Ask the Meadmaker EP. 127 – Sediments

My many fans who have seen like every episode of the show, when it comes out every other week, do you ever think to yourself, how could he do another episode? Hasn't he answered like 600 questions about mead? You know what? I think the same thing too.

Welcome to Ask the Meadmaker, where I, Ricky the Meadmaker, answer 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 Alan, who wanted to know if, when using something like heather honey, you can really taste the heather at the end. Will it be mild or strong? Or should he just infuse heather into the batch like people do with fruit? The answer is, well, to the latter question, depends on how strong you want the heather to be. If you want it to be really strong, I'd suggest an infusion. But it also depends on how strong your mead is, in the sense that if you do a really, like, craft-style mead and use heather honey, you know, only 5% of that entire batch is that honey. If you're doing something at 15-18%, it could be as much as 20-22% of your batch that is heather honey and you're going to have a lot more heather flavor. 

Calm Radical wants to know if you can create bottle bombs with force carbonation. I hesitate to answer this question because if I say no, not really, I know that somebody is going to prove me wrong. 

Our next question comes from a few people over the last two years. How would you purposefully make a mead vinegar if you were, like, trying to just make mead and then screwing it up? And the answer is, I am not the expert on that. There is another meadmaker in Vermont named Mark who works at Artisano, and I bet if you reached out to him, he makes them professionally, and he might give you his tricks. 

HelloJelloHub has a question that I really like. His question is, “Do you have a YouTube video about how you take sediments out of your bottles?” And the answer is no, I don't, because I don't think that's a thing. But the reason I like the question is actually it says, "Do you have a video about how to take sediments out of your bottles?" And I don't know what he thinks sediments are, but maybe it's a thing that I'm not allowed to talk about am supposed to know about? Or maybe it was supposed to be a subtle hint, but I'm sorry, JelloHub, but I missed your reference. 

Our last question this week comes from Bruno, who wants to start a meadery in Brazil, which is super cool. I feel bad because his question got on the Ask the Meadmaker list. And mostly he wants really specific things about like, "How do I get beer making commercial equipment, but modify it or adjust it so that works well for mead." I'm gonna send you an email, I promise, it just got on the wrong reply list. He wants to know if there's anywhere he could go to get some good recipes. The answer is, and I don't say this often enough, we're an open source company. So if you go to groennfell.com, all of our recipes are there for free with instructions, and we have articles about how to brew, plus I do this YouTube show, which has lots of good information about mead making, so if you have any questions that aren't like commercial specific, the answer is probably somewhere on our website. But if you want to go pro, reach out to me directly, ricky@groennfell.com. I will probably get back to you in less than half a year. 

Keep sending your questions, and I'll get to them as soon as possible. No promises. Cheers.