MICHAEL>>: Welcome to Brewing TV. I'm Michael Dawson.
Today we're stepping away from the brew kettle and stepping up to a rather large bucket with this man, Curt Stock.
Curt is a member of the St. Paul Homebrewer's Club. His beers have earned him countless ribbons and medals, and we can confirm he does make a damn fine beer but he also makes a damn fine mead.
CURT>>: This is just cherries and black currants.
MICHAEL>>: Over the years, Curt and his wife, Kathy, have brought home many awards for their meads. And in 2005, the couple was jointly named Meadmaker of the Year by the American Homebrewer's Association.
Brewing TV stopped by the Stock house basement on three separate occasions to sample mead, watch the man in action as he made a 15-gallon mega batch of Mega Mellow Mel, and talk with him about his method and his mead philosophy.
Meadmaking has so much in common with winemaking.
How -- how is it that homebrewers and the AHA are the ones that have the style guidelines and they're kind of the ones carrying the torch of meadmaking into the 21st century?
CURT>>: I think it just -- as people rediscovered, you know, how easy it is to do, they just -- you know, they're going, oh, and it doesn't taste bad at all.
Basically, the reason I didn't start making it until 2003 because in 1990-something, I had somebody's mead and it tasted like fingernail polish remover.
I'm going, who in the hell would ever drink this stuff?
But -- and a few years later, I started getting into the BJCP classes and going, and they had the mead night -- you know, they had 17 different classes and this was mead night -- and I'm like, a lot of these taste actually pretty good.
I think that helps spur a lot of what we're seeing now and almost -- you know, almost -- I would say at least 50 percent of the homebrewers have tried to make mead.
MICHAEL>>: Wow. CURT>>: And many of them -- you know, I mean there's still a whole group of people that don't brew, they only make mead.
This is a mesquite blossom, dry mead, so people who don't like sweet things, there you go.
Rhubarb. Some rhubarb picked in the backyard; some gathered from friends and non-friends.
Oh, I don't know if I can say what -- we're going to leave this a secret but it's goodness, goodness, goodness, and goodness.
I mean, if you make one, it's gotta be good because it's the only one you have.
But if you make 10 in a season or 12 in a season, you're going to go, uhh, failure; oh, it's okay, I'll give it to my friends to get rid of it.
And then these ones are really good but these ones, I'm keeping these for me, my wife -- my dog doesn't drink them -- but --
MICHAEL>>: These are the ones that Brewing TV will never see? CURT>>: Well, we can maybe -- I don't know.
MICHAEL>>: I'm just -- I'm just -- I'm not trying to mooch, Curt.
CURT>>: Oh, hey, my scotch is gone so I might need -- I might need a little -- I might need a little something. I'm parched.
This would be one of the two blackcurrant cherries I have -- MICHAEL>>: Okay. CURT>>: -- from last -- from last fall. MICHAEL>>: Thank you. Wow.
CURT>>: A real fine blackcurrant mead I think is a lot like, you know, what winemakers would love to have.
MICHAEL>>: Can you walk us through the process that you use to make mead?
CURT>>: You find some good quality honey, and it ranges for whoever. You know, it's -- I like wildflower; I like orange blossom; I like tupelo.
The key is good ingredients make good mead. So you start with -- I make mostly mellow mels so I find a nice, strong honey that can stand up to the fruit.
I'm using orange blossom and clover, and 4 gallons of orange blossom; 2 gallons of clover.
The orange blossom actually has a -- it always has a very distinct flavor.
Honey and blackcurrants -- that's why you do blackcurrants.
Then we pick, find, sourced fruit one way or another just about anywhere you can find it. The best fruit is you pick it yourself.
You know what it is; you know it's clean. You clean it; bag it; freeze it.
I bought frozen fruit yesterday at about 10:00 o'clock in the morning, so I stuffed them in this cooler. So it's still -- still about half frozen.
You got your three main ingredients; your water, your fruit, and your honey, all as good as they can be.
And then of course you've got yeast nutrient. For what we use, it's a staggered nutrient addition.
It's pretty common throughout. You know, it's nothing we made up. It's -- you know, basically the wine as an industry started it.
See, now as these thaw out and it starts to ferment, that fermentation will break them apart. It will just be pulp by the time you're done.
And then I'll introduce that at -- I'll wait for fermentation to start, so we're talking probably 12 to 24 hours.
I'll hit it again with another dose. I'll probably give it, you know, anywhere from one to two or three days.
And then the last dose I'll get when the -- about 30 to 40 percent of the sugar is depleted.
So -- and just based on specific gravity measurements, so that could be -- you know, that's probably in your six to seven, eight-day range, I'll hit it with that last one.
There's yeast in every stage of its life cycle. MICHAEL>>: Okay.
CURT>>: And so what I think that does is it gives the yeast the nutrient at the right time as opposed to putting it all in the front end and it all -- most of it ending up down in the bottom of the fermentor.
MICHAEL>>: Precipitating out -- CURT>>: Yeah. MICHAEL>>: -- before the yeast can make use of it. Okay.
CURT>>: So -- and another thing about the staggered nutrient -- and I'll actually stir the must more often during fermentation just to drive off the CO2.
MICHAEL>>: You were the first person I knew that was using it, and so under -- before that, I'd always labored under this assumption that mead had to be aged for years and years before it was drinkable.
Does the staggered addition of the nutrients make a difference?
CURT>>: The -- the -- the previous needing to be aged was basically stemmed from I'm guessing bad fermentations and higher alcohol formations due to sluggish, unhealthy yeast.
That's what the staggered nutrient additions bring to it. It brings a faster, healthier ferment.
So when you're left out of primary, which now takes probably anywhere from three to six weeks to get -- from start to completion, at the end of that, your mead is pretty much usually drinkable.
The staggered nutrient additions I believe brought it from, okay, I've got to let my mead sit around for 12 to 18 months before I'll even try it to I just racked in the secondary and it doesn't taste too bad at all.
You know, I'll drink it now basically.
Before the Oakland conference, I started a mead that we did for a mead panel out there on May 1st, on May Day, and served it the third weekend in July -- or June. So --
MICHAEL>>: So seven weeks. CURT>>: Yep. Yeah, about seven and a half weeks and it -- and, you know, it tasted really, really good.
Now it doesn't say -- you know, I mean would it taste better with age? Will it taste good, you know, in -- in, you know, like 18, 24 months? Probably. But I don't know. It's all gone.
In fact, that one's completed gone. I didn't even save a bottle of it.
All these cases, I don't have bottles from every batch I've had but I've got some that go back to when we started in 2003.
Each case contains -- you know, however many dots are on it, that's how many different batches are in it, so --
MICHAEL>>: You got an '06 muscat. 2006 raspberry. This is awesome. It's like a library. CURT>>: And they keep going all the way back there.
MICHAEL>>: Curt, I know from drinking your meads and waking up in pools of sweat that smell like blackcurrants that you were a big fan of Blackcurrant Mellow Mel. CURT>>: Yes.
MICHAEL>>: Do you have any other favorite fruits? CURT>>: I like the combination of fruits a lot.
You know, I like just blackcurrants by themselves but I also like blackcurrants with cherries, tart cherries.
I like raspberries with -- well, chipotle peppers. Not really another fruit but it works pretty good.
Strawberries and bananas. I mean, I think one of the first meads I ever made was a strawberry-banana.
Smells like goodness. That one's starting to taste pretty good. I think it was, yeah, because, you know, it's 10 months old now. It's perfect.
Speaking of that, yeah, this one's got the mancan and the other ones -- you got to shake the drops off.
You can do it with less. You just end up with less fruit character.
I like the fruit bombs. I often get dinged because people will go, well, that's a fruit wine, that's not a mead; where's the honey?
And I'm going, I don't know, there's probably 12 pounds of currants and -- or probably 8 pounds of currants and 12 pounds of cherries in this batch; I'm getting plenty of honey out of it.
But then again, it's probably -- you know, it's the -- to define the gravity right now is I believe 1.045, something like that, so I mean --
MICHAEL>>: It's plenty sweet. CURT>>: If you can't get the honey out, then you're not trying.
I think if you're going to use a fruit, then use a fruit. You know, if you're going to use --
I think it's just -- to me, I like it when it just screams whatever it is; it says I'm blackcurrant or I'm cherry or I'm strawberry-banana.
You know, I want to -- I want those to be center stage and I want the rest of it to be, you know, supporting of that, so --
Yeah, this -- well, hopefully, that holds it, but I think we've got 16, 17 gallons of honey and water and another few gallons of fruit.
Probably weighs, oh, I would guess at least 150 pounds, so it will be resting right here until she's ready to transfer.
MICHAEL>>: Mead we all know is honey wine with fruit and other things sometimes in it, but what is mead to Curt Stock?
CURT>>: What is mead to Curt Stock?
A portion of it is taking ingredients that -- you know, any ingredients you can get your hands on; things you would like before they're mead and bringing them together and making a mead.
The process of starting out with these raw ingredients and making something that -- you know, that you can't buy; nobody else has in their basement.
You know, I mean something unique to how I want to make it and -- and what the product is that I end up with.
And then obviously just enjoying -- you know, it has to be something I'm going to enjoy; otherwise, I didn't make a mead, I just made another beverage that I'm going to have to unload somewhere. So --
MICHAEL>>: It's got to be something for you. Something that you'll enjoy. CURT>>: Yeah.
MICHAEL>>: Thanks a lot, Curt. CURT>>: Thank you.
MICHAEL>>: Cheers. CURT>>: Cheers.
MICHAEL>>: I don't know about you citizens but this episode made me real excited to try making some mead.
To facilitate that, to get that monkey off all of our backs, Brewing TV is going to throw out a promo code this week.
10 percent off any mead kit at Northern Brewer, October 8th through October 21st.
Code is meadup, M-E-A-D-U-P; that's meadup, M-E-A-D-U-P, at northernbrewer.com, October 8th through October 21st.
All for brew. Brew for all.
{♪♪Music♪♪}
CURT>>: Nothing says Brewing TV like an oosic.
Google that. You'll find out why.
MICHAEL>>: He's not wrong. UNKNOWN>>: No, he's not. MICHAEL>>: He's not wrong. UNKNOWN>>: He's not wrong.