Following Bray's step-by-step instructions on mead making from this article, I swirled Meads No. 11 and 12 this morning to help degas. I'm sure I didn't do it nearly enough as one video I saw says you have to do it for like 30 minutes, but I'm trying to improve my processes to make a better mead.
The pumpkin spice mead (No. 11), however, had a MEA, which is a mead explosion accident, just as I suspected it would. I had used Lalvin D47 yeast and though it didn't seem to be doing much last night, today it was beginning to bubble up through the airlock. I may have caught it early enough as there was no big mess, but having overfilled the jug I was expecting it would happen.
Mead No. 12 was fine as I kept the level a little low on purpose, and it is bubbling along nicely now. Both are actually.
I took a gravity reading of No. 11 and it doesn't seem to have moved at all so I'll check again tomorrow as I'm supposed to do another nutrient addition when the reading drops by 1/3, which is called a "sugar break." As the original reading was 1.084, that means that when the reading drops to 1.056, I'll add more nutrients, followed by another dose when it falls to 1.028. From other readings, staggered nutrient additions (SNA) is usually every other day anyway.
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