Groennfell Meadery was featured on the WCAX "Made in Vermont" segment on Monday, December 30, 2013. They got some great footage of us brewing a batch of Mannaz. We hope you enjoy the video!

Huge news! As of tomorrow, December 31st 2013, Groennfell Mead is available anywhere in Vermont that you can buy beer, cider, or wine. We are now working with Farrell Distributing, so if you can’t get a bottle at your local bar or liquor store, go ahead and ask for us; Farrell would be more than happy to bring them a case of mead.  

Note: The Bourbon Barrel Mead was so popular it's already in development for future release! If this was your favorite, go ahead and vote for your second choice above!

There’s a story going around that a “honeymoon” is so named for the historical practice of drinking mead for the month after a wedding. Some slightly more elaborate versions of this tale state that this was done in the hopes of increasing fertility. You will find this story on so many websites and lists of facts about mead that we won’t even bother giving a citation; Google-up your own citation if you must. Or, better yet, visit almost any meadery in North America.

The term “honeymoon” is a very common one appearing in languages as diverse as Welsh (mis mêl), Portuguese (lua de mel), Hebrew (ירח דבש), Tamil (தேனிலவு ), Arabic (شهر العسل), and Bengali (মধুচন্দ্রিমা). In every case the term translates either to “Honey + Month” or “Honey + Moon.” The mere geographic scope of the word is pretty freakin’ cool. But, abandoning its cognates for a moment, let’s jump back to English.

The earliest citation in English is from 1546, though the term almost certainly predates this substantially, given its linguistic kin and the context in which it is first recorded. In fact, just a few years later in 1552, Abcedarium Anglico-Latinum pro Tyrunculis refers to it as a time which the “vulgar people call the hony mone” indicating that it was already a common term used by the lower class.

So, what does this mean for our pet etymological story?

The list of Red Flags:
1.  Every language which has the term “honeymoon” has a word for “mead.” It is quite unlikely that every single one of them would have either chosen to employ (or preserve) the use of “honey” when “meadmoon” could have been substituted.
2.  We have no evidence to suggest that the drinking of mead for the first month of a marriage was a common practice anywhere, even with the dipsomaniacal Vikings.
3.  The term is present in many cultures which do not commonly consume alcohol (notably in the Middle East and southern India).
4.  The earliest etymologies describe the term as “the first month after marriage, when there is nothing but sweetness and pleasure.” (From the famous Samuel Johnson Dictionary of the English Language.)
5.  The story sounds like it was made up for marketing mead.

There you have it: Another tour guide etymology shattered! Nevertheless, we now have a fine opportunity presented to us.

Just because the word “honeymoon” doesn’t come from the practice of drinking mead for a straight month after your wedding, it doesn’t mean that you must eschew the opportunity! The photo with this article is one of many bottles of mead enjoyed by the owners on their honeymoon to Norway surrounded by several arcane Norwegian references.

So, in conclusion, if you’re on a tour of a meadery and the tour guide tells you that they have a “honeymoon mead” and proceeds to tell you a cock-and-bull story about where the word comes from, don’t be an asshole. Just keep your damn mouth shut and enjoy the samples.

It’s cold in Vermont today. Tonight it’s going to be very cold. Next week it’s supposed to be very, very cold.

For those of you who are from warmer climes, here’s a quick explanation: If your car starts with just a little bit of complaining, it’s probably just cold out. If you can’t wear jeans anymore because the denim will freeze and crack, then it’s most likely very, very cold. Vermont children start complaining somewhere between the two.

Now, why does this matter to you as a meadmaker? Well, it doesn’t unless you happen to be like our meadmaker: Stingy.

Our meadmaker abides by the belief that paying to heat his apartment is a sign of weakness. This is no joke, Ricky attempts to keep his home warm through the winter exclusively by making soup three times a week on his stove and the metabolic warmth he generates from being alive. When asked whether he’s ever suffered from hypothermia, he tends to respond, “Suffered from? No. I’ve participated in hypothermia on numerous occasions, however.”

This might be possible for Ricky and his perhaps overly-understanding spouse, but cold temperatures are a no-go for yeast. At lower temperatures, mead fermentation becomes sluggish, sometimes even inefficient to a point where it begins producing off flavors.

Over the years, however, Ricky has come up with numerous solutions to his frigid fermentation conundrum. We present, in no particular order: 

Ways to Make Mead When Your Home is 52 Degrees Fahrenheit

• Insulate the heck out of your fermenter. If your must (aka honey water solution) goes in at 75F, and you wrap lots of blankets around the fermenter, a combination of metabolic activity and Newton’s Law of Cooling will probably allow for a healthy fermentation without too much trouble.
• Find the warmest part of your house. Just because you can see your breath in the bedroom and it’s hard to apply mascara with all that frost on the bathroom mirror, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t toasty warm next to your old oil burning furnace. See if there’s a temperate spot in your home.
• Warm your fermenter directly. There are many products on the market from heat belts to warming trays for buckets and carboys. Others opt to place their buckets in an unplugged fridge with an incandescent bulb. All of these can be attached to a temperature controller to keep your mead from getting too warm.
• Admit that your mead is more important to you than your family, and only heat the house when you have an active fermentation going. Well, it might not make you popular, but this is certainly not unheard of in the homebrew world.
• Choose a cold tolerant yeast. If you can’t warm the vessel, why not try a lager yeast? They love cold temperatures! Anywhere between 45F and 60F is their jam.
• Don’t worry about it. Slow and sluggish isn’t always a bad thing. After all, honey isn’t all that expensive and what’s more fun than an experimental batch? Pitch that yeast and see what happens.
• Brew at the right time of year. It may sound silly, but back in his homebrew days, Ricky just brewed seasonally: Ales in the spring, Belgians in the summer, ciders and meads in the fall, and lagers in the winter. 
• Spend an enormous amount of money on a glycol unit which can heat or cool your jacketed conical fermentation vessel. This is what the pros do. Just thought it should be thrown in for good measure.
  

Well, we hope that one of these works out for you! 

Do you have other ideas? Post them in the comments or on our Facebook page. We’d love to know how you brew in the winter.