Check out our latest video recipe for canning pot roast (with mead, of course)!

It's time for your weekly Thursday Fun Fact!

In the past we’ve discussed whether or not you need to boil your mead. Then we discussed it again here. We’ve probably mentioned it a few other times, but this gives you an idea that it’s a pretty important (and contentious) subject in the world of meadmaking. Good news, today we are not going to talk about boiling (much).

When people want to make their first batch of mead they often go one of two places for their water: The Grocery Store or The Tap. Both of these are fine sources for water if you know what you’re looking for.

In case you don’t want to get into all the geekiness, there is a quick way to tell if your water is going to work for a batch of mead: If it’s good to drink, it’s good to brew. Do you filter your water at home? Then filter it for your mead. Do you drink it right out of the tap? Then go ahead and use tap water for your brew. If you do want to get your aqueous geek on, however, keep reading.

What you don’t want:

• Water that has a distinctive aroma. Whatever your water smells like (plastic, leaves, rust, etc.) your mead will probably smell like that too.
  
• Water that has a distinctive aroma especially if it’s chlorine. Chlorine can turn into chlorophenols through the metabolic activity of yeast. Chlorophenols smell like 1970s Band-Aid Brand adhesive bandages. Ew.
  
• Distilled water. Distilled water lacks the minerals that your yeast needs to be happy, and it can also produce a flaccid mead. Try drinking mineral water and distilled water side-by-side and it can give you an idea. There's a new book out, Water by John Palmer, for the Super Geeks.
  
• Water that has any microbial activity. This should go without saying, but if you get well water that may have algae or any other little buggies in it, Don’t Use It.

What you do want:

• Water that has a good taste. If it’s really good water to drink (crisp and clean tasting) then it’s the first step in making good mead.
  
• Something reasonably priced. If you’re going to be making a lot of mead the cost of the water can add up. Remember that in the United States bottled water costs between 300 and 5000 times more than tap water. [Source]
  
• Something consistent. If your water source and treatment changes seasonally (as it does in many parts of the US) your mead will vary, sometimes discernibly. This is only a problem if consistency is something that matters to you. 
  
• Just to put it out there: It’s interesting to note that there are thousands more people monitoring tap water in the US than bottled water (70% of which is even exempt from FDA oversight).
  
• Oxygen. Water has relatively little dissolved oxygen in it when it comes through our taps and almost none if you boil it. Remember that if you do anything to push the O2 out, you'll need to find a good way to put it back in (shaking, oxygen stone, or whatever floats your boat).

And, last but not least, on a completely separate note: Did you know that the “water, water everywhere” quote is one of the most misquoted lines in our language? It is not completed “but not a drop to drink.” The entire stanza reads as follows:
Water, water everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink.
Water, water everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.

Just in case you didn't know.

For all you homebrewers and mead-drinkers out there, we put together this handy poster illustrating the the most common types of mead!

If you want to print a copy of the poster, you can download the PDF here:

It's time for your weekly Thursday Fun Fact!

Back in his homebrew-shop-employee days, Meadmaker Ricky was often asked a simple question:

Ricky was told not to say: “So, you want me to pick out something intensely personal for your husband? Won’t he take that amiss?” but rather, “I bet he’d love a gift certificate.” This was usually unsatisfactory because this individual wanted something SPECIAL, not some dumb-ol’ gift card.

The next line of defense was the one we’re going to present to you here today: 

• A Refractometer – This nifty device tells you the gravity of your must or wort with a single drop rather than a whole vial as is required by a hydrometer.
• A Fast-Flow Auto-Siphon – It’s like a normal racking cane but 1,286,508 times better!
• A Kegging System (minus the fridge) – For a cool $135 you could be just under halfway to getting that hubby of yours kegging and dispensing his mead, cider, or beer on demand!
• Oak Chips – What would he do with a bag of Medium Toast Hungarian Oak Chips? Anything he wants, really. Not really a contraption, but in the same vein.
• A Mix-Case of Beer to Inspire Him – Definitely not a contraption, but better than a potentially useless bag of Medium Toast Hungarian Oak Chips.
• An Electronic pH Meter – Y’know, for electronically checking the pH of every liquid in the house.
• A Champagne Corker – You know you've always wondered how they get those funky corks into champagne bottles.
• Nifty-Thing-He-Can-Put-on-the-Wall-That-Takes-off-the-Caps-Then-Drops-Them-in-a-Box-to-Be-Thrown-Away-Later – A product with a Dickensian Name
• A 5-Foot Wooden Mash Paddle – If he’s into cider or mead, but not into All-Grain Brewing, at least he can use it to keep people out of his brewing area.

And, at this point, the spouse would look Ricky straight in the eyes and say, “Y’know, I think I’ll get him a Gift Certificate.”

Our Meadmaker's Great Grandfather, Thaddeus Klein, used to mix mead cocktails when he worked as a bartender in the '20s.  
Wait a sec . . . our fact-checker just told us we completely made that up. But we do have a good photo!

It's time for your weekly Thursday Fun Fact!

The people who come to the Groennfell Tasting Area generally fall into two categories (well, three if you count our college buddies who just like free drinks).

First, there are the people who are simply curious about what mead is. Then there are the people who are curious about every single aspect of what mead can be. It is this latter group that really challenges and excites one as a meadmaker.

As we discussed in the past, a good elevator speech is very important in this industry, but it’s never really exciting to deliver. Sure, it’s fun to be there for someone’s very first glass of mead, but what’s really interesting is when you get a home meadmaker, or someone who’s tried traditional Scandinavian Mead, or a beekeeper, or anyone with really good questions.

At this point you’re probably thinking that we’re going to get into some of these fine interrogatives from our favorite customers. Wrong. Many of the questions we receive are worth whole blog posts unto themselves. No, what we’re going to talk about is the one question that almost all of our dabblers ask: “What’s the right temperature for drinking mead?” It is, almost without a doubt, our most common question.

What follows is an archetypal conversation betwixt Meadmaker Ricky and a customer who we will call Weekend Dabbler.

Ricky: Now, what you have here is not currently available bottled by our company, it’s one of my personal-all-time-favorite-reci…
Dabbler: What’s the proper temperature for mead?
R: Well, different meads are best at different temperatures.
D: What’s a good average temperature for all of them?
R: Different people have different predilections. The owner likes her mead at…
D: No, I mean, like, what’s the traditional temperature for mead.
R: Sweden.
D: Excuse me?
R: Friend Dabbler, you seem to have some serious misconceptions about the relative ages of mead and refrigeration. It used to be that the best – and only, I should add – temperature for your mead was whatever temperature your bedroom/kitchen/parlor/hut was. It’s only in the last little while that you got to say things like “gosh, I think I’ll have my cream as the iced variety today.” Up until the turn of the last century, if you were lucky enough to have a cellar in addition to your bedroomkitchenparlorhut, then you got to choose between cellar temperature and bedroomkitchenparlorhut temperature, both of which vary regionally and seasonally. So, I’d personally check the weather in Stockholm, a traditional mead enclave, and warm or cool your mead appropriately.
(Here Kelly the Boss steps in.)
K: Fridge or cellar temperature is fine. The most important thing is what tastes good to you. Ricky, please go mop something.

It's time for your weekly Thursday Fun Fact!