Oxygen levels in must.

rjb222 said:

You will get enough oxygen into your must when mixing to do the job as long as you mix it well. I am talking about setting up a fruit wine or mead or a beer or a kit wine, grapes are differnet. There are two reasons when setting up a must to stir it well with the water and other additions before putting in your fruit. You need to throughly mix the sugars into the water used to totally dissolve them and keep stratification of the must from occurring. The second is the addition of oxygen to the water sugar mixture. In this case you won't add any fruit just the sugars from the honey and the oxygen. Mix it very hard and then your yeast will take care of the rest.

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Marshall said:

I should have told you that I am adding 1 orange, some raisins and 1lb dark cherries. Does this change anything?

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fatbloke said:

Robert has explained it in general terms, but meads are a bit different.

It's currently recommended that aeration takes place at least once daily, until the batch hits the 1/3rd break (some people like to aerate to the 1/2 break, personally I just aerate until the 1/3rd point).

So, if you've used fruit and want to aerate, but don't want to beat the fruit into a complete pulp, I'd suggest that you keep a spray bottle of sanitiser handy. Then sanitise either a liquidiser, a food processor or a stick blender. Obviously if stick blender is your "weapon of choice", you'll need a container that can also be sanitised.

The sample of must can be removed into the sanitised container/liquidiser/food proc' with a turkey baster, then just blitz the liquid for a couple of minutes and add back into the brew.

Sounds a lot of effort, but washing implements with dish washing soap/liquid and water, rinsing well and then spraying with sanitiser (I use CJJ Berry's home brew sanitiser i.e. 5 crushed campden tablets and 1 tsp of citric acid dissolved into a pint of water/500mls, which is what is kept in the spray bottle). 3 or 4 minutes of contact time before emptying out any excess sanitiser, then just transfer some of the liquid in any way you like, just that it's easy to sanitise a turkey baster or even a small jug, just so that you don't pick up any of the fruit, that way, the only "damage" that is done to the fruit is the action of the ferment.

Hopefully that lot makes sense.

Oh and yes, if I'm making a base brew or traditional etc, I usually just sanitise a stick blender and blitz straight into the bucket.

Don't get fooled by those who will go on about possible contamination. Yes, it's theoretically possible, but unlikely if you sanitise correctly. There are many here who make beers as well as meads. Beer hygiene tends to be a lot more intensive, as is techniques to avoid opening fermenters, etc. I won't bore you with the reasons why this is, just that it is and is why those who make both, can often be very anal and mega over cautious.

Meads/honey musts are a bit more hardy......

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mmadmikes1 said:

Marshall that is a little over kill. I simply stir the must with some splashing and it is good enough

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mmadmikes1 said:

Marshall that is a little over kill. I simply stir the must with some splashing and it is good enough

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Marshall said:

Ok , I have a tendency to over think things. Thank you.

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fatbloke said:

IMO it's overkill as well, but there's nothing to stop you if you have the kit.

If you read around the forums, a lot of people like to add the O2 with stainless airstones from a bottle (you do need a regulator as well though - as I'd have thought that high pressure compressed O2 would make quite a mess).

There's a number of processes I've read about that people "on the western side of the pond" have used that I would think of as overkill, but hey, it's your mead/brew, give anything a try and if it makes a good brew then it's a result........

I like to use a stick blender if I'm doing a traditional i.e. no fruit or bits to pulp. If it's got fruit or bits that may be an issue in some way, I just take some of the brew with a turkey baster and blitz it with a liquidiser, then add it back in. Some might think that's over the top, but it's quick..........and I'm lazy !

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