less benefit from releasing CO2 and more chance of introducing oxygen. So I’m using common sense based on experience. I think it’s good to follow instructions the first time through but I think meadmaking protocols tend to be a bit pendantic. I think that this is because meadmaking doesn’t yet have the numbers of people doing it and there are only a handful of authorities out there so there hasn’t been a lot of push back on the authorities and not a lot of new authorities with different ideas like beer brewing. Not a knock on current authorities or methods, I just think that as more people make Mead there will be more people who say “you know what, I did it a different way and it came out great”.

5

Agreed to all of this. I don’t necessarily taper off per se, but I do still punch the cap down twice a day through day 10 or so and once a day through day 15-20ish. It’s not a vigorous degassing, but I’m sure it helps let some extra CO2 out.

6

That reminds me that I meant to say that my degassing gets way less vigorous as fermentation slows. Just enough to release gas without too much turbulence.

7

I beat the holy hell out of my meads for the first week (much more gently when I am using a carboy to avoid the foam jetting out). Never really thought about tapering off the oxygenation - and degassing, but that makes some sense. I don’t degas anymore after adding the final nutrient addition.

I also use a tiny bit of metabisulfite when racking as an anti-oxidant.