Will Odin Watch My Melomel For Me?

[Beelzebub]

I started my first melomel 5 days ago and everything is going great. It's a 5 gallons triple berry (blackberry, raspberry, blueberry) with Lalvin 71B-1122 eating into 20 lbs of fruit, 3 gallons of spring water, and 16 lbs of Round Rock honey all inside a 7.9 gallon primary fermenter (aka big plastic bucket).

So far everything is going beautifully. I'm "punching the cap" three times a day (not a sexual tern oddly enough) to prevent carbon dioxide from getting trapped underneath the nylon sack-o-fruit.

The problem is that I'm leaving the country soon and will not be there to do my melomel maintenance. It will only be a week of absence but I'm worried that (1) the fruit will dry out from not being dunked and (2) the carbon dioxide will build up and hurt the yeast.

I'm leaving 11 days after the initial fermentation and will be gone for 7 days. I was thinking of putting some kind of glass weight inside the primary fermenter to keep the fruit pushed down into the must.

Is this a good idea or should I just not mess with it?

Before I punch the cap, I notice CO2 foaming up on the sides of the cap so I'm not too worried about its release but more so about the fruit drying out and getting a weird taste.

I'd hate for all this work and care to go to waste.

Thanks all.

tl;dr
I'm leaving my young melomel alone for 7 days. Will it be okay?

 

[dtfleming]

your melomel will be fine. Would have been better to add the fruit after primary ferm.

 

[Beelzebub]

dtfleming, I totally hear you. I'm following Curt Stock's recipe for this batch and though he admits there is a debate on when to add the fruit (primary or secondary) he follows by saying:

After my first few batches I started fruit in the primary fermentation (FPF). There are many
benefits to this technique. Fruit will provide many of the nutrients needed by the yeast during
fermentation and help to regulate the pH of the fermenting mead must. FPF will typically take much
less time than traditional mead fermentations. [I’ve won awards for meads that were six weeks out of
the primary with this method.] Fermentation of mead with an original specific gravity up to 1.145
should be complete in three to four weeks in most cases.

Source: http://www.bjcp.org/mead/melomel.pdf

So I'm just going by his guidelines.

As with any recipe, all the little details are lacking so I'm relying on you all

Nonetheless, that's for the vote of confidence.

 

[HEMIII]

Odin will…
I've been under the assumption that you stir and squeeze the freak (three times a day or when ever you think of it) out of your must in the first week in the primary then transfer over to the carboy which you let set and ferment for 4 weeks and then rack it off the "sludge" (which you add to soups or soaps) and a; let it sit longer for flavor or b; drink it.
I'm new to all this but my first two batches have turned out awesome.


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[HEMIII]

Thanx for the link, btw, I will be reading that at a later date.
Here's a picture of my one gallon blueberry Melomel.
As you can see I've compensated for the "sludge".
What is the term for the "sludge" again? And does anybody have a link to some good soup recipes with said "sludge"?


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