Home meadmaking is on the rise.  How can we tell?

1)  The amount of literature, web content, and other buzz about the subject has been growing geometrically in recent years. (We would say exponentially, but the owner is actually a mathematician by training and she told us that it hasn’t been technically exponential.)

2)  Williams-Sonoma is selling a Home Mead Making Kit. If the hoity-toity Williams-Sonoma is in on the action, there must be some real money to be made.

3)  Just look at that graph! We made up every single number this very morning before the coffee was even brewed, so it must be true!

We rest our case.

There is, nevertheless, a serious problem with that graph (other than the fact that it is entirely founded on fiction). As you can see, home mead making is on the rise, but nowhere near historic levels. We need more meadmakers!

In last week’s blog post we gave our best advice for not screwing up your first batch of mead. We’ve also discussed some of the nuances of mead making like selecting a yeast strain, the process of aging, and many other topics. But we’ve never really answered the most basic home mead making question: What do you need to get started?

1)  Not the Williams-Sonoma kit. Because A) It’s overpriced, B) It uses the nonsense phrase, “contains no chemicals,” C) It only makes a gallon, and D) It does not contain a sanitizing solution

2)  A fermentation vessel. Personal preference of our staff is a 7.8 gallon Brew Bucket for primary, and a 5 gallon Better Bottle for secondary. Some people prefer all glass. That’s cool too. Either way, why make 1 gallon when you can make 5 with the same amount of effort?

3)  An airlock to keep bugs and wild yeast out as well as the appropriate bung for your fermentation vessel.

4)  A sanitizing solution. There are a slew to choose from, but you seriously need to sanitize everything your mead is going to touch.

5)  A siphon (known in brewing lingo as a racking cane) to get your mead from primary to secondary and from secondary to whatever you’re going to drink out of.

6)  The ingredients: Honey, Water, Yeast, and Yeast Nutrient.

7)  Or, ignore this list and go to your Local Homebrew Shop and tell them you want to make mead.

There are 1,286,953 contraptions for homebrewing and every home meadmaker will tell you that such-and-such 5 are absolutely essential. But, since we can’t all agree on which five things they happen to be, we’ll leave the list there. We may not be good graph makers, but at least we’re not contentious.

Kelly Klein, owner of Groennfell Meadery, fields questions about honey supply, meadery ownership, Colony Collapse Disorder, and much more. 

Happy Belated Earth Day! Time for your weekly Thursday Fun Fact:

Practically every professional meadmaker in the world today began as a homebrewer. We sure did. No books, no references, just our gut instinct… and boy did we get a lot wrong.

On the face of it, mead looks like the easiest fermented beverage to make. Really, how much can go wrong when all one is required to do is mix water, honey, and yeast? Well, ever seen a four-year-old try to just mix water, yeast, and flour to make bread? The problem with mead is that it’s at least as much about technique as recipe.

We’ve mentioned before that mead is nothing more than yeast, water, and honey. There are, of course, many varieties which include other fermentables, such as cysers which have apples and pyments which have grapes. There are also recipes with spices and herbs, which are called metheglins. But mead, in its most basic form, only needs those three key ingredients. And, let’s face it, might as well learn to walk before you run, right?

So, you've decided to make some mead. We proudly present Groennfell Meadery’s Advice So You Don’t Screw Up Your First Batch (or, GMASYDSUYB, for short).

1.  Sanitize everything your mead is going to touch. EVERYTHING! Ideally you should use a no-rinse sanitizer. It sort of defeats the purpose if you sanitize your fermenter then put non-sanitized water in it.

2.  Do not use bleach to sanitize. Bleach can lead to chlorophenols which taste like 1970s Band-aids smell. There are many food-safe, no-rinse sanitizers online and at your local homebrew shop. Use those.

3.  There are hundreds of strains of brewer’s yeast available for homebrewing, some work better for mead than others. Almost all of them work much better than bread yeast. We have a favorite, but we don’t want to predispose you. There’s a great podcast about mead and beer yeast on Basic Brewing as well as our article on the subject. Also, while you’re at it, make sure to put in enough yeast so that it doesn't have to work too hard.

4.  Did we mention sanitizing?

5.  Oxygenate. Yeast needs oxygen to reproduce. We now oxygenate with a tank of oxygen. We used to oxygenate with a paint whip. Before that we oxygenated by shaking our bucket. However you do it, oxygenate the heck out of that must. Then, once fermentation begins, your job is to keep oxygen out. Otherwise, it tastes like cardboard.

6.  Oh yeah, and did you sanitize? We mean EVERYTHING.

7.  Remember that less honey per gallon means less alcohol and a shorter wait. More honey per gallon means higher alcohol (to a point) and potentially a sweeter mead. Learn more about that Here.

8.  Use Yeast Nutrient! Yeast needs a variety of vital nutrients to survive and thrive; beer wort has almost all of them, mead must has practically none of them. Yeast nutrient has every single one. Nutrient is second only to oxygen for a healthy fermentation.

9.  Other than that, so long as you sanitized, there’s nothing else to worry about. There are tricks to make it bubble and tricks to make it see-through. There are tricks to make it pink and tricks to make it taste like bananas. But none of these things really matter.

Did we miss something? Do you know a trick that we forgot? Post it as a comment!

Test your knowledge of mead with this quiz from Groennfell Meadery.

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Time for your weekly Thursday Fun Fact!

Disclaimer: All Thursday Fun Facts are culled from millennia of texts as well as random statements around the internet and they are also made up. They are only facts in the loosest sense of the word (or possibly not at all). Please note the dearth of citations.

Meadmakers are an affable bunch. Friendly. Kind. Gentle. Lovable. These are just a few of the many superlatives we proffer for the species Homo sapien hydromelis. (Oh yes, and that is totally our trinominal taxonomy.) There’s hardly a meadmaker in the world – pro or homebrewer – who we wouldn't have over for a cup of tea.

Until someone mentions the “B-Word.” Yup, boiling.

Then all hell breaks loose. It’s like an Old West Saloon what with the chairs being smashed over heads and the bottles of perfectly good mead being used as the basest of blunt objects. Actually, we've never seen a genuine, honest-to-goodness bar brawl break-out over boiling must, but it is a fairly contentious subject.

Here are the facts:
1) Honey does not like to mix into cold water, so many meaderies bring the water up above body temperature, though not all of them.
2) If the honey is in a raw state, heating is one very effective way to remove wax and other potentially negative bee products... like bee legs and wings. This is done by skimming.
3) Heating honey can also have the negative effect of removing potentially positive chemicals which provide flavor and aroma.
4) Sanitization is a function of time and temperature, meaning 30 minutes at 145F is roughly equivalent to .1 second at 201F.[1]
5) If honey is not heat pasteurized, chemical pasteurization is recommended. This is usually done with sulfites.
6) People hate the word “chemicals” for some inexplicable reason, and think that sulfites give them headaches, despite conclusive evidence to the contrary.[2]

Unfortunately, that is sort of the end of the facts. Everything else after that, no matter how loudly pronounced, is opinion.

Some say that pasteurization is unnecessary since honey is naturally antiseptic. Since wild bacteria and yeast causes off flavors and potential bottle bombs, we do not recommend skipping some form of sanitization. That, however, is our opinion.

Some say that 30 minutes at lower temperatures is better than even a second at higher. Others say the reverse. Both are opinions. Both are fine by us.

Some say that they sulfite at the beginning and the end of the process because they feel that it preserves the integrity of the product as well as allowing them to “cold process.” Cool. Fine by us.

Some say that adding any chemicals is bad. These people do not understand basic organic chemistry. We tell them that we add Pentahydroxyhexanal to every batch we make, and tell them that if they don’t like it, they can take it up with the bees. [3]

Are you a boiler? A sulfiter? A Viking who believes that the Gods preserve your mead’s purity? If your bottles don’t explode and your mead tastes good, you’re always welcome to bring a bottle to share with us at Groennfell Meadery.

Time for your weekly Thursday Fun Fact!

Disclaimer: All Thursday Fun Facts are culled from millennia of texts as well as random statements around the internet and they are also made up. They are only facts in the loosest sense of the word (or possibly not at all). Please note the dearth of citations.

In last week’s blog post we wrote about the boring history of mead recipes. For millennia every recipe we find in almost any language says the following: Take honey and water, and then mix them together, and then wait, and then drink the mead. At some point people figured out that the dregs of beer (which we now know is yeast) would speed up this whole process.

Meadmakers are not alone; vintners have the same problem. Find an old recipe for wine and it usually reads: Crush grapes, remove skins, wait. Does this mean that there is nothing to be found in the annals of mead history? Absolutely not! Why? Because: Metheglins. That’s why.

A metheglin is a mead which contains herbs and spices in addition to honey, water, and yeast. It is often claimed that this beverage, once touted for its healing virtues, gave rise to our term medicine. This is not true. Medicine comes from the Latin word medecina which meant, ummmm, medicine. And all that without some undocumented application of Grimm’s Law… But we digress.

Old metheglin recipes are awesome! They call for things like bog myrtle and mugwort. Or, our favorite actual recipe: “Put in one good handful of Strawberry-leaves, and half a handful of Violet leaves; and half as much Sorrel: a Douzen tops of Rosemary; four or five tops of Baulme-leaves: a handful of Harts-tongue, and a handful of Liver-worth; a little Thyme, and a little Red-sage.” Not only does it contain great ingredients, it also has great measurements: “a little,” “a good handful,” and “four or five tops.”

And from whence did we dig this absolute gem of a recipe? From our dearest friend, Sir Kenelm Digby. In addition to having a name that belongs in a PG Wodehouse novel, this polymathic gentleman took it upon himself to record 106 pages worth of mead and metheglin recipes in a text which was eventually published as, The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Opened. It can be enjoyed in its entirety Here.

This text is an absolutely fascinating look into the pantry of a 17th century lord. Every page is a delight, from the first recipe which discusses the skimming of the wax off must, to the end of the book which explains how a concoction of borage, bugloss, and marigolds, “suffereth not the heart to burn, nor melancholly, nor the Spleen to be lifted up above nature.”

So, as you can see, there is plenty that the modern meadmaker can learn from ancient mead texts. Not only do brewers not have all the fun, but their spleens are probably lifted up above nature. Serves ‘em right, too.

Time for you weekly Thursday Fun Fact!

Disclaimer: All Thursday Fun Facts are culled from millennia of texts as well as random statements around the internet and they are also made up. They are only facts in the loosest sense of the word (or possibly not at all). Please note the dearth of citations.