In which Ricky continues to wrestle with the chiller, six batches of mead get made in a week, Ricky preps for the Parking Lot Party, and the BrewMonitor does its thing.
11/7
At least the chiller will go almost 20 hours without faulting... that's better than 20 minutes! Thank goodness for the BrewMonitor. Even though I was planning to head in over the weekend to work on the mushroom farm, it was nice to be able to check out the temperature graph and prioritize getting in to reboot it.
Speaking of mushrooms, I am stupidly excited about this project. It's like brewing but with even more patience.
11/8
I finally dealt with all of those piles of cans. I'm sure that folks come to these posts to learn about the secrets of restarting a stuck fermentation or figuring out how we balance the spices in our holiday meads, but three hours of my day was spent moving cans and cleaning kegs, so... that's that. And it was awesome.
All four active fermentations are going in lock-step, which is pretty rare but nice to see. The chiller has successfully gone two days without faulting, so that's nice.
11/9
My collaboration with Village Garage Distillery just dropped and it's SO GOOD! All of our Barrel-aged products have been made with their barrels, and now their gin is made in one of our mead barrels!
11/10
Everything is fermenting at exactly the speed it's supposed to! This shouldn't be nearly as exciting as it is.
11/11
In the tank I have Chaos Cinnamon Edition, Root of All Evil, VC, Nordic, OW, and Psychopomp all at the same time! This is so wild! I'm really excited to see how my new Base system works out.
11/12
The Parking Lot Party was everything I thought it would be and so much more! I can't believe someone drove 800 miles round-trip for it and someone else flew up in the middle of her semester!
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.
I love Nordic Farmhouse so much I would marry it! My favorite flavor profiles are sour and sweet, and this festive mead is very refreshingly tart! I especially love to drink it and serve it to my guests at the cranberry holidays (ie. Thanksgiving and Solstice/Christmas)!
Lovely golden color.No off smell to this one. Definitely notice the cinnamon flavor. Very refreshing.
I’m not getting the snickerdoodle/fall notes others do, but to be fair my palate is not the most refined. It’s a brisk lightly flavored mead to me, but I can’t pick out any particular flavor(s). It did help me through a good portion of the latest crossword, however. Going to let the rest of the pack sit awhile - sometimes aging is the secret formula to mind blowing mead. Will update down the road.
I didn’t care for early batches but with age this one is pleasant. Crisp, heavy vanilla forward (if you don’t like vanilla, this may not be for you). Balanced without being tart. I don’t pick up much on the apple, but not being a big apple fan that works for me. It would probably make a tasty mead bread!
BIG difference from last batch. Tasty up front mild oak taste that’s lighter than more mouthful meads like Wayfarer/Nordic Farmhouse/Psychopomp, richer than Buckland. I like to do a hard pour to release more of the carbon and let it sit a few minutes before drinking. I think it’s going to be AMAZING in a few months (assuming I am willing to let it age that long).
