We bottled our first batch of mead this weekend, after being in secondary fermentation for about 5 weeks. The advice I found online about how long to leave it fermenting was all over the place, but mostly ranged up to 6 months to a year. But we’re impatient and didn’t want to wait 6 months to see if it came out or not.
It was nicely clear, and apart from smelling strongly of yeast, was very nice. The final gravity was down to 1.006, for a final ABV of 8%. We used the same honey we brewed with for priming sugar (thanks again, Uncle John!). We’ll let the bottles carbonate a couple weeks, and probably have the first bottle at Thanksgiving.
As long as we had the all the gear out and sterilized, we also pulled the Dubbel into the carboy for second fermentation. It looked and smelled fantastic, so we’ve got high hopes.
A long secondary fermentation isn’t a bad thing. (Though the batch we left sitting for over 2 possibly 3?) years was probably over-the-top…) We had one batch that smelled and tasted like listerine at the beginning of the secondary, but was very smooth and tasty at the end of a year.
Though you’re much more scientific than our slap-dashery, so you’re more likely to get something good right off the bat.