After pitching the yeast on the tart cherry melomel on Monday 8/14, the airlock seemed to have gone still by Friday, 8/18. I was degassing every day, so I degassed it and checked it again on Saturday and the airlock was still quiet. I took a gravity reading and got 1.006. That seemed pretty quick to get all the way down there -- less than a week -- and now I checked it again on Sunday and the hydrometer reading has not changed.
I had checked on the Got Mead? board on Facebook what this might mean, and was basically told the yeast had run through the available sugars and was done. That is the fastest I've ever gone through fermentation, which I rather like as I can now rack it to a secondary, sulfite it, and add actual cherries to sit for several weeks to give more flavor. I imagine within a month it will be ready for bottling.
The mead tastes good too. A lot like tart cherry juice to be sure, but it has an ABV of just below 12%, so giving it some time to age may improve it even further.
But today will be a big mead day. I have several meads that will be bottled (Nos. 4 and 5), though after back sweetening No. 4 it hasn't cleared yet so I may hold of awhile longer. No. 5 is perfectly clear and ready to be bottled.
I'm hoping a mini-freezer I have in the basement can work as a cold crashing refrigerator. I was looking into modifying it, but saw it had a "Warm" setting on it which supposedly should put it in the 37F range, which would be perfect, and while I've turned the temp way down on it (moved it to "warm" today) it has remained at about 30-32F. It could use be because it has been so cold previously it is just taking time to get to that level, but assuming the temp does rise above the freezing mark, I'll add mead No. 4 to it and let it sit in there for a week to see if that speeds up clarification.
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