In which Ricky the Meadmaker is all by himself with no adult supervision and tells you about the biggest disasters at the Meadery.
I'm all by myself this week. No Kelly, no baby, no staff to tell me what I can and cannot say on screen. It's going to be a great episode.
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.
Since I'm all by myself this week, I had a great idea. No one can stop me and tell me what to tell you and what not to tell you. What I'm going to talk about is the five worst disasters we ever had at the Mead Hall. One of them is so crazy you won't even believe it.
Number one. A disaster so monumental that we almost lost a 900-gallon batch. We had a pump head, in a pump that cost us $3,600, melt while in liquid. Completely melted. And the tank filled up with smoke. How does something catch on fire while it's underwater? We don't know. Neither did the manufacturer. The whole tank filled up with smoke and then we put a batch into that tank before we knew what had happened. And we lost a batch of Old wayfarer.
Number two. We once had a batch of Psychopomp where my assistant brewer forgot to turn the chiller on. Now, all of you homebrewers will know that temperature plays a really big part in fermentation. And rather than fermenting at 86˚F, it got to 98˚F, from the metabolic activity. It was also our top-rated batch of Psychopomp we've ever made. So, guess what we do now?
Number three, back when we bottled, we had a machine that would do six bottles at a time. We had some people coming in and recording a video about our bottling process and other things we made. And the bottles got jammed, and the compressor head that puts the caps on the bottles came down on a bunch of bottles that already had caps on them. And the compressive force was so great that all six of those bottles blew up. And then the concussive force of that blew bottles off of both ends of the machine while we were being videotaped.
While we're on the subject of bottling machines, the first time we ran the bottling machine, we couldn't stop the head from going back up right after it filled it so it didn't compress the foam down, which meant that every time we filled the bottle, the bottles just exploded. Not in the way I just mentioned, but like, all the mead came back out, to the tune of 295 gallons of a 1000-gallon batch. All the bottles were low-fills and at the end of the day, we finally found a button that said, "Shift delay." And it turns out that “shift delay” is the thing that prevents that.
The last disaster is so crazy, most of you won't even believe it. So, when people say my worst nightmare, they're not usually talking about like an actual nightmare they've had. But when I go to sleep at night, the horror that fills my mind is of my coolant system rupturing. So, on the day that Nora was born, we were at the hospital and we get a phone call from the landlord. That pink stuff is leaking underneath the wall. It was coolant. A line had blown off and 140 gallons of coolant had flowed onto the floor of our facility. We had three active fermentations at the time, so none of them could be chilled. But my amazing staff cleaned it all up. We got someone in there, they fixed the system, which is pretty impressive, because Kelly and I built it, which means it was super janky. Which might be why it failed. But anyway, the entire thing just poured out onto the floor, on the only day in my whole life where I couldn't be there. But you know what, the company still survived it.
So, I hope these disasters have been informative to you as homebrewers and have also reiterated for me what I've been trying to say for years, which is you want to be a homebrewer? Great. If you want to be a professional brewer, I can't highly recommend it.
Keep sending your questions. I'll get to them as soon as possible. Cheers.
