first mead - bottling question

[Stinkfist]

But if you are bottling still them you do not have the benefit of second fermentation to create the carbonation, which the yeast will uptake that extra o2.

I have not had any trouble keeping the siphon with the auto siphon and bottle filler.

But if you are purging with CO2 that works as well

[spiderwrangler]

Unless you are stripping the yeast out entirely, any that are left would still take it up just as readily as if they were fermenting.... since they aren't using that O2 in breaking down sugars....

[Stinkfist]

Unless you are stripping the yeast out entirely, any that are left would still take it up just as readily as if they were fermenting.... since they aren't using that O2 in breaking down sugars....

Why would they take up the oxygen if there are no sugars left to ferment, by that point they would be sleeping

[spiderwrangler]

Yeah... suppose. Less that they take up O2 because there is sugar, and more that the sugar gets them active to take up O2, then? I read that as you were saying they'd take up O2 to use in breaking down sugars.

[1beerbaron]

Reviving a relatively dead thread, but thought I might put in my 2 cents.

It might be overkill, but what I did was keg the mead. I didn't carbonate, but I purged the keg beforehand, and then purged the head space after transferring. Then I used a beergun to bottle. This let me purge the bottles before filling and the head space after filling. The keg was never under more than 4 psi and definitely not long enough to absorb any noticeable amount of CO2, so the mead remained still.

Bad news is it creates a dirty keg (and beergun) which you have to clean, when you didn't really use it for anything except as a bottling bucket replacement. Therefore it's more work to clean up than using a bottling bucket. However, I like the comforting (to me) knowledge that any air has been purged as much as practically possible.