The Mead House

Tonights show we got an update on The Mead House Cherry Mead and some ingredients needed for part 2. You can see the post here for a complete rundown. We also talked a little more on Bochet’s and Braggots,  JD’s wild discovery after caramelizing two different varieties of honey, and

Who doesn’t like a cherry cola?! Tonight, Mississippi Chris puts together a Cherry Mead recipe using cherry concentrate from Brownwood Acre Farms live on the show. Starting with sanitizing all the equipment, to slapping the lid on with the airlock. Also, JD and the boys talk Bochet’s and Braggots, reply to

Tonight we talked about Melomels and Metheglins. But first, a thank you to Angie Colwell and her husband for listening to the show! Melomels, probably the most common of meads, we talked fruit, fruit puree, and then Metheglins, spices and herbs. Great show! Make sure and check the Hopper List

Tonight we talked about experimenting with mead. This is one of the fun aspects of making mead, using different components such as varietals, fruits and spices, herbs, etc. Aaron talks about setting up a method, Designed Experiments in Mead Making, to determine several factors in one experiment. For example, if

Coffee, Chemicals and collusion. The coffee experiment is fast approaching D-day, and it looks to be next week around June 1st. Chris and JD are set to begin their coffee adventure after selecting the Kenya AA bean for their mead. Meanwhile, Jeff and Aaron collude to implement a coffee mead

We found a post by Robert Moreland on the Mead group facebook page about a cherry mead he was considering. Mississippi Chris has pretty extensive knowledge of cherry melomels, and we thought we would help Robert out a bit. He has all the right stuff, except the cherry puree. Sweet cherries will turn your mead into cough syrup familiar to most kids. Rather than sweet, it is better to use tart cherries to avoid that. We also talked about yeasts, our go-to’s and popular yeasts most people use. Enjoy the show!

The show featured a discussion on aromas and flavors, mouthfeel using tannins, vanilla beans, oaking, and Chris’s favorite, ripe bananas! Jeff has acquired a bunch of homeless bees, he also talks about a “MacGyver moment” he has with a queen bee and a shopvac. You really don’t want to miss this one!…Shopvac, eh?…

Tonight we talked about Sergio Moutela’s TOSNA and how to calculate the nitrogen needs for your nutrient additions.  Below are Aaron’s notes from tonight. Also want to thank Brett Tennant from Calgary, Alberta Canada for joining us to talk about his chocolate mead, and What’s In The Hopper. Walk through of TOSNA calculation. Start with your starting brix (in this case, 21 brix).  That determines your target milligrams of Nitrogen per Liter. 21 brix = 200 mg N/L Take your target mg N/L and divide by 50.  200 divided by 50 = 4. Then you multiply that by the number of gallons, 3 times 4 = 12. That is the number of total grams of Fermaid O to use. Divide that by 4, and that would be how much Fermaid O to use during each nutrient addition.  12 divided by 4 = 3 grams per nutrient addition. If you don’t want to do the calculation and just want to look it up in a table, here is a table filled out for different starting brix levels as well as different batch sizes (1, 3 and 5). TOSNA also requires that you calculate the amount of yeast.  Here are the steps: For 21 brix, you would use 1 gram of yeast per gallon. In this case, it would be 3 gallons, so 3 grams of yeast. Multiply the grams of yeast by 1.25, and that’s how much go-ferm to use. 3 times 1.25 = 3.75 grams of go-ferm. Multiply the grams of go-ferm by 20.  That’s how many ml of water to use. 75 times 20 = 75 ml (or grams) of water.  1 ml = 1  gram of water. Same as above, here is a table if you don’t want to do the calculations.

The studio has been fumigated, all the gremlins have been eradicated, and JD insists that we’re going to have a good show for you! Tonight we had a brief discussion on Oxidative/reductive fermentations, plus, an update on Aaron’s varietal experiment and Jeff hears from the Mazer Cup about his submission this year. Jeff updates us on his nutrient experiment, and this is day 14 of the Simple Mead recipe we put together at the start of the series. JD talks about a DIY cooling system that’s easy on the budget, plus a couple shout outs to a couple listeners!

The show from hell…JD having massive audio issues, we have Erik Newquist from Aesir Meadery in Everett, Washington with us. Chris, Aaron, Jeff and Erik talk coffee meads and problem fermentations.  In the mean time, JD is busy pulling his hair out for the 3rd time in a row!

Episode 2, Sweet Mead. Episode 2 is about making a simple sweet mead for beginners. Starting with 20 pounds of orange blossom honey and 5 1/2 gallons of water, we step through putting this mead together. We will monitor this mead for the next few weeks on the show, and talk about where you should be in relation to time. This is a simple mead, the recipe is featured on our website. We also talked about stuck fermentations, how to recognize them and what to do in case you find yourself in a predicament.   Here is a link to TOSNA which was also discussed as an alternative nutrient addition.

From Aaron Martin: Aaron Martin experiments with varietals. Find out how this amateur mead maker took a large step forward in the quality of his homebreww on this week’s premier episode of themeadhouse.com podcast! I racked these four 1 gallon traditionals comparing cranberry blossom, blueberry blossom, raspberry blossom and sunflower blossom honey varietals. Even after an initial mishap, in just 1 month of primary fermentation they are already smoother and cleaner tasting than many of my other batches are between 1-6 years of aging. Tune in Tuesday at 9:00 eastern to find out how I did it! From JD Webb: A friend, Jim Davis of Colorado has been corresponding with me, we’ve spent some time talking about my Rube Goldberg projects. He sent me an email a few days ago wanting to know what I thought of a pump-over system for a home setup. He showed me a video from Melovino Meadery of how their system works so I thought we’d talk about it and figure out a way a home mead maker might incorporate it into a home system. From Jeff Shrouse: Jeff’s nutrient experiment. Jeff is doing an experiment comparing different types of nutrient asdditions using both Fermaid K, DAP and Fermaid O. Based on a single 5 gallon batch of traditional mead, he split it into five 1 gallon carboys to run the experiment. Jeff’s goal is to measure both objective measures such as time to complete fermentation, final SG, pH, stalling activity, as well as more subjective qualities such as flavor or mouthfeel differences to settle on a preferred protocol to adapt for future recipes for all my brews. From Chris Spencer: Mississippi Chris is on the mend from a rather bad auto accident last week. He did say he would call the show in between sponge baths and chicken feedings. We’ll also check on the Heart Murmur project, a Ken Schramm Heart of Darkness knockoff.