The Mead House

Catching up after an action packed travel schedule, Jeff and Chris spend a little time chatting over some of the popular trends they’ve seen in mead making, from the ubiquitous meadowfoam honey to some trends in the past and speculating as to what new trends are coming forward. The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!

The guys take some time to do a recap of this year’s Valkyrie’s Horn mead competition while driving home from Minneapolis as the experience is still fresh in their minds. Tune in for the impressions, annecdotes, memorable parts of the experience and far too many new ideas the fellas have come up with over the course of the weekend! The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!

Jeff challenges Chris to design a pyment using some wine concentrate which may be past its sell-by date, using ingredients he has around the house. The guys think about additional fruit, spices, different options for yeast and honey, and the end result shows a lot of promise. The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!

The guys spend a fair bit of time thinking through how to put together a good pyment, a mead/wine hybrid, and all the considerations that need to go into that. Then they take a few minutes talking about some of their favorite YouTube content creators by listener request. Valkyrie’s Horn Mead Competition: https://home.valkyrieshorn.com/ The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!

Jeff takes some time to talk Chris through a mead recipe he’s taken through several iterations – a sangria style mead he makes for his wife Sheila.  Using a base of blackberry wine and merlot kits and some eclectic ingredients for backsweetening, they end up with a consistent crowd pleaser that gets repeated again and again. Valkyrie’s Horn Mead Competition: https://home.valkyrieshorn.com/ The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!

The guys take some time speculating about the burn – not just capsumels using hot peppers, but what other ingredients could be used in mead to get the heat sensation and how to approach adding those ingredients, including hot peppers, ginger, black pepper, and even a few other odd possibilites! Valkyrie’s Horn Mead Competition: https://home.valkyrieshorn.com/ The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!

The guys are working towards a trifecta! In this third episode of “let’s eat interesting stuff we found and see if it can make a mead” Chris brings in a series of 11 different fruits to sample and evaluate their feasibility in making a new interesting mead with. Some produce strong options, some produce disappointment, and the final fruit in the list – well let’s just say they didn’t save the best for last. Valkyrie’s Horn Mead Competition: https://home.valkyrieshorn.com/ The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and...

Jeff takes a turn at “I found this weird thing…” and cracks into some pomelo. Chris ups the ante and brings ‘sweet lime’ and kumquats to the flavor party, along with pomelons, then Jeff takes a step way out to left field to sample a little dried galangal. Editor’s note: It looks as though pomelo, pomelon, and pummelo are all regarded as the same species of fruit though it does appear there is also significant flavor and aroma differences between different varieties and locales, only further complicating our analysis. Valkyrie’s Horn Mead Competition: https://home.valkyrieshorn.com/ The Mead House Pod...

At Chris’ suggestion, the guys take a deep dive into trying lychee and lychee flavored drinks, talk options for how to make lychee into a mead, whether to use whole fruit or prepared options, honey selection, and even a little on other flavors that play well with this fruit. BJCP Mead Judging Program: https://dev.bjcp.org/exam-certification/mead-judge-program/ Valkyrie’s Horn Mead Competition: https://home.valkyrieshorn.com/ The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!

Jeff and Chris take some time going in depth regarding maintenance steps for equipment used on the day to day when it comes to meadmaking, from glass carboys, plastic buckets and stainless steel fermenters, along with all the smaller bits and bobs like rubber grommets, transfer tubes and airlocks. Valkyrie’s Horn Mead Competition: https://home.valkyrieshorn.com/ The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!

The guys realized in all of last week’s talk of fruit and spice additions to recipes, they’d completely neglected to talk about several important finishing steps, so this week they move to correct that with a discussion on oaking, finishing, fining and filtering, and a few words on bottling as well! Valkyrie’s Horn Mead Competition: https://home.valkyrieshorn.com/ The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!

Last year the guys gave you three basic starter recipes – traditionals with an ABV of 8%, 12%, and 16%. Today Jeff and Chris start wading into taking these recipes – or any other recipe you find – and making them your own with advice on when and how to add fruit, spices, and even a brief commentary on carbonation. The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!

Jeff and Chris return to feeding prompts into Large Language Model Chatbot AIs to test their capacity to create recipes, this time testing the ability to manage a more technically complicated prompt as well as a potentially confounding subjective prompt. Afterwards the guys give a few brief thoughts on the utility of these models in recipe development. Raw responses for the two prompts given can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bxiG7W3OrP62xyrwxpgkxI4swYGAiTLFJvAiK25gfhw/edit?usp=sharing The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your sho...

The guys spend a little time talking through their year making episodes of the mead house, favorite parts, proud moments and even a little room for growth, along with a few hints as to where things may end up going in 2026! The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!

Happy Holidays from The Mead House to your house! In this holiday episode, Jeff and Chris are joined by their wives Sheila and Kat for a laid back, fun session of mead tasting and a couple rounds of a card game called Principle Dilemma giving you and us a break from the sometimes hectic holiday season. The drawing for The Compleat Meadmaker by Ken Schramm and The Flavor Bible has been extended one final week! To enter, send an email, or two if desiring to enter for both, to info@themeadhouse.com. Enter “Ken” in the subject line to enter for...

Jeff and Chris decide to test the validity of using AI to design mead recipes – in what quickly becomes a multi-episode topic, the guys discuss feeding a simple prompt for a cherry mead recipe to four of the most popular Large Language Model AI chatbots – ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Grok and Claude. Additional similar prompts for a chocolate cherry were also given, results contained below. For the Google Doc with full text for Cherry and Chocolate Cherry prompts (warning, 21 pages in length) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Bg-rXEdXc4fZ8nzOZ63gJRUN0pNomXx-SvhlsqooljQ/edit?usp=sharing To enter the drawing for either a co...

Jeff and Chris take some time to play with the Iron Bee 2026 secret ingredient – Tamarind. A really fascinating fruit with a bunch of different ways to add it to a mead, they taste a few different ways to get it into a mead and throw around a few additional flavor combination ideas. Iron Bee 2026 entry link: https://ironbee.brewcomp.site/ To enter the drawing for either a copy of The Compleat Meadmaker by Ken Schramm or The Flavor Bible, send an email, or two if desiring to enter for both, to info@themeadhouse.com. Enter “Ken” in the subject line to ent

Jeff and Chris spend a little time talking about making meads in the Polish style, general characteristics and processes for approaching that style, then Jeff transitions to his batch making a first attempt at something in this style using a new-to-him yeast to push the ABV of his finished product. To enter the drawing for either a copy of The Compleat Meadmaker by Ken Schramm or The Flavor Bible, send an email, or two if desiring to enter for both, to info@themeadhouse.com. Enter “Ken” in the subject line to enter for the Compleat Meadmaker and “Flavor” in the subject

In honor of Episode 300 and the Thanksgiving holiday, inspired by the historically dubious movie 300, the guys take a look at the way mead is portrayed in movies, TV, and other pop culture media along with a few digressions on the mythology of mead. To enter the drawing for either a copy of The Compleat Meadmaker by Ken Schramm or The Flavor Bible, send an email, or two if desiring to enter for both, to info@themeadhouse.com. Enter “Ken” in the subject line to enter for the Compleat Meadmaker and “Flavor” in the subject line to enter for The Flavor […]

With the holiday season fast approaching, the guys spend a little time talking about a particular ingredient that fits strongly in the holiday palate – ginger. Then, they discuss an extensive experiment undertaken and published by Man Made Mead on YouTube comparing using 15 different fruits in primary and secondary and some of the interesting results he’d obtained. Man Made Mead’s Ultimate Fruit Mead Test The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!

The guys take a look at a few more questions they didn’t get around to the first time around from cruising social media from last week. They also talk through a trip to Total Wine and a few natural food grocers looking for ingredient inspiration, which leads to tasting two new fruit varieties Chris had picked up. The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!

Jeff and Chris look at some questions posted by users on social media, Facebook and Reddit, answering them and discussing several of the topics in more depth. The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!

Following the episode two weeks ago regarding using Gruit inspired ingredients to make a braggot without hops, Jeff talks Chris through options for making a braggot which is either gluten-reduced or completely gluten-free, the process for going about both and some adjuncts and ingredients used in either process. The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!

Chris mixes up and talks through a series of four cocktails made with traditional mead as one of the ingredients, and makes them for he and Jeff to sample. Blackberry Mead-Fashioned 3 fresh blackberries 2tsp honey syrup 2 dashes bitters orange peel 1 1/2 oz mead 1oz bourbon splash of water Bee’s Knees 2oz gin 3/4 oz honey syrup 1/2 oz lemon juice shaker filled with ice/strained Autumn Breeze 2oz mead 1oz apple brandy 1/2oz lemon juice 1/2oz cinnamon simple syrup 2 dashes bitters Hot Mulled Mead 2 cups mead 2oz brandy 1/2 tsp allspice 1/2 tsp clove 10 cardamom […]

Jeff and Chris wander out into the yard and back to the olden days of brewing to examine a way to make beer using herbs and spices in place of hops, talking through some of the historical and some of the modern herbs being used, and how to incorporate these herbs into a gruit beer, a gruit braggot or just a metheglyn. The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!

Jeff and Chris continue making their lists. Jeff shares a rather involved recipe for a Christmas braggot with some fun ingredients (recipe below!) and then the guys spend a long while plotting out several ideas for flavor combinations that might just hit the spot for a Christmas seasonal brew. The Mead House Sugar Plum Fairy 8# Maris Otter (OR 5# Golden Light DME) 1# Carafa III .5# Chocolate Malt .5# Special Roast .5# Crystal 80L .5# CaraPils .5# Honey Malt 1oz Northern Brewer 60min .5oz Fuggles 15min Bocheted or melters honey to 1.095 1 package Omega Scottish Ale yeast 4 […]

What do you do with a drunken meadmaker? To complement the previous Mead House 8% and Mead House 12% recipes, this week Jeff presents the highest base recipe yet, a 16%. He walks Chris through the process and ingredients, along with subtle changes from previous base recipes, then Jeff and Chris spend a little time chatting about what they’d use a higher ABV mead for, when the higher ABV can be a benefit and when it can be a drawback. The Mead House 16% ~1 gal water Honey to 1.125 Fermaid K in 4 doses of 2.33g each 2g K1-V1116 […]

Chris and Jeff spend a little time going down the rabbit hole of fruits that are exotic, hard to find, or otherwise rarely seen in meads, as well as talking about how to handle working with an unfamiliar fruit. Various ways to process fruits for making a mead also quickly become a topic of discussion. The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!

Jeff and Chris spend a little time chatting about meads for the spooky season. Both share a personal recipe that fits the holiday fun (see below!) and then the guys riff on ideas like candy meads, and much like their thoughts on meads made from soda versus meads inspired by soda, they also give some thought to meads based on candy varieties. Chris’ Apple Pie Cider Mead 2gal cider honey to 1.100 sg 2-3# apples cored and sliced thin, frozen 1 pkg 71B 6g GoFerm 3g Fermaid K 1 1/2 tsp pectic enzyme Secondary 4 cinnamon sticks 8 whole cloves […]

Chris and Jeff spend some time talking about strategies for making time for making mead and getting mead made in an efficient manner, then they also take time to cover some equipment that can be a major time saver for your mead making processes. The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!

Chris and Jeff take some time to brainstorm on fall flavors and what makes a good fall mead now that Kansas City weather has taken a decidedly more pleasant turn in recent weeks. The guys share some past experiments, successes and lessons learned along with throwing out a handful of new flavor ideas and directions for future experiments. They also taste some results from Chris’ fat washing experiments using peanut butter with grain alcohol and coconut with rum, to some very pleasant results. The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopp...

Chris shares some thoughts and recipe ideas regarding making meads inspired by popular sodas like Mountain Dew and Dr Pepper. The guys discuss their thoughts on making a mead that tastes like a soda without the high degree of processed ingredients that come with commercially available sodas. Chris’ Mountain Dew Base (for 1 gallon of mead) 12 Oranges 8 Lemons 8 Limes 2 cups sugar (or honey?) Zest fruit, careful to avoid pith. Combine with sugar, making sure zest is completely coated. Allow to rest at least a few hours, but a day or more is better to extract oils […]

Jeff gives Chris a rundown on a handful of tools and processes to go beyond single use yeast packs at your local homebrew store. From freezing for long term storage, reuse, collecting, and even capturing wild yeast, the guys cover a bunch of techniques for the rare instance when it makes sense to take that effort into your own hands. The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!

Chris and Jeff take some time to walk through their own process for planning and developing a recipe including ingredients, thought process and planning – and of course a few anecdotes and tangents along the way. The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!

Chris and Jeff take a deeper dive into the world of tinctures, what they are, how to make them, why to use them, and different approaches above and beyond a base spirit and an herb or spice. Then, inspiration strikes Jeff in the oddest times and he walks away with the idea of making… mead boba pearls? Jeff and Chris throw around some further ideas to make the presentation side of serving more fun and enjoyable. The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus […]

It’s a content packed episode this week on The Mead House, Jeff and Chris reflect on some of the differences between the process of making a mead versus making a beer or a wine. Chris tries a taste of Jeff’s partigyle bonus braggot. The guys switch gears to talk general rules about estimating how much fruit, spice, etc. to add to a new batch. Stories about their first batches and a few entertaining tangents get shared along the way. The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and suppl...

Jeff and Chris walk through a few different methods for caramelizing honey and making bochet style meads, along with a little discussion of their successes and failures along the way. Then, Jeff gives a series of tips for diagnosing and dealing with a stalled ferment. The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!

It’s a listener request episode! First the guys discuss various options for labeling mead for home mead makers, from elaborate to extremely simple. Then, they discuss adding hops, from why, to how, and what kinds of flavors and types of hops lend themselves best to a good mead. The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!

It’s another longer topic this week as the guys dig into getting ready to get meads to competition. They talk finishing your meads with an eye for entering, packaging your mead, options for shipping and the ins and outs of getting it entered! The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!

The guys take a deep dive into the various faults one can encounter while making mead, and talk steps to mitigate and deal with them as they spring up. The Mead House Podcast is sponsored by Bacchus & Barleycorn! Use our discount code MHP10 for all your shopping and supply needs! Thank you Bacchus & Barleycorn!