On 3/15/12 D&D visited the meadery of Carl who has been making mead for many years. He's even won some silver and bronze mazers at the Mazer Cup international mead competition. We learned a lot about mead making, melomel, and methyglyn. Some things were revelations.
1) Carl makes his mead in a primary carboy with a paper towel in place of an airlock. This allows some aerobic primary fermentation. He "is just trying to keep the flies out".
2) Carl ages everything in secondary fermentation and bottles everything with crown caps in 22, 12, and smaller bottles. Some meads were in the secondary 5-8 years!
3) Carl is no where near as careful as we are about sanitation.
4) Carl wraps his stoppers in foil for long term storage/aging of mead in carboys. He's considering removing the airlock and replacing with a solid stopper once fermentation is complete to prevent oxidation.
5) Everything is adjusted for taste in the secondary, when alcohol is 12-14%. Carl adds no fruit or spice during the primary. Fruits are added in chunks small enough to fit in the carboy and without washing and only require 3 or 4 days to infuse the mead.
6) Everything we've made has been too dry. Carl leaves 3-4% potential alcohol as residual sugar. We may need a different yeast to support this or stop fermentation to stabilize. He stabilizes with a half and half mixture of potassium metabisulfite and potassium sorbate.
7) Carl sanitizes bottles by filling with dilute bleach solution (1 tsp in a 12 oz bottle) while bottles are neck deep in hot water for 30 minutes. He rinses with chlorinated tap water, inverts to drip dry, covers with aluminum foil and stores long term for future bottling. He always has sanitized bottles ready in quantity to fill into.
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