Separate the water? And that is complicating it. Most common methods for clarifying (any homebrew. Not just mead) Cold Crashing The most basic method is cold crashing. If the yeast have just recently finished eating all the sugar in your must, they may still be actively moving around and not quite willing to drop. A quick drop in temperature will force them to enter a less active state, somewhat like a hibernation. This can help in getting the clearing started. Racking Siphoning your mead into another container can help degas your mead. That combined with getting everything all mixed up can also help to accelerate the clearing process. On occasion these simple methods are enough to get things moving, but there are some more advanced techniques if these fail. Also known as secondary fermentation which may not have any fermentation going it's more an aging and flavoring stage. http://madalchemead.com/how-to-clear-mead/
Yea, specifically to help the particles to drop down faster. Even in cold it can take some time for the mead to become clearer. Then again I suppose that for the cost and size of a large scale centrifuge I could just get a ton more balloons and shelves for them and this alone would increase the throughput quite a lot more with a lot less hassle. I am interested also in possibly building a brewery in future even if for my own use - simple automation such as automated racking, automated filling and automated bottling. Nothing too fancy. Baby level stuff.
Spoiler: Pictures of latest batch Sooo, I completed 28 liters of mead bottled from 3x 10l wine balloons. That's a really good ratio and very low losses. It took something like 1,5 months total. I quickly counted that if I kept making new batched I would make roughly ~shit ton~ of mead per year and drown in a sea of bottles. Managed to keep the temp between 14 and 17C for the whole month, no air lock. Lots of raisins and an appropriate amount of yeast nutrient mix. Most of the time the temps sat at around 14,5 and 15,5C. Managed this by using a 200l childrens' spider man pool filled with water and the wine balloons sitting there mostly submerged and the whole thing on the sauna's tile floor next to outer wall with the radiator turned off in the autumn. The body of water nicely evened out the temperature fluctuations, this probably works best in spring and autumn, also during winter with mild amount of effort and undoable during summer. Three different honey varieties, 11kg total spread into 30 liters. Used a fermentation stopper after a month as the fermentation had slowed down and then two different clarifying agents and in three days it was instnatly crystal clear and drinkable after carefully bottling it up and avoiding the sediment. This would have been a two man job but I managed even though my face and the floor were soaking with mead with it dripping from my beard. Then again that just added to the atmosphere
This stuff is *really good*. Even if I say so myself. If only I could make it without sacrificing the sauna for a whole month. Ah well, I suppose that I have an actual crate filled with 20 liter bottles and a whole bunch lying around these will last me a while anyhow and there's no rush to make more too soon or else I'll be drowning in mead bottles.
