Transcript
This is not the last episode of Ask the Meadmaker, but it could be because I'm going to tell you everything it takes to be a professional meadmaker.
Welcome to Ask the Meadmaker, where I, Ricky the Meadmaker, answer your questions about mead making, mead drinking, mead brewing and really any question you're willing to send to me.
So, I am at home, and it is very late. It is nine o'clock, in fact. Eastern Standard Time. For those of you who do not know, I have a 10-month-old as of a few hours ago, and I'm usually asleep by this time. Today, I'm going to tell you what my day was supposed to look like and what my day looked like.
So, I haven't had a day off in the 16 days in a row. I'm not one of those sorts of people that likes to brag "Oh, I'm so busy that..." I haven't had a day off in 16 days in a row. I keep meaning to have days off. Because I like to spend time with my family. I wouldn't have started a business if I didn't want to be near my family. But I have the kind of business where my daughter has a nursery at the Mead Hall. So, I feel very lucky.
So, today was supposed to be my day off. But we were sponsoring a big event. So, I decided I should show up, put my pretty face in front of some cameras. When I arrive, my chef says, you know how we rented the commercial kitchen here? And I said, "Sure do. It's very expensive." And he said, "Yeah, it's very expensive. You know how it's owned by the town?" And I said, "I sure do. Kelly told me about that." And we're going to cut to the chase, which is the fire marshal showed up and said we weren't allowed to boil water there because they weren't licensed to boil water in a commercial kitchen owned by the town. This was the event at which I was supposed to just be showing my face.
My staff was amazing. They made the entire thing work. We did fantastically, we really supported our community, which is a big deal for us. Off the record, I'm not going to tell you what event it was. But it was amazing for the people involved. And we got a lot of nice feedback, which made me feel great, which I got by text message. 45 minutes later, I got a phone call from my restaurant, in which we found out that our customers, our beloved customers, had consumed over four gallons of soup in six hours. And with chef at another event, our sous chef at the same event and me, the original chef, also at that event, I needed to drive back to the Mead Hall where I cooked for four and a half hours because every time I got a new dish out, something else ran dry.
So what I was going to do with my day was I was going to go and I was going to clean tanks. Because, boy do we need to clean tanks, we need to clean tanks like it's my job, which is funny, because it is literally my job. I am a Meadmaker. And if you haven't seen the episode, the vast majority of what I do is basically glorified janitorial work.
And then. Nobody has a favorite employee or shouldn't you're allowed to have a favorite child and a favorite product, but I don't have a favorite employee. The single sweetest person that will ever work for me. It was her last day and I gave her a little present. And she started to cry. And I started to cry. And then she handed me a card and she said don't open it. Because I want you to be safe to drive home because I know you cry a lot. So, I didn't open it till I got home. When I got home, my little girl was still awake and waiting for me.
So, what it takes to be a professional, an entrepreneur, a meadmaker at this scale is I thought I knew what my day held. I was so wrong, that if it were a test, I would have literally gotten an F. Like I failed. Literally 100% was wrong about what my day would hold. I did not touch a tank. I did not call a distributor. I did not mix one thing together. I pretended to be as good as my chef which I am not and I held my stuff together. Until I got in the car and started crying on my way home, because we're going to miss Haley that much. And I got home, and I put my little girl to bed, and I got my bottle of brandy out. And we have never missed an episode of Ask the Meadmaker. And I will be damned if today was going to be the day because I had the perfect day.
So, if you want to do it, it's horrible. I haven't taken a paycheck in over four years, and it's worth every minute. So, keep sending your questions. And I promise if I could do it today, I'll get to them as soon as possible. Cheers.
