Cold Crashing Mead?

[HDIr0n]

So usually in beer I cold crash my beer to get the yeast to drop out where I want the FG to be at or just before. Do I use the same process to drop out the 71B yeast? I am a few points above where I want to be 1.006 ( I am at 1.011) I am going to keg the mead so I can carbonate it to where I want, I am just at a loss on this. I do have some metabisulfite and sorbate that I can stop fermentation as well. I just haven't found much to read on this process.

This is my first mead BTW, and I am soo excited to give it a try.

Thanks,
-G

 

[loveofrose]

You certainly can cold crash. It has varying degrees of success and most of the time it takes a week, but it won't hurt anything even if it doesn't work.

Lots of folks cold crash before stabilizing. Be sure to stabilize if you are going to carbonate!

 

[Arpolis]

You can go ahead and cold crash it, after the first 24 hours mix in your sorbate and Camden. That may keep the yeast from fermenting but once it is clear within the week go ahead and keg/carb the mead. I have tried this a few times now and each time it stopped fermentation but after a couple months in bottles at room temp the yeast started fermenting again and it went completely dry. Thank goodness there was not enough sugars to make bottle bombs. If you think you are going to age this longer then let it ferment dry. Cold crash the mead. Rack the mead and cold crash again to let additional yeast drop out. Then rack again on top of Camden/sorbate. 24 hours later add honey back up to the gravity you want. That is the safest way to do it.