In which Ricky the Meadmaker answers questions about adding fruit to mead, temperature for fermentation, what he means by secondary fermentation, and shares a PSA from a viewer.
A lot of you have noticed that I've started shooting Ask the Meadmaker from Redbrick rather than at Groenfell and wanted to know why. That's because this is where my baby hangs out.
Welcome to Ask the Meadmaker, where I, Ricky the Meadmaker, answer your questions about mead making, mead drinking, mead brewing, and any question you're willing to send to me.
The first question I'm gonna answer this week is my favorite kind of question. Wait for it. Question from a new meadmaker, expendable123, “Should fruit be added to a melomel in primary fermentation or secondary?” Expandable123, I can answer that. The answer is it's up to you. Personally, I found that adding fruit in primary gives you a more subdued fruit flavor that really comes through on the back end. Putting fruit in the secondary tends to be a bit bolder and can mask the flavor of the honey. The only addendum to this is strong citrus fruits that don't ferment well. A lemon or pineapple will just sour your batch. Just play around with it. Have fun and experiment.
Our next question comes from John and it's another one of those "Boy, I should have probably written that better or answered that before." He was reading my recipes online and it says that we mix all of our ingredients together at 104˚F, then 24 hours later we put the yeast in. Do we hold it at 104˚F for 24 hours? That seems complicated and like a lot of work. It is complicated, a lot of work, and no we don't do it. We mix it together at 104˚F, then we use some street temperature water to bring the temperature down to about 90˚F and we just let the air temperature take care of the rest.
Our next question comes from Wyatt, which is neat because you don't meet a lot of Wyatts anymore. Wyatt wants to make a semisweet mead and it's not clarifying. So, he wants to use bentonite, a clarifying agent. He's worried that as the bentonite falls through solution, it will take out the dissolved non-fermented honey, and then he will end up with a drier mead. Is this something to worry about? The answer is as far as I know, it does not bond with those sugars.
Our next question is sort of a PSA actually, and as all of you know, from a few weeks back, I don't do PSAs, they don't go well. But this one's from Paul. "We had a gentleman from Orkin Cellar. Do you know him? I always assume you meadmakers keep a wary eye on each other like old west gunfighters." They may be keeping an eye on me, but I feel that the world is not full of threats. "He spoke at our monthly meeting and it was terrific. Everyone learned a bunch, and a number of our members decided to try making their first mead. I was thinking, you might want to suggest that anyone in a homebrew group invite their local meadmakers to their meetings. If anyone watching makes mead but doesn't belong to a group, they should consider joining their local one. It's nice to get to talk about something other than beer, which we have to do all the time. Are you involved in the local Vermont homebrew scene?" I like the PSA portion. And yes, yes, I am. I'm a celebrity judge.
Our last question this week comes from Andrew and he wants to know when I say secondary fermentation, exactly what do I mean? Do I mean that I'm taking my mead completely out of one tank and putting it in another, or am I simply racking the yeast off of the bottom, or am I waiting for fermentation to complete and then throwing in a bunch of stuff regardless of the yeast at the bottom of the cone? The answer is sometimes I mean each of those things. Hope that helps.
That was our last question this week. I'm just going to send it over to Ricky with our Word of the Week. Ricky. Thank you, Ricky. Yeah, no, I feel pretty laid back and tropical. I'm a new Word of the Week Ricky.
This week's word is Umami. Umami is all the rage in cooking. It's another flavor. There's salty. There's sweet. There's bitter. They're not on different parts of your tongue. Go look it up. Umami is a richness, something you get that is in mushrooms and meats. And there's been a move towards making more savory alcoholic beverages and people are looking for ways to introduce an umami characteristic. Here's a fun little fact though. Mushrooms and yeast are related. So, you can actually develop umami flavors by picking the right yeast. How cool is that? Umami. That is our word of the week and the end of our show.
Keep sending your questions and I'll get to them as soon as possible. Cheers.
