I will try to push the mead over the filter using vacuum on the collector side rather than pressurizing the mead. to push it through the filter. The idea is that it would be less risky to remove air/CO2 from the mead by vacuum rather than increasing the amount of air (+ air pollutants) by pressuring the mead

The inspiration I got from YouTube. Here is part 1:

I like the concept of filtrating the mead rather than using clearing agents. For removing particulate matter you can use 5µm or 3µm filter. Using 1 or 2 µm filters will remove yeast cells. Finaly, for sterilization you can use a 0.45 or 0.22µm filter will also remove bacteria cells too.

What you use will depend on what you wish to remove, and how much material you expect to remove, and how will you want to remove it. Smaller pore sizes will result in higher back pressure, and as the material is trapped in the filter the pressure/vaccum needed to move the mead through the filter must be increased.

I have no issues with un-wanted organism, so I will go for just removing particulate matter, and/or yeast cells – but it depends on which filters I can get my hands on. :o)

I have started shopping for the process. It is quite amazing what you can get on ebay and aliexpress from China for hardly any money when it comes to electronics and wires etc. :o)

I added 25 g again, but this time I did not boil the oak. Instead I just rinsed the chips and hop bag in cold tap water and put the bag in the microwave for 60s at full power.

The smell of the wood was quite intense, and it must have been all that great stuff I boiled off last time. Then I took a small sample of the mead for reference before I finally I dropped the bag into the mead and sealed the fermentor.

Today, after 1½ week, I did a tasting and compared with the sample I took before the second oak addition. The fruitiness was still present but now the oak was quite significant but not overpowering the mead. So I decided to remove the oak again. Also, the mead feels sweeter with the oak, and the fruit acids had been mellowed out quite a bit. I get the feeling that when using oak I should probably not have sweetened the mead to 25 oechsle but rather stopped at 20.

Still, it tastes great, and I would like to have used a much larger glass for tasting……. :o)

To raise pH I use pot ash or potassium carbonate (K2CO3). Potassium has no risk limit in foods because it is considered harmless and just as important, potassium does not impart a salty taste. CO3– is on the other hand a quite strong base, and should be handled with care.

So, as titrator I used a 0.10 M K2CO3 solution (Mw 138.2g/mol) by dissolving 0.70 g in 50 ml of tap water using my old but trusted analytical scale and a 100 ml glass measuring cylinder. As titrand I used 40 ml of currant mead again measured with a 100 ml glass measuring cylinder

To add the titrator in a controlled fasion I used a 1 ml plastic syringe with needle. The needle provides a sufficiently small exit hole to control and “cut” small droplets. After each addition to the mead, I gave the solution a quick stir on my home made magnetic stirrer (ref HERE), and measured pH with my pH meter (ref HERE).

Adding in total 2 ml moved pH from 3.41 to 3.89. I found that adding 1.2 ml resulted in a pH of 3.70. Targeting this pH, I would likely be within the “sweet spot” with some error in the volumes used.

Converting the addition in ml to add K2CO3 in g to 1L the graph looks like this:

Some of the fluctuations from linearity might be due the various pKa values but with the general uncertainty of all numbers involved, I figured I could approximate the data as linear.

So, to get pH 3.7 I would need to add 0.42g K2CO3 to 1 L of currant mead. Since my batch size now is about 19 L I would need to add a total of 7.98 g. I have tested my scale with analytical reference weights and found it to be off by 6% and the error is proportional. Therefore I can just correct the target mass by 1.06 and I would need 7.53g K2CO3 and the actual mass will be 7.98g.

The entire amount was gently sprinkled into the fermenter and the entire volume was stirred well afterwards. I left the fermenter for 10 min to let the K2CO3 dissolve fully and mix with the mead. Then came the crutial check: Target 3.70 -> measured……..

PERFECT !

I purchased 250 g of American Oak chips which should give taste quickly, though less complex. Other options would be French or Eastern European oak. French should give a more complex Oak taste but should also be able to over power a mead quickly. Eastern European oak should release taste slower and the taste should be much less intense. With absolutely no experience with oaking mead I figured the American oak chips would be the best chips to start with :o).

Furthermore the oak can be toasted to several levels. The main types used are light toast, medium toast and heavy toast, each imparting different taste notes. Apparently medium toast is by far the most recommended to start with. so American oak chips – medium toast it is :o)

I have also been looking for a guide for dosing the oak. The best I could find was actually from where I bought the chips (Dansk Hjemmeproduktion). Here the recommendations are:

White wine: 50-150g / 100L
Red wine: 100-250 g / 100L
Extraction time: 4-12 weeks.

Again I figured I would start somewhere in the middle – something that would go for both red and white wine, i.e 125 g / 100 L or 25g / 20 L.

Just found another reference HERE from E.C.Kraus. This is by far the best web page I found so far regarding oaking. And as a bonus there is a bit about the history of oaking.

So here we go:

The chips I bought contains lots of little bits that will be able to go through the “hop bag” that I will use for the chips. The get rid of these I just used my spaghetti strainer with a plastic bag underneath.

In this way I lost about 45 g of the 250 g bag that I bought. But now, at least, most of the chips should stay in the hop bag. This is definitely one good reason to use oak cubes next time if available.

I weighed out 25 g in a hop bag, and tied the bag up at the opposite end, so that the chips would not be pressed together in a small space – more free and available surface, better extraction.

Then I boiled the bag shortly. The water quickly got colored, and I became unsure whether this was the taste components I wanted in my mead, so I just boiled for 10 sec or so. I am not so worried about contamination since the mead has finished fermenting with a high content of ethanol (14-15%). This should be too harsh for most wild yeast.

Also in the picture below I took a sample of the mead for tasting, so that I can compare “before” and “after” oaking.

Finally I drained the pot for water and left the hop bag in the pot to cool for a few minutes. Hereafter I just dropped the hop bag into the currant mead, and closed the lid.

Now I will just have to wait. I will test the the mead weekly to see how it develops.

I read that the chips will sink once they get fully soaked. Come to think of it, I should perhaps have tied a string to the bag which I could have attached to the edge of the fermenter. In this way I would not have to “spoon” the bag out later. Fingers crossed that it will not be that difficult and that the sediment will quickly settle again.

Oe: 26 (OK)
pH 3.45 (Uh, somewhat lower than I wanted)

The color is great – bright red – and not pink that I was initially afraid of since the amount of juice was quite limited. It has also cleared quite well already.

I need to lift pH a bit which I will do with potassium carbonate. I just need to test how much to add.

Finally I covered the mead with a layer of CO2 (See “CO2 generator” under Knowledge Tools), sealed the lid, and attached the airlock.

So, today I tried to rack the mead. First I racked the top layer the normal way and put this aside. Looking into the fermenter I got a bit discouraged, but decided to give it a shot.

First I put a large coffee filter in a sieve and tried to filter the mead through this. Did not work. The liquid stop dripping shortly after I filled the filter.

Next step was to use a diaper cloth, which I rinsed on boiling water to ensure that it was clean. I put it in the sieve without folding it, and filled the sieve again. This time the liquid came through, but after a short time, the flow through the cloth was also blocked.

In the end, and after a lot of patience, I stopped. I poured the 1 L I did salvage into the new fermenter too, and the total volume was now only about 20 L.

The last 4.5 L was then poured………… in the toilet. !”¤%&¤#”?.

Now here is another lesson learned: Rack first, back sweeten afterwards!!!!!! And to step in it a little more: 4.5 L, or about 20%, means that I wasted 20% of the honey I back sweetened with – around 350 g down the drain.