Bassin,
Here’s an article I wrote on making sparkling wine from kits. It’s a little different, but the ideas are the same. The big take-away here is that if you do bottle carbonation, your mead must be completely dry. THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT: you can either have bubbles, or you can have sweet, but you can’t have both. If the mead has any sugar left the champagne yeast will eat it, and turn your bottles into razor-flinging glass hand grenades.
Making Sparkling Wine from Kits
CAUTION! The bottle fermentation process used to carbonate wine can create very high pressure. Your sparkling wine bottles must withstand over 90 pounds per square inch. Only proper Sparkling wine bottles can be used. Any other bottle may shatter, possibly causing a dangerous shower of glass.
Preparing the sparkling wine base
Produce a 6 gallon wine kit (white or rosé) in the normal way, up to the stabilizing and clearing day. Do not use a kit that has an oak addition: oak flavours in sparkling wine are not appropriate. Do not add the sulphite or Sorbate included with the kit. This is very important because these packages contain enough stabilizers to prevent the wine from carbonating properly
On the stabilizing and clearing day, dissolve 1/4 teaspoon of metabisulphite powder in 125 ml (1/2 cup) of cool water and add to the wine. This amount will prevent the wine from oxidizing, but will not hamper yeast during bottle carbonation. Add the fining agents, following the kit instructions. Remember: Do not add the sulphite or Sorbate packs or the wine will not carbonate!
Rack your wine back into a clean, sanitized carboy. Wait 10 days.
Observe your wine. When clear, it is ready to be made into sparkling wine. It does not need to be filtered.
Bottling
Rack the wine from the carboy into a sanitized primary fermenter. Avoid disturbing the sediment. Dissolve 325 ml (1-3/4 cups) white table sugar in 500 ml (2 cups) boiling water. Stir thoroughly and gently into wine.
Carefully rehydrate one package of champagne yeast following these instructions exactly: stir the yeast into 1/5 cup of water at precisely 100°F. Wait 5 minutes then stir yeast thoroughly and gently into wine. Don’t agitate it too much or you could oxidize it.
Siphon your wine into the champagne bottles, leaving 2.5 cm (1 inch) of space at the top of each bottle.
If your champagne bottles accept crown caps, cap them now. Otherwise, insert plastic stoppers and wire them down using wire cages and a wire-twisting tool. Using anything other than a proper champagne bottle could result in dangerous breakage: do not attempt to use non-champagne bottles!
Store bottles on their sides at 65–75°F for two months to carbonate.
Drinking:
After two months your wine will be fully carbonated and you can try your first bottle (it will improve for at least a year in your cellar). However, the carbonation process leaves a layer of yeast cells in the bottle which will make the wine cloudy if you do not take steps to keep it out of your glass.
If you don’t wish to go through the riddling and degorging process (it’s a bit time consuming, and can be messy), simply store the bottles upright for one month to allow the sediment to collect on the bottom. Chill before serving and pour carefully. Leave the last ½ inch of wine in the bottle, to prevent sediment from being transferred into your glass.
Separating Your Sparkling Wine from the Sediment—Méthode Traditionelle
Riddling
After the two month carbonating period, invert the bottles (place them cap down) in wine boxes to allow the yeast sediment to collect in the neck of the bottle. To assist this sediment formation, raise each bottle about 5 cm (2 inches), twist sharply ¼ turn, then drop back into the box. This is called riddling, and should be repeated once a day for two to three weeks. (When riddling, please wear gloves, long sleeves and eye protection.) The inverted wine should then be aged for approximately two more weeks, until it is completely clear.
Degorging 1: Preparing your dosage (topping wine)
Because the sediment collects in the neck of the bottle, you will be able to remove it. This is called degorging. However, degorging results in the loss of a small amount of wine, so it’s necessary to top up bottles to avoid low fill levels and oxidation. For your topping wine, choose something similar to your sparkling wine base and chill it; you’ll need between 50 and 100 ml (1/5–1/3 cup) per bottle. (If you wish to sweeten your sparkling wine, dissolve a half-cup of white table sugar in every quart of wine used for dosage. Gently warm the dosage wine to help dissolve the sugar. Then chill the sweetened dosage.)
Degorging 2: Freezing
Remove the sparkling wine from the box (still inverted) and place in your freezer, inverted. Allow it to chill, monitoring the bottles frequently. When ice crystals form in the neck of the bottle, it is ready to be degorged. (Do not allow bottles to freeze completely: they will break, releasing wine inside your freezer).
Degorging 3: Popping the cork
This is best done outdoors—or in a room where the walls, floor and ceiling can easily be washed—due to possible gushing of the carbonated wine. Please wear gloves, long sleeves and eye protection when handling the bottles.
Remove the bottle from the freezer. Keep it inverted. While holding the bottle upside-down, remove the crown cap or undo the wire and carefully pop the cork. The pressure will free the cork and push the sediment out of the bottle in one step. As it gushes free, cover the neck of the bottle with your thumb and turn it right side up. (You need a quick thumb to avoid losing much wine!)
Once the sediment is ejected from the wine, top the bottle with your topping wine. Be careful to pour the topping wine down the side of the bottle to prevent foaming.
You can re-cap the wine, or insert a sanitized Champagne stopper and wire it down securely. You will have the most success with plastic stoppers. Cork stoppers are difficult to insert correctly using hand equipment, and can be difficult to extract.
Age your wine for at least a month before trying it.
Sparkling wine will improve tremendously with age. While it may be tempting to drink it all as soon as it is degorged, try keeping back a few bottles for a year or more. You’ll be delighted with the results.