In which Ricky the Meadmaker answers questions about stalled batches, fermentation time, fruit punchdowns, blending meads, distribution, and more!
A Stalled Batch and What We Did About It
You may be wondering why I'm sitting in Word of the Week Ricky's favorite chair and drinking his second favorite brandy. It's because he's been away for six months and he told me he was doing something of utmost importance for the meadery. Well, it turns out that he is. And we got this in a recent telegram. Actually, a roadie for a traveling pre-raphaelite exhibit.
Welcome to Ask the Meadmaker, where I, Ricky the Meadmaker, answer your questions about mead making, mead drinking, mead brewing, or really any question you're willing to send to me.
Our first question this week comes from Cody and Jenny and a bunch of other people, and they have stalled batches. They have tried everything. They've tried energizer, and nutrient, and new yeast and balancing the acids. Good for you guys. I don't even try that. They wanted to know what they're doing wrong. The answer is, it's impossible to say. No matter how involved your recipe is, and your technique is, there are so many things that can go wrong with a batch of mead that I can't say with 100% confidence what has happened, why you've had a stall, or how to fix it. What I can do is I can point you to the article, which I've sent to two of you already, which is about our stalled batch and what we did to fix it and I hope something in there can help you out.
Our next question comes from Zach, who would like to hear about the business side of things. Are you made to go through a distributor or can you negotiate your own contracts with businesses? How did Groennfell land most of their contracts? Any advice for a brand new micro-meadery in the South? The answer is we could go without a distributor, but distributors, if you ask me, are a bargain at any price. How did Groennfell land most of their contracts? Primarily through my charisma and the quality of our product. Advice for a brand new micro meadery? Don't do it, man. It is super stressful, and way more work than it's worth. But that said, I've done it for five years.
Here's a cute one. Adam says that he has a small issue. He brews a whole bunch of things. Beers and meads and even ginger beers. He uses D47. No matter what he does, it takes 5-7 days. I don't know whether he thinks that's too long or too short. 5-7 days is perfectly reasonable. You don't have a problem at all.
This one is awesome. And it's another reader. "Hi, Ricky. My question is......" Two ellipses. So, I wonder why he is hesitating so much. "When adding fruit to a mead on a commercial level, how do you go about doing the fruit punch downs? Do you ferment it in an open top fermenter like red wine or in a stainless-steel fermenter under an airlock and open each day to punch down?" I don't know what that is, but whatever it is, apparently it is really common in New Zealand. Now I feel like I'm failing all of you because I don't punch down my meads in any way. So, I'm super sorry if this is disappointing to any of my consumers.
Our last question this week comes from Niles Rattle, which sounds like it should be Lord Niles Rattle Esquire of North Burrows or something like that, but apparently not, or at least it's not his email address. Anyway, he's making mead for the first time and he has multiple different honeys. He wants to know if there will be a difference between making two meads with different honeys and blending the meads or blending the honeys to begin with. The answer is they will almost certainly taste different. But I cannot tell you how or why. But it'll be a very, very cool experiment to run if you have the time.
That's our last question this week. Keep sending your questions and I'll get to them as soon as possible. Cheers.
