Ricky's Mead Brew Journal - Week of 5/16 - Can Rave

Ricky's Mead Brew Journal - Week of 5/16 - Can Rave

Ricky the Meadmaker
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These are all of Ricky’s actual notes on our meadery operation and the mead we make. There might be profanity, usually of the late 19th Century variety. The only redactions are to remove the names of people and businesses when deemed appropriate. Footnotes provided by Jess and Kelly.


May 16th
Sam the Intern’s last day, but he couldn’t make it, which is just as well because we didn’t have a free tank to brew into. He’s planning to come in tomorrow.

May 17th
CRAZY big day. Spent all morning modding the canning line and it seems like a 2x4 has solved 90% of our troubles.
Sweet Mod to Depal

Then came the evening… brewed three batches and was at the meadery until after 10. The kids were absolute troopers. There was a bit of a spill… I’ll wet/dray vac tomorrow.
This is not blood, nor is it mead just yet

This is less juice than it looks like

Brewed VC, OW, and Bee Proud.

May 18th
All three fermentations are off to the races. Bee Proud is almost done in 15 hours! That Sour Pitch is a wonder. I need to remember to account for that when doing step additions for fruit.

May 19th
Old Wayfarer is also chugging along. I think the fermentation temperature must have been wrong on the last batch. Also, BrewMonitor is consistently 6 gravity points off from the manual reading.
Apparently Jake is going to be out something like 8 days out of the next 10 work days. Even writing that down, I’m sure I’m going to forget.

May 20th
Need to brew more Buckland next week. Need to order labels.
Jake told me that the reason I wasn’t seeing bubbling on VC before I went home last night was because yeast is nocturnal. Apparently he’s correct:
Bubbles! Yeast is nocturnal!

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