Episodes

Photo by Matt Furman 6-12-18 Tonight we're hanging out with Raphael Lyon, owner of Enlightenment Wines in Brooklyn, NY. Enlightenment Wines started out as a small part time farm winery in 2009 by Raphael Lyon. In 2015 Lyon reached out to Anthony Rock and Arley Marks with the intent to join forces and grow Enlightenment Wines into a full scale production meadery with a tasting room and cocktail bar in Brooklyn New York. Enlightenment is a little different from many meaderies, in that they are hea...

6-5-18 Tonight Ryan is going to tackle one of the tougher aspects of mead making, creating a balanced end result. Meadmaking is really about making a good balance of ingredients. Once we can produce clean mead without any faults, ( and that's pretty easy with a little knowledge) it becomes an art form. Much like being a food master. So we're asking you to call us at 803-443-6323 to ask your questions on air, or join us in our live chat to tell us about your mead so Ryan can help out. There are m...

5-29-18 Tonight we're getting with Billy Beltz, award-winning mead maker. Billy Beltz is the Co-Founder of Lost Cause Meadery located in in San Diego, CA. Billy and his wife Suzanna opened the doors to Lost Cause in November of 2017. After only six months of being open they have already amassed several national awards for their meads including medals at the Mazer Cup International, the San Diego International Beer Competition, and the CA State Fair Wine Competition. Prior to opening the meadery ...

5-21-18 We're back! Tonight we're talking with Adam Thompson, owner of Machination Meadworks in Loveland, Colorado. Adam envisioned Machination Mead Works in 2013 and began the long path to starting his own meadery. Now with over a decade of brewing experience and a few dozen medals, including five Mazer Cups, he is ready to share his mead with the world. It has been a long uphill fight but his time in the Army’s 3rd Ranger Battalion (Thank you for your service!! - Vicky) taught him to never acc...

4-24-18 we are yeast hunting today! Our guest is Luke Holcombe, with Scott Labs. Born and raised in California’s Central Valley, Luke grew up surrounded by wine grapes. This led him to pursue a degree at CalPoly, San Luis Obispo in Wine and Viticulture. Prior to joining Scott Laboratories, Luke was the Assistant Winemaker at McManis Family Vineyards in Ripon, California and Head Winemaker for Post Winery in Altus, Arkansas. He currently resides in Alma, Arkansas with his dog, Mr. Wilson. Scott L...

4-17-18 Tonight our guest is Alex Gonzales, owner of Honeypot Meadery in Anaheim, CA, and one of the founders for the Southern California Mead Alliance and the Southern California Mead Club. Alex has been all over the mead world in the last couple years, and launched Honeypot Meadery after doing custom crushes with Golden Coast Mead. They will be opening a tasting room this summer. Alex is one of the founding members of the Southern California Mead Alliance (“SCMA”) and it’s current Director, he...

4-10-18 We're off on a honey run today! If you went to the AMMA Conference, you may have gotten to hear Evan Himes speak about Dutch Gold Honey and the honey market, and maybe even gotten to taste the varietals Sergio made from their honeys. Evan is coming on tonight to talk with us about what Dutch Gold is up to, discuss varietals of honey, and dig into the honey market. And a little bird told us that we converted him, and he's now making mead, so we'll talk mead (of course) as well. A trail ru...

4-3-18 Tonight we're venturing into the world of mead data. Stephen Snudden is an avid home mead maker and BJCP certified beer and mead judge in Canada. Stephen is also a huge proponent of studies and data and because he was frustrated at the lack of formalized study of mead, he decided to design his own and founded the web site experimeads.com. This is an outlet for mead makers to share data observations through peer reviewed triangle test experiments and detailed BJCP evaluated recipes. The fi...

3-27-18 Whew, it’s been a busy few weeks! We return this week with something different, a cidery owner. Mead and cider go hand in hand, and there are many similarities. So, we're talking with Chris Sheldon, owner of Diner Brewi Co, in New York state. Chris first began trying his hand at brewing in 2008 while he was a junior at Boston College. He and his roommate were feeling unsatisfied with the beer made available to them in stores and at bars, so they sought out a beer-making kit to create the...

2-27-18 Tonight we're mixing it up a bit, with a regular guest, and an AMMA Mead Conference Speaker. Julie Lawson and Kristen England will be here with the BJCP, and Adam Crockett, owner of Haymaker Meadery, talking about mead and oak. Kristen is a medical doctor. And spent some time overseas pursuing his studies, where he discovered awesome beer. Upon returning to the U.S., England began homebrewing. He passionately pursued his hobby even as he attended graduate school at the University of Minn...

Live from the NYC Fermentation Fest

2-20-18 We're continuing our speaker showcase for the AMMA Conference with Carolyn Peepall. Carolyn is originally from South Africa, and has been a beekeeper since 2007. She started the Bee Town Bee Club in Bloomington, Indiana in 2014, with a focus on sustainable beekeeping within the Bloomington area. The Bee Town Bee Club is a growing group of bee minded folks who are striving to raise Indiana hardy bees. She started making mead back in 2009 but it was pretty dreadful. Once she buckled down a...

2-13-18 Tonight we're continuing our AMMA Conference Speaker Showcase and have Greg Heller-LaBelle, owner of The Colony Meadery and Chrissie Manion Zaerpoor, author of The Art of Mead and Food Pairing. Greg Heller-LaBelle is the CEO and co-founder of The Colony Meadery in Allentown, PA. Prior to that, he drove the success and growth of startup ventures in industries ranging from community banking to math educational technology. A passionate believer in community and economic development, Greg st...

2-6-18 We’re continuing showcasing speakers for the AMMA Conference next month with Carvin Wilson. Carvin will be speaking on different fruit addtion techniques for making melomels. He wil be doing a side-by-side comparison of difference meads made with all fruit in the primary, all fruit in the secondary, half primary/secondary, and one late fruit addition in primary. All meads will be made with the same fruit without any acid adjustments. The goal of this is to educate mead makers on the diffe...

1/30/18 We're continuing the run up to the AMMA Conference and Mazer Cup Competitions and talking with Diane Currier, owner of HoneyGirl Meadery here in Durham, NC. Diane started homebrewing beer shortly after moving back to Durham in the early 1990s. She experienced her first mead at Ring of Fire Meadery in Homer Alaska in 2004. After hiking through a field of local fireweed wildflowers, she was introduced to a mead made from those flowers, and was hooked for life. She remains in awe of the ext...

1-23-18 We're continuing talking with AMMA speakers, and tonight we have Jeff Herbert, meadmaker and owner at Superstition Meadery, who is stepping in for Carlos Bassetti, who can't make it tonight. Carlos is speaking at the conference about Superstition's leap from 60 gallon batches to 1000 gallon batches. He's also an amazing meadmaker, with some very unique ideas. We're going to get an overview of his talk, and then pick Jeff's brains on his mead making ideas and techniques. We're also going ...

1-16-18 We're continuing featuring some of the AMMA speakers in this run up to the AMMA Conference March 14-15 and the Mazer Cup International Mead Competition and Mead Mixer March 16-17. Today we're featuring Matt Weide, VP of the Minnesota Homebrewers Association. Matt is going to be presenting at the AMMA Conference on how to bochet honey. In his talk at the conference, he will discuss the methods of caramelizing honey for meads. The pros and cons for the different methods along with how it w...

1-9-18 We're starting to feature the speakers from the AMMA Conference, coming up March 14-15, 2018. You can learn more at the website, 2 days of both home and professional tracks, all about mead. Sergio is owner of Melovino Meadery, and will be speaking on his experiment with nutrients, doing a triangle test to determine which methods of meadmaking are perceived to make the best mead, according to the 80 people expected to take part. We will also have Bob Slanzi on with us, and he's going to be...

1-2-18 Happy New Year! To start the new year off, we're visiting with Andrew Lumberto and Bob Slanzi. You all know Bobby, he's been on the show several times, and usually hangs out in the chat. Bobby is going to talk about flavor profiles in mead, and creating flavor groupings. But you might not know Andrew. Andrew is a Certified Cicerone and a Grandmaster Beer Judge I with a mead certification.He's also President of the largest fermented appreciation group on Long Island, Long Island Beer and M...

11-28-17 This is our last show of 2017! We go on our December break after this, and will return in January with new, fantastic shows! To finish 2017, we will be talking with Steve Fletty, two time Meadmaker of the Year at the National Homebrew Competition, and a member of the St. Paul Homebrew Club in St. Paul, Minnesota. Fletty has also won two Minnesota State Fair Best of Show awards (for a Russian Imperial Stout and Saison), as well as 2009 Midwest Homebrewer of the Year. While he enjoys brew...

11-21-17 We will have a mead celebrity on with this tonight! Peter Bakulic will be coming on the show to talk mead with us. Pete was introduced to winemaking at an early age as part of his family's Croatian roots in winemaking. He traveled to Lodi, California to visit family friends who were Zinfandel winegrowers and became familiar with the winemaking process. He became interested in making mead in the late seventies about the same time he was learning about brewing. After his first taste of me...

7-14-17 So now that we have a good idea on how to employ modern science to make the best mead possible in very short order. I thought it might be a good time to explore how to massage our meads on the other end of the spectrum, once the science piece is finished, so they can become the best they can be. Almost never is a mead finished straight out of the fermentation process. Anyone can read a recipe, but it takes more than that to coerce several parts of the equation into a something beyond goo...

11-7-17 We're back with another edition of Making Modern Mead. And we're headed back to Australia, to talk with Steve Kirby, owner of Stone Dog Meadery in Yarra, New South Wales, Australia. Steve is a braggot monster, and makes a lot of them. Steve started brewing in 1990, and his first attempt at fermenting was a plum wine made in his parents’ laundry and he's been brewing ever since. Along the way he has been mentored by champion amateur and commercial brewers, been awarded both gold and silve...

10-31-17 Hoppy Mead-o-Ween! We are back tonight to continue our series in Making Modern Mead. We've been talking about styles, and tonight we're talking session meads with Eric Lowe, co-owner of Meridian Hive Meadery in Austin, Texas. Even though session meads, i.e. lower alcohol meads between 4 and 8%, are a sack mead and can be in any style, we are pulling it out in an episode to focus on how to make your meads better at this level. Meridian Hive turns out some of the tastiest session meads ar...