Out of Room in fermentation chest.

[Justintoxicated]

It's time to make another apfelwein and mead!

Ok, so I can fit 2 glass carboys in my fermentation chest, and my mead has been going for about 4-5 months. I had to pull it out a couple times to cold crash some beer and when the temp goes up the mead seems to start fermenting a little more (getting tiny bubbles).

Do I really need to keep the mead in the chest freezer still? Can I put it in a closet to age it? It does get pretty hot in the house but not sure if that will drastically affect the mead at this point in time?

I'll be looking into some extra tops for my kegs as well (the ones with airlocks) so that I can age / ferment in them and use them as secondarys.

At this point can I simply put the mead in the keg, fill it with CO2 and call it good? Meaning do I need an airlock to finish aging / conditioning the mead, or better to just have the thing sealed?

The advantage of kegs is that I can fit up to 4 of them in the chest freezer, or 2 and one carboy.

 

[MarshmallowBlue]

Temp for meads at least really only matters for primary, there is much less risk aging in room temp than fermenting at higher temps. You should be fine removing the 5-month one to age out.

 

[fatbloke]

The small bubbles when it comes out the chiller will likely be a bit of off gassing. The colder it is the more CO2 it holds, warm it up and some starts to nucleate out....

Yes you can safely keg it and blanket with CO2. Just remember that if bottling still, you'd need to degas it before bottling to remove the CO2 tang it can have.....

As for not having any space left in chiller ? You could get a small 10ft chilled container. Don't matter if its a bit dented and tatty as long as the fridge plant still works any you keep it filled with diesel. A lifetime of chilled storage for home brew might be a minor snag if you lived in an apartment