As many of you know, I chop my hair off and donate it to charity every two years. A lot of you are thinking, "Ricky is a Viking. surely he'll use an axe or something for that." And I have my trusty axe right here. The problem is not that it's too dangerous, but it's too predictable. Everyone thinks I'm going to use an axe. So, this time instead, I hand-forged a knife. [RICKY THE MEADMAKER PRODUCES A SHARP KNIFE FROM STAGE RIGHT].
Now, I have never cut my hair with this knife before, but you know, as they say, "Live TV. There's nothing like it." [RICKY RAISES THE KNIFE TO HIS PONYTAIL AND BEGINS TO CUT THROUGH IT] Though, first thing is, probably shouldn't have put decorative cuts into it. It's really just catching the hair and pulling like Billy-o. But again... Hmm. [RICKY CHANGES HIS KNIFE’S VANTAGE POINT]. Some lucky person is getting... should have stuck with the axe. Hmm. Might also be easier if I could see what I was doing. [RICKY HAS CUT ALL THE WAY THROUGH HIS PONYTAIL. HE LEANS BACK IN HIS CHAIR]. Again, never stopped me before.
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 Eric, who wants to know whether more expensive honey makes better mead? And the answer is yes and no. You see, raw honey is usually more expensive than filtered honey and raw honey usually makes better mead, though not always. There are a lot of other factors. Here's the issue. Once you have raw honey, the more expensive raw honey doesn't really make a difference.
Here's a question from a different Eric who wants to know at what point I suggest putting the ginger and the lemon into root of all evil? What gravity? The answer is, depending on the brew cycle, and who's working on Mondays, and if we had a long weekend, we usually put it in somewhere between 10:10 and 1:00 even. But once it was at 10:22, and another time, we've forgotten till the day before we were canning.
Tyler is having inconsistent carbonation in his bottles, and it seems to depend on which mead he's making. He's sent a very long question to me with lots of details that probably aren't salient. The one I want to focus on is he's using honey as the primer. Now, you can use honey as a priming sugar, but it's usually easier to use corn sugar and stir it into the whole volume rather than to try to add a little bit of honey to each bottle. This leads to inconsistency, bottle bombs, and flat bottles. That doesn't seem to be his problem, either. It's just that some of his needs don't carbonate, and some do. And the answer to his question of what's causing that is: could be a lot of things.
Alan wants to know if I've ever tried oaking a mead and the answer is it's called Old Wayfarer.
Our last question this week is a twofer. It comes from Jason. The first question is he's going to start making Mead (good, you're watching the right YouTube channel). He's heard that one-gallon jugs, the glass is too thin to ferment in because of the pressure buildup. But wouldn't the bubble lock let the bubbles out? So why would the pressure build up? The answer is you heard right in that the pressure of a fully carbonated beverage could theoretically burst a bottle, never seen it happen, not saying it can happen, but the airlock will definitely let your bubbles out thus preventing this problem. His second question is “What is in my humidor?” The answer is cigars.
That was our last question this week. Keep sending them, and I'll get to them as soon as possible. Cheers.
