It occurs to me that a more elegant option might plausibly be to put a dye in the airlock liquid, and rig up something along the lines of a light sensitive diode / light emitting diode get-up to either side (boxed in so that external light wouldn't influence it) - so that each bubble passing through would temporarily complete the circuit...
One of my buddies likes toying with electronics. He made a sensor that hooks up to the top of the three piece airlock, and counts every time a bubble goes through, which will output the totals for every 5 minutes in comma separated text file, which can then be input into Excel... While it won't measure volume of CO2, it would still be an indicator of overall activity.
Realisticly, The only way to calculate this is the gravity measurement. In Mead making that is how you tell if it is done. The yeast will eat up a certian amount of sugar before making the environment unlivable due to the % of alcohol. And a percentage of alcohol in a solution, removing the sugar, will lower the gravity as it becomes less dense. When the gravity stays the same for x period of time you know it is complete. Also, if you know how much sugar you start out with and the alcohol tolerance of the yeast you are using then you can aproximate how much alcohol it will make, ie how many points the gravity will drop. I think with honey in meads it basically amounts to about 1 pound of honey to 1% of alcohol. But it stands to reason that the fermentation isn't complete until one of two situations occurs: 1. The yeast run out of sugar or 2. The yeast can't survive in the solution as it is goes beyond the toxicity of the yeast tolerance
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As for having remaining sugar in a brew to make it less dry ... one can do that with lactose right? Because I believe brewing yeast cannot ferment lactose. That's the trick in cream stouts ... I've never heard it done with mead before though.
The other idea I had pertaining to a flow meter was what if one could design the ventilation lock so it would still release excess gas, but only at a certain pressure -- so the whole thing won't explode but it would keep the pressure up enough for it to become carbonated, thus resulting in you having a carbonated beverage as soon as the fermentation is done, and not needing to force carbonate / priming sugar it.
True, Lactose is a non-fermentable sugar, like Maltodextrin. Problem is that they are not very sweet when compaired to sugar or honey. You would need to add about twice as much. And adding that much will end up with a stronger of a mouthfeel. Possibly undisireable. I still recomend Stablizing and then Backsweetening. It isn't that hard and it makes the most of the honey. Lower ABV% making it more drinkable and keeping all the sugars the same yet not using tons of honey. Figure about 12% ABV is you use 12 pounds of honey in a 5 gal batch, aprox. If you use 18 pounds of honey up front then your ABV% will be to the tolerence of the yeast, firgure around 14-16%. And aging time will be a bit longer.
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Do commercial breweries monitor that kind of thing?
I had thought that a certain volume of carbon dioxide would coincide with a set volume of EtOH, but I guess not?
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As for having remaining sugar in a brew to make it less dry ... one can do that with lactose right? Because I believe brewing yeast cannot ferment lactose. That's the trick in cream stouts ... I've never heard it done with mead before though.
The other idea I had pertaining to a flow meter was what if one could design the ventilation lock so it would still release excess gas, but only at a certain pressure -- so the whole thing won't explode but it would keep the pressure up enough for it to become carbonated, thus resulting in you having a carbonated beverage as soon as the fermentation is done, and not needing to force carbonate / priming sugar it.
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