In fact, we go a step further: We write a blog post every single week. So, effectively, we’re giving away all of our secrets without even being asked.
It’s not like we’re just giving yeast recommendations to homebrewers either. At any given time, Ricky the Meadmaker is consulting with four to six start-up meaderies. We have played host to nascent professional meadmakers from a dozen states, even giving away schematics of our brew set-up and full copies of our recipes.
Oh yeah, then there’s Ask the Meadmaker.
So what gives? Are we extremist Marxists who don’t believe in private property? Is this just Ricky’s inability to keep his damn mouth shut played out on an international scale? Do we have some secret master plan to bring down Big Beer? Are we just super bad at business?
Possibly. (Except the beer one. We love beer.)
The answer is simple: We think individuals making mead at home will grow their appreciation for the beverage and we believe in community not competition when it comes to other professionals.
Home meadmakers have three things to offer us:
- If their mead is very good, they will seek out commercial examples. We like to think our mead is very good, so they will naturally want to drink it.
- If their mead is very bad, they will gain an appreciation for how challenging what we do is. They will, instead of drinking their own bad mead, wish to drink good mead. See outcome above.
- Either way, they will be educating their friends and acquaintances about mead. To this day, the single most common question we get is, “Now what is mead exactly?” Also, there are many, many people who claim to have never heard of mead, which is of course bull honky.
Professional Meadmakers, far from being our competition, potentially offer us something even greater: Comparison.
Nobody can be a connoisseur of a single item. You can be a beer connoisseur, but not a Sam Adams Boston Lager connoisseur. More mead means more Meadiacs.
So, we like to think that we are part of a big network, all working together to bring mead to an ever widening population of mead fanatics.[1] We don’t want to knock any beverages and you will never hear us say that mead is the best drink. We just happen to really like mead, and we like when other people get to enjoy it as well.
Oh, but before we forget, full disclosure: We have one secret.
Our secret is the last name of our honey supplier, Pete the Beekeeper. His honey is so spectacular we don’t want anyone to come and steal him from us. (OK, full, full disclosure: We actually can’t ever remember his last name, though we believe he has one.)
[1] Moderation and regular exercise will help if you find yourself to be one of the ever widening mead fanatics.
