In which Ricky the Meadmaker answers questions about the color of glass bottles, D47 yeast, fruit additions, scaling recipes, barrel aging, and more!
I thought for a fun change of pace that I was going to drink water during this episode, but I've never had water before and this stuff is really boring.
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.
Our first question comes from John, who has been making meads based on our website and he said, "I see that you use D47 yeast. Isn't that a champagne strain of yeast?" And the answer is no, it's not.
Alan has one of those questions that I'm like, "How haven't I answered this yet?" He wants to know what color glass to use when bottling his mead. Brown, blue, green, clear? The answer is it doesn't really matter. The reason brown glass is superior for beer is it prevents skunking. But skunking only occurs with hops. So, if you do not have a hopped mead, any of the colors will work. The boss wanted me to say that there are other things that also degrade in sunlight, but nothing is quite as bad as skunking hops.
John wants to know if I have any advice about all the different fruits he wants to use to make meads. The answer is no, not really. I've only used a handful. But what I would recommend is going on our website. We'll have a link in the doobly doo below about how we run experiments with different fruits and flavors in our meads. The best way to find out is to Google it. Go onto fora and look up the different ways of using them, or just make a lot of mead.
John has another question worth answering. He's been making one-gallon batches but took my advice and he's gotten himself a little conical fermenter that does eight gallons and he wants to know if he can scale his recipes at 1:1 or does he need to change something? And the answer is, for the most part, they scale really easily.
Our last question this week comes from Damon who wants to know if you can age mead in barrels and if it's a good idea. The answer is yes, you sure can. It's usually a good idea. So long as barrel aging wouldn't make that particular mead taste bad for some reason. So, go ahead and barrel age your mead. He had this idea that he would then age a bourbon in it, which I think is an even better idea. So, try it out. And if you have any, send it along, I'd love to try it.
That's our last question. Keep sending them, and I'll get to them as soon as possible. Cheers.
