The Sour Mead: An Unexpected Journey
In a hole in the ground there lived a…
No. Sorry, wrong Journey.
In the back of the Meadery there was a drum.
Not some old dirty drum, just sitting around getting nasty. This drum was filled with honey. Beautiful, golden, sweet honey. All thick and gooey, just waiting to become Mead like all the other drums around it. There were a lot of drums of beautiful honey, so this drum waited patiently for its turn, idly passing the days by itself. Or, so we thought.
You see, honey has a superpower. Nasties can’t grow in it. Yeast, bacteria and other stray microbes can’t live in honey because it is so thick and gooey. Normally, honey has a moisture content of 15-17% which is very low and very unfriendly to the little organisms that can cause trouble. Normally.
Sometimes, the honey the bees give us needs a little help, so the beekeeper usually dries the honey to the proper moisture content. Usually.
Most of the time, if the moisture content is a bit high it doesn’t matter too much if it is used right away and mixed with other drums. Most of the time.
This drum of beautiful, golden, sweet honey was not as thick and gooey as it should have been. It was… moist. Not too moist, mind you. But moist enough. Sitting quietly, waiting patiently our little drum made a friend. In fact, it made lots of friends and they all had the same name: Lactobacillus.
And the drum kept its new friends a secret.
Finally, the day came and our hero was going to be made into Mead. Along with some of its drum friends, a bunch of water and some yeast our barrel started on his Journey. An Expected Journey to a destination we all knew and loved. And, in our brand new tanks!
This was to be our first batch of 1,000 gallons of delicious Mead. It was going to be great – until it wasn’t. The drum’s secret friends woke up and got to work. When the batch was done we tasted it and were… surprised. The yeast had made defiantly “mead.” But the secret Lacto had made it sour. This was not good.
And, so, we set off on a VERY Unexpected Journey.
The Alchemist will take it from here…