Yes, I am wearing socks and sandals. I am an old man and I have earned this.
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 Grendelves (some handle I can't really pronounce). Anyway, he was watching our old episodes from when we were bottling and heard that we have about 10,000 bottles in a batch. And in our new packaging type that's 8,000 cans. I just started making that much? How long did it take me to scale up to that? And the answer is I did. We jumped right into thousand-gallon batches which is not something I would recommend for everyone.
Our next question is about CO2 purging. How do you do CO2 purging for a large vessel which you can't shake because it's too big without introducing oxygen? And the answer is you push the CO2 in through a carb stone (or some other mechanism) through the bottom and have the top open or a valve open. And you don't need to worry about oxygen getting in because the CO2 comes up out of solution. It will push all other air back out.
Alexander wants to know what kind of commercial style fermenter he should get, should he get one with a rounded bottom or a conical, the conicals are more expensive, but they seem much more user-friendly. And he really likes the idea that he wouldn't need to rack the mead off of the yeast. He could just pull the yeast out. There is a reason that almost every large-scale commercial producer has conicals and I really love mine.
Ron wants to know how much corn sugar he should add when bottling his mead to make it carbonated. The answer is, it depends. The more complicated answer is that you need to know what style of mead you're after, which means you need to know how much carbonation would give it the right mouth feel. Higher alcohol content meads with more sweetness can handle a little more carbonation. In very light ones you get a seltzer-y characteristic if it's too high, so I'd recommend going online and looking up a CO2 volume calculator and adjusting your corn sugar based on that.
Our last question this week comes from SpagKnot and it's another one of those questions that I don't know the answer to, but I'd love to hear from you meadiacs at home. He wants to know, do you use the same amount of acid blend for sweet and dry meads? We don't use acid blend here because our meads naturally have a sharp characteristic because of both the carbonation and the way we ferment. If you make meads at home and use acid blend, I'd love to hear if you vary it based on what you're making.
That was our last question. Keep sending them. I'll get to them as soon as possible. Cheers.
