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Thirsty Thor’s Day - New and Improved

1/30/2018

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Ricky the Meadmaker - Groennfell Meadery
You asked and we listened! Thirsty Thor’s Day is bigger and better than ever with the twice the number of deals!

Starting this Thursday on February 1st, all craft mead on draft is $3 all day, no food purchase necessary!

But, because people still like food… we’ve also added $6 bottomless soup!


Learn about Thirsty Thor’s Day here.

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Mead Cocktail: You Earned It

1/26/2018

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Mead Cocktail: You Earned It - 1,032 Gallons of Valkyrie's Choice; Splash Angostura Bitters; Splash of Gin. - Groennfell Meadery
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Thursday Fun Fact 1-25: No Room for Error

1/25/2018

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Thursday Fun Fact 1-25 - Groennfell Meadery - Here at Groennfell Meadery, we don't have room for error. In fact, we don't have room for much of anything.
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A Stalled Batch and What We Did About It

1/22/2018

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Valkyrie's Choice - Groennfell Meadery
Having a stalled batch as a homebrewer is frustrating and irritating. Having a stalled batch as a commercial brewer - in addition to being frustrating and irritating - can also be embarrassing and financially disastrous.

Since we pride ourselves on being open-source, the brew-staff agreed that we couldn’t let our pride get in the way of sharing the story of our most frustrating month. It is also commonly agreed upon that more can be learned from a mistake than a success.

If you are unfamiliar with Valkyrie’s Choice, you should check out the recipe here as well as our general brewing practices.

Also, a spoiler alert: We did manage to rescue the batch, and we’re throwing a huge party to celebrate our success this weekend!

Here begins the saga of Valkyrie’s Choice.

Things that were the same as always:
  • Water temperature
  • Water filtering
  • Nutrient addition
  • Sulfite volume and timing
  • Batch volume
  • Honey quantity
  • Oxygenation
  • Wait-time after sulfiting
  • Volume of yeast pitched
  • Tank temperature
  • Ambient temperature (which shouldn’t matter since the tank is insulated)

Things that were different:
  • ​New honey from a few hours from our normal farm

Observations of note:
  • The aroma of the must had a slightly vegetal aroma (somewhat like asparagus) which dissipated during pump-over. This is relatively common in light Canadian honey, but it does correlate with one other batch we had that failed to reach full attenuation (that one was 1.008 instead of 1.002).
  • The time between pitching yeast and active fermentation was identical to our standards (about four hours for vigorous bubbling)
  • The average rate of fermentation as observed by hydrometer and refractometer was completely normal for the first five days (about .010 gravity points per day aka 2.5 °P)
  • Fermentation was on the same logarithmic arc we expect to see as it heads towards full attenuation
  • The smell of the fermentation was perfectly normal with no vegetal aroma
  • pH was completely normal.

Here’s where things start to go awry. After the normal period of active fermentation (about six days) the bubbling slowed as anticipated, the temperature in the tank began to drop due to lack of metabolic activity, and all seemed right with the world… until we tasted it.

The mead tasted fantastic! The only problem was that it was distinctly sweet. We took a gravity reading and found that it was at 1.024. At this point it should have been at 1.004 at the highest, ideally 1.002. We double-checked the reading with a refractometer with correction calculation and the reading was identical.

No big deal! We’ve dealt with this before. Besides, canning day was two weeks away.

Here’s what we tried, in order, with waiting period [and gravity in brackets next to it].
  1. Degassing through CO2 purge, 2 Days [No Change]
  2. Recirculation of yeast back into solution through pumping, 2 Days [1.024-1.020]
  3. Recirculation of yeast plus nutrient addition with the effect of degassing, 4 days [No Change]
  4. Reoxygenated, 2 Days [No Change]

At this point, the batch was officially stalled, there was no way to meet our canning date, and the state was days from running out of Valkyrie’s Choice.

At this point, Kelly sat the brew team down to go step-by-step through the process (“Did you accidentally add Sorbate?” “No.” “Are you sure?” “Pretty sure.” “Pretty sure is not OK.” “I’ll go check… No. No we didn’t.” “That’s too bad; then I could have just blamed this on you being idiots.”)

The next question was: “Have you tried absolutely everything?” Or, in other words, “If you had unlimited resources what would you do?”

The answer was simple: “I need $160 and two extra weeks.”

Our friends over at Iron Heart jumped through hoops to get us a new canning day, bless their hearts. So there was the two weeks we needed. Now, for the magic bullet.

There are thousands of yeast strains out there, but most brewers only use a handful. One of the best things about being a homebrewer is the ability to experiment on each and every batch. This is why we advocate that our brewing staff keep homebrewing as a hobby, even after they start working for us.

One of the strains that Ricky had used in the past is DV10 by Lalvin. He describes it as the SpecOps of yeast: It goes in where no one else can get the job done, and it does its work quickly, cleanly, and - under the best circumstances - you don’t even know that it’s been there.

One hour after pitching a small amount (by commercial standards) of DV10, the bubbling had started again. Over the next week the fermentation followed a bell-curve of activity and after 8 days we were at our goal of 98% attenuation with a final gravity of 1.002.

The batch tastes amazing, the abv is spot-on, and carbonation is well under way!

Here are the big takeaways from our scary experience:
  1. The honey seems to be the only real variable here. The apiary we used also pollinates agricultural products (rapeseed, primarily), and there is a slight possibility that some of the honey came from this source. We have switched suppliers to another Canadian apiary that can guarantee the wildflower provenance of the honey.
  2. We are going to experiment with recirculating the yeast on a daily basis at the start of fermentation to see the effects on the health of the fermentation.
  3. We are always going to keep DV10 on-hand… just in case.

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Ask the Meadmaker Ep. 105 - The Meadmaker's Back

1/20/2018

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In which Ricky the Meadmaker answers questions about seeing no bubbles through the air lock, distributing mead in Germany (he's not), brewing with figs, brewing with herbal tea, and more!
Further Reading:
It's Tea Time
What's That Smell?
Carbonating Mead
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Mead Cocktail: Hazy Shade of Winter

1/19/2018

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Mead Cocktail: Hazy Shade of Winter - 2 oz. Snowfall White Whiskey; Splash Maraschino; Dash Rhubarb Bitters; Top with Valkyrie’s Choice. - Groennfell Meadery
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Thursday Fun Fact 1-18: Burlesque

1/18/2018

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More info here!
Thursday Fun Fact 1-18 - Groennfell Meadery - Ricky is going to be on stage this Saturday at the Vermont Burlesque Festival!
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Rent Seeking and Craft beverages

1/16/2018

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For Rent
Scoot. Scoot. Scoooooot. [Ricky drags his soapbox out from under a pile of brewery rags.] 

Hello, Friends and Meadiacs!

Today we're going to talk about Rent Seeking and its effect on your favorite beverages. This isn't - as you might have guessed - simply about mead. Rent seeking affects every craft beverage available on the market: Beer, Cider, Mead, and Others.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, Rent Seeking is any practice used by a large business to unfairly leverages their resources (most often money or political connections) to gain advantages without providing any benefit to society.

A very common example of rent seeking is when a company gets large enough that they can lobby for legislation which benefits them to the detriment of competition. Consider that many "Interior Decorating Firms" managed to get legislation passed that requires that anyone practicing interior decorating acquire a license to do so.[1] There is no clear benefit to any consumer, but it does mean that young entrepreneurs can't break into the field.

For a great article on the effects of rent seeking on the economy over all as well as its history as a tool of oppression, you should read FiveThirtyEight's Piece on the subject.

Before we continue, we're going to say this in bold: We support legislating the production and sale of alcohol. Alcohol is a popular poison that needs to be regulated from manufacture to packaging to sale.

Now that that is out of the way, on to the main point.

There is an enormous amount of rent seeking in the alcohol industry aimed at keeping small producers small and non-beer beverages off the shelves. Don't believe us? Check out THE OFFICIAL RESPONSE from AB InBev on the subject here.

Yup. They think that small breweries are trying to dupe their consumers. And, we should also make this clear, we believe that these large breweries have genuinely convinced themselves that they are in the right.

These are the breweries, however, that have spent a huge amount of time trying to replicate the feel of craft and - this is where the rent seeking comes in - have changed the law to allow them to make up the names that are on the packaging so that they needn't say that Shock Top or Blue Moon are simply brewed by Anheuser-Busch and Coors respectively.[2] 

Many of you are now well aware of the famous Bubble Tax that was levied on cideries to keep them out of the marketplace. If not, you can read our article here. But level heads have prevailed! Small producers rejoice! The law is changed! Or is it?

The law was, in fact, rewritten. Nevertheless, the definition of "cider" is extremely narrow; it basically makes room for Angry Orchard, Johnny Appleseed, and Stella Cider (Owned by Sam Adams, AB InBev and AB InBev respectively). Each of these companies is valued at well over a billion dollars. There's also Woodchuck which is only worth half a billion and is owned outright by C&C which is the multi-billion dollar player.

So, where does this leave poor little craft mead?

Perhaps nothing will serve better than to give a list of actual recorded statements from the TTB (the governing board for all alcohol regulation in the United States) and senatorial aids from offices that will not be mentioned.
1) "We can't change the bubble tax for your type of beverage because there's fear that people will just start making alco-pop and targeting it at children." (October 2015) - Senate aid
​This is, of course, after Not Your Father's Root Beer (essentially malt liquor) was already available throughout the United States distributed by Pabst as was Best Damn Root Beer (AB InBev). 
2) "We can't let you put 'Christmas 2017' on your packaging because mead isn't wine..." "no it's not beer either, so you can't put any 4-digit number that appears like a date..." "yes, I know it's really stupid and unfair." (October 2017) - TTB
3) "We might change the regulation for all wines [mead is legally a wine according to the US government], but I wouldn't hold my breath (sic), there's very little industry pressure to do so for obvious reasons." (November 2014) - TTB

On a heartening note, AB InBev made the mistake of attacking mead directly and the ad was so poorly received that they immediately pulled it off the air and lost millions of dollars in production. You can learn about that here.

And also the bubble tax seems to be changing for some (though very few) types of meads, which is great and also makes us a bit worried (see cider above).

That's it. Just thought you should know.

Ricky steps off of his soap box and wanders off to get a pint.
​
[1] www.allartschools.com/interior-design/interior-designer-license/
[2] https://pourmybeer.com/thats-not-craft-beer.html

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Mead Cocktail: Like an Old Fashioned

1/12/2018

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Mead Cocktail: Like an Old Fashioned... But Spicy (and also with Chocolate)! 2 oz Bourbon; 2 Dashes Angostura Bitters; 2 Dashes Chocolate Bitters; Top with Fire-Drake. - Havoc Mead
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Thursday Fun Fact 1-11: Citation Needed

1/11/2018

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Thursday Fun Fact 1-11 - Of all the quotes on Wikipedia that are listed as [citation needed], our favorite is: “mulled mead is a popular drink at Christmas time, where mead is flavored with spices... and warmed, traditionally by having a hot poker plunged into it.” Mostly because Wikipedia keeps refusing photos of Ricky drunkenly brandishing a fire poker as a “citation.” - Groennfell Meadery
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    Groennfell Meadery is Vermont’s premier craft meadery. Inspired by Old Norse legends, brewed with extraordinary ingredients, Groennfell’s meads are unlike anything you’ve had before. Crisp, clean, and astoundingly drinkable, the only way to explain any one of Groennfell’s meads is to try one yourself.

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