capping or corking?

[LittleHippieMama]

Hello, I am new here. I have helped my husband brew a few times, a stout, a porter, a wheat beer. I want to do a mead for myself. I have a gallon of local artisan honey ($$$) coming this weekend, and I have yeast and nutrient and accelerator on order, as well as new basic equipment. I intend to do a 5 gallon batch, all together in the primary, then split into gallon jugs for the secondary, and flavor the jugs individually with several different ideas.

After the secondary, comes racking and bottling. With beer, one just caps them. I have a capper, though I do not have bottles yet. In my reading it seems like everyone corks mead like wine instead of capping. Is that just for elegance, or does corking improve the end product? I am just curious. I have a few weeks before I need to get my bottles ready, and wondered what opinions folks have.
Thanks!
LittleHippieMama

 

[Cyclman]

Corking is just aesthetic. You can cap flat meads, ciders, or wines just as easily as you can cork them. Capping will not allow any air transfer for multi-year ageing, so if you want an aged, slightly oxidized mead or wine, which can be good, add sulfites and cork.

For your first, IMO no need. I have been making grape and apple wines, they come out so awesome, it is impossible to save them. Age also makes them much better. The only hope is to make so much that you have a huge pipeline, and your drinking can't keep up with your production- my personal wine goal, long way from that so far. I moved away from commercial wine (too expensive) to beer to save money. Now that I'm making my own wine very economically, I am really getting back into loving great wines. And with wine, the savings is HUGE compared to moderate savings brewing. Both give great pride of personal production.

 

[LittleHippieMama]

Wonderful! That is what I suspected, glad to have it confirmed.

 

[snuesen]

I don't disagree with the facts, however comparing wine and mead can be like comparing wine and beer. Different ingredients for each product. It's quite common for a mead at 6 months to be near terrible and at 1 year+, commercial quality. Aging properly with cork/synthetic (temperature controlled gas transfer) is never "necessary", but recommended by every veteran I've ever talked to/read.

Granted this all depends on your goals/schedule/technique, and there are a ton of nuances to the craft that I hope you've read up on! But as its your first mead, and you're spending good money on ingredients, it kinda makes sense to do what the medal winners do, right?