Clearing, fining and the second racking

A young mead is cloudy with yeast and protein, and most of it clears on its own with time. Meadmakers commonly leave a traditional mead about three months in the second vessel, racking again every two or three months off the fine sediment that gathers. Each later racking loses a litre or less.

Fining speeds the haze along:

• Bentonite, a clay, goes in at 0.5 to 1 gram a gallon and settles out in one to two weeks.
• Kieselsol and chitosan work in days.
• A cold crash works in a week or two.

None of them ages a mead; they only clear it.

In this game a standard mead is clear 120 days after its first racking, 90 with bentonite. Halfway through those 90 days the cellar racks it again, leaving 0.7 litres behind.