Hi and welcome to the rich world of mead brewing.

As I type this I have a dry hopped manuka sparkling mead in my hand.

1. I use Fermaid AT and just dump it in

2. anything that has a lot of CO2 in it will degas if you give it lots of nucleation points (ie dump a pile of powder in it) degassing first will help with that

3. I sanatise too much (mostly just the brewing vessel, airlocks etc) Most other stuff (stainless steel) is rinsed under tap water. Honey is already full of yeasts* and stuff, so unless you are doing metabisulfite 24h before pitching yeast there will always be stuff in there already

*One thing to start to try as you go down the road is wild ferments - you can get some very interesting flavours, some good and others not so good

Hello and welcome to the club, buddy!

1. I'm all for slow-release nutrients, not mixing it in thoroughly might actually be a good thing; I dump whole almonds as nutrient source, those have no chance of dissolving at all and they work perfectly. Yeast with too easy access to nutrients misbehaves - like any fertilizer, it's too easy to overdo.
2. Same here; yeast metabolism has nothing on the timescale of overflow event. What often happens, dissolved gas un-dissolves on nutrient addition because of salinity change. Nutrients are fertilizers essentially, common nutrients are something like pretty much inorganic salts that dissolve instantly, smarter products like Fermaid are supposed to be proper large organic molecules or even chunks of dead cells that metabolize slowly and almost do not dissolve, thus no salinity change and no gas evolution. That's good, rapid salinity changes are harmful for cells too.
3. That really depends on quality of water. In Texas, I used only bottled water; here in Finland I don't even boil tapwater that goes into mead, room temperature all the way. Besides, sanitationrequirement is connected to yeast health and vigor - it isn't easy to infect fresh angry starter, yeast population running at full speed would devour all life in its wake given enough energy supply. Especially if it's good strain (seeing Fermaid I suppose you are Lallemand fan, their yeast is especially good at killing competition). Those fruits in fermentation are not really sterile either, right?

Asked a friend:

"1. pour out some must, mix it into the must, and then add it back. Or could you just add it and it will dissolve over time

2. It depends. All things being equal it should react the same way each time, but I have a lot of variation from batch to batch

3. To me, it wouldn't matter that much. I don't use distilled water, I use tap water for all my mead "

Agree with other guy. Regarding tap water, typically people say no. Since we don't know how clean yours is.But city water with a chlorine smell is definetly clean.

Just to add something about sanitation, I don't make mead (can't get cheap honey).

Somewhere you can get peroxide based disinfectant that is rinse free, it just brakes down to bit of oxygen and harmless byproduct. Widely used in food industry is peroxyacetic acid, but here it is restricted so can't get my hands on it. Another one that is more available is something that decomposes to baking soda but you need warm water and it dissipates quickly (can't remember what it is now).

As others said the drinking water in pipes is usually OK and I wouldn't worry that much about the effect on mead, on the other hand I am always worried about some bad taste from usually chlorine based disinfectant so I rinse everything. So some of my stuff I sanitise in boiling water- doesn't leave anything.