In which Ricky the Meadmaker answers questions about how long to age mead, adding fruit to secondary, stepping up the volume of a batch, getting started as a pro meadmaker, and more!
Over the years, people have wondered whether you can tell where, and when, more importantly, I am shooting these episodes of Ask the Meadmaker based on whether I'm drinking tea or coffee, or something made of alcohol? And the answer is, I am a professional brewer, the time of day has essentially no bearing on what I am drinking.
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 Christopher, who wants to make a five-gallon batch of mead, which is good. This is a show about mead making. He wants to step it up. He wants to make a small batch, add a little more, add a little more and he wanted to know, how many steps should he do? It's a great question. Somehow, we never answered this. I can say in my home brewing days, I went by even gallon increments, it was easy to keep track of how much honey to water ratio. So, one gallon, two gallons, three gallons. It's about five steps if you're doing a five-gallon batch, and I think that's a safe number for the speed at which you step it up. It keeps the risk of introducing buggies and the wrong amount of oxygen pretty low.
Our next question comes from Ken, and it begins, "Nobody likes paperwork." False. We'll come back to that in a moment. "However, as far as the government is concerned, it's imperative. As a brewer, how can I legally start selling mead? What is the legal process? Please point me in the right direction." The good news is, Ken, the right direction is: go to the TTB website. Your state probably has an entire website devoted to opening up a brewery or a winery which is what a meadery in a cidery technically are. That will give you a lot of information there. They do not care about grammar, so you're in luck. And also, people love paperwork. People love paperwork because they can do paperwork instead of real work. I know people that have devoted their entire careers to the love of paperwork. And it's important that you remember that these are the people to whom you will be sending your paperwork. So, whether you love it or not, there are people that work for the US government and your state that get a literal high off of paperwork. So, fill it out, fill it out robustly, fill it out with more information than they ask for, and you are well on your way to owning a meadery.
Evan has a very simple question which should have a very simple answer. He wants to know if he can just chop up some fruit, put it in a bag and add it to his need for secondary fermentation to add the fruit that way? And the answer is absolutely, so long as you're in a bucket and not a carboy. Feeding fruit through the neck of a carboy into a bag and having that bag sit on the bottom, and then trying to get the bag back out is the kind of thing that turns people off of brewing, ruins marriages, destroys friendships, destroys carboys. Do it in a bucket, not in a carboy, and yes, otherwise it's a great way to go.
I've answered this question before, but I'm going to answer it again differently. Jerry and about 1,000 other people want to know how long should he age his mead? I mean, I guess thousand people don't care how long Jerry ages has made. They care how long they age, their own mead or we age our mead, but the point is before I've said long enough, the right amount of time. But I didn't say how you'll know. So, this is one of the big reasons I recommend five-gallon batches over one-gallon batches. One, if you make one gallon and it's really good, you're just going to be kicking yourself because it's just as easy to make five gallons as one gallon. The other reason is taking little samples out of a one-gallon batch to see when it's ready, really cuts into your supply. But the way I tested my mead back in the homebrew day, and how I test it now when I'm making 1,000 gallons at a time is every 2-3 days, especially during carbonation, I'll pull a little sample through the tap, taste it, and that's how I'll know when it's ready. You don't even see the dent in 1,000 gallons, but your one-gallon batch could be gone before you know it.
Douglas made a batch of Psychopomp. Congratulations. It is one of the most popular meads in America and now it's available in Indiana at Douglas's house. But he was worried because the fermentation completed in 48 hours. 48 hours! How could that be? He made mead in the past and it took forever and he tasted it. It tasted just fine. Did he do something wrong? Douglas, if it tasted fine, you didn't do anything wrong. And also, I've said it before. 48-72 hours of active fermentation time is very, very common at our facility and several other craft meaderies, as well as cideries and breweries. The idea that meads should take weeks and months and sometimes years to complete is an artifact of old-fashioned brewing processes that are still being used today. So, it sounds like you made a great batch. I should probably be worried about competition. But if I worried about these kinds of things, I guess I wouldn't put my recipes for free online. Congratulations, Douglas.
That's our last question this week. I would send it over to Ricky with our Word of the Week, but I have to do it. I'm the one that messed it up a long time ago. 50 episodes back, I said, "masticated" when I meant to say "macerated," and I've been struggling with this ever since. Losing sleep. It's finally time. Maceration. Our word of the week. Maceration is when you take a usually dried fruit and soak it in fruit juice or water or vinegar, don't do that for brewing, and rehydrate it. The reason macerated fruit is used in fermentation is maceration breaks down cell walls, which makes it easier for the east to get in there and get the flavor and the sugar out of that fruit. The reason macerated fruit and not masticated fruit is used is "masticated" means to chew it up and spit it out. This is pretty much only used for the beverage Chicha. I'm not lying about that. Go Google it. Macerated. That's 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.
