Old Wayfarer Homebrew Recipe
Valkyrie’s Choice Homebrew Recipe
More Episodes on Smoky Mead:
No Nap Nora
Recursive Education
Eaten Alive
TRANSCRIPT
I thought I would shoot this episode of Ask the Meadmaker like a cool middle school teacher sitting here on a table with a solo cup in my hand and lay some serious life advice on you. So, look out.
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. I lied to you with the cold open. I'm not laying heavy life advice on you. This is a show about mead making, which should rarely be as serious as I tend to make it.
Anyway, our first question this week comes from Dylan, who is yet another in a long list of people who wants to know how to make a smoked mead. The answer is there are a lot of different ways I've talked about people screwing up honey with their smoker. I use lapsang souchong. It's about time that you folks stop asking this question and start making it at home and sending it to me. Then I can taste them all and tell you and the other mediacs which one I think is the best. Or, drink them yourself and you decide at home.
Our next question this week comes from MountainDrifter. He's been watching this show for years. That clip at the beginning where I'm juggling those machetes has always bothered him because it looks like it's being played in reverse. It is! How in God's name did you notice that? That's, that's nuts. What do you do with the rest of your time other than watching this show and looking for errors like that? I have deep concerns about your life.
Our next question this week comes from Conrad and it's a great one. He made our Valkyrie’s choice at home and he did everything we said in our recipe online, and it finished much drier than ours. What did he do wrong? Well, the answer is, Conrad, you didn't do anything wrong. It could not have finished drier than ours because we ferment it to 98% attenuation. All of the sugar is gone except for the non-fermentable sugars. Probably what happened was you used a different type of honey from the honey we use. We've talked about in the past. The honey is the majority of what you're tasting. It represents a lot of the flavor of the final mead. Honey has in it what are known as flavor potentiators. Chances are the honey we use has more of those, giving a higher perceived sweetness, but it's actually no drier or sweeter than what you made at home.
DakotaU, either one person or an entire university out in the middle west, wants to know about using oak chips in mead. Do I ever do it? Yes, I do. It's called Old Wayfarer. How do I do it? Could I do an instructional video? A whole video about it? I could. The way I do it is I put them in a bag, and then I throw them through the front of my tank. Or if the tank is already full of mead, and I need to add them, I put the bag in through the top and then fill in the chips. Then I tie it and drop it in. That's it. Not much of a video other than that.
Our last question this week comes from teddybear5150. And there are a bunch of typos in including the wrong type of "which." But I'm going to answer it anyway. He wants to know which of my meads was the most challenging to perfect? The answer is: depends on the day you're talking to me. Old Wayfarer, the one with the oak chips, has the most going on because it's the only mead I brew with a different type of honey. So, I need to sort of relearn it every time. Plus, oaking is an art and science unto itself. But frankly, it's Valkyries choice. Honey, water, yeast. All you can play around with is your honey, your water, your yeast, and your nutrient. So, dialing in something with that few ingredients is a real never-ending challenge. Right now, in this cup, is a pull right off that tank [RICKY GESTURES TO A 1000-GALLON TANK OF VALKYRIE’S CHOICE]. I think I finally got the Valkyries choice I've always wanted as of today. Until the next time I brew it.
So, that was our last question. Keep sending them and I'll get to them as soon as possible. Cheers.
