In which Ricky the Meadmaker answers questions about using stir-plates to degas, canning nitro meads, why our meads are lower a.b.v., why he recommends adding citrus in secondary, and more!
How We Brew Everything We Brew
What the Heck is Nitro?
Your First Batch of Mead
A Stalled Batch and What We Did About It
Today during the episode, I'm going to be drinking Odin's Eye from Nordic Moon Meadery. I like that they come in these individual serving bottles, and at a mere 15% alcohol, you can enjoy a few of them in a row.
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 this week comes from meadcomo82. He wants to know if I would use a stir plate for my degassing to lower the risk of oxidation. The answer is no I would not, because it sounds more complicated than shaking the bucket.
Our next question comes from Sage, who wants to know how we keep the nitrogen bubbles in Coffee Chaos in the can, and the answer is we don't. The nitrogen comes to the head of the can. Then before we serve it, we have to turn it upside down, and then back, and then back a couple times and then we crack it. If it's me doing it on air, it always ends poorly. I always nail it at home when the cameras aren’t rolling.
The next question comes from Commisarius, who wants to know why all of my meads are in the beer-like alcohol level. Is it because I'm targeting the beer market and not the wine market? The answer is you nailed it! Some people have a theory that the reason my ABVs are lower is because I don't like high alcohol content, honey wines. Obviously not the case.
Guten tag, Boenna. Our next question comes from Germany. Boenna wants to know, why do we recommend you add citrus in the secondary, but many other fruits in the primary and the reason is, most other fruits represent 10-15% of the sugar content of your mead but citrus tends to be in the 1-4% range. So, since you have more, say cranberry or kiwi, you have more flavor in there to begin with, and a little bit of yeast scrubbing you get during primary fermentation won't wash out all the flavor. The citrus however, can get just scrubbed away by the yeast and all you get is a very slight residual, almost Pine Sol smell.
Our last question comes from Levi, who was making a bochet, and it was supposed to be 17% alcohol, but it stopped at 3%. He even has a high alcohol tolerance yeast. Do I have any idea what happened? The answer is if you stopped it 3% and you were shooting for 17% my first guess would be maybe you took your readings wrong. Other than that, I don't know where to point you, man. That's pretty wild. Well, that was our last question this week. Sorry. I couldn't help with it, but keep sending your questions and I will do just as good a job with them. Cheers.
