Full Episode HERE.
Mead is the oldest known alcoholic beverage, but it’s still a mystery to most people. Garrett Freeman, the creator of Man Made Mead, has made it his mission to change that through approachable education, wild experiments, and a thriving online community. With nearly a decade of brewing under his belt, he shares insights from hundreds of batches (and not always successes) ranging from traditional honey-water-yeast recipes to bold flavor combinations you’ve never imagined.
We explore the history, versatility, and surprisingly simple process of brewing mead, plus the role of honey varietals in shaping flavor. Garrett breaks down primary vs. secondary fermentation, reveals his craziest ingredient mashups, and takes us behind the scenes of the Mead Stampede, one of the biggest competitions in the U.S. He also offers practical advice for anyone curious about making mead at home, from choosing the right honey to avoiding common mistakes.
Expect to Learn:
-
- Why mead was safer to drink than water for centuries
- How honey type transforms flavor (and why there’s no such thing as “just honey”)
- The difference between primary and secondary fermentation—and which gives more fruit flavor
- Garrett’s most outlandish experiments, from candy to spicy fruit blends
- How the Mead Stampede became a must-attend event for brewers nationwide
- Where to find great commercial meads (and which brands to avoid)
- The essential gear and ingredients for your first homebrew batch
- Why some of the best meads in the world come from small homebrew clubs
Links:
Service starts now.
Follow the show: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube
I talk mostly to people in and around the service industry space. I’m looking to hear from the people I wish I could have talked to when I was coming up in restaurants. Said another way: I am trying to make sense of this wild, beautiful mess of a life, and help others that are feeling similarly confused and/or lost. You can find more of my work at my blog, and all my social links are at the bottom of that page.
Classic Episodes You May Like:
-#10:Nat Harry, cocktail expert!
-#14: Dr. Shalini Bahl, mindful marketing
-#22:Doug Frost MW MS
-#23:Jeffrey Morgenthaler
-#31:ET: Entrepreneur (and creator of Surfer on Acid)
As always, I’m just here taking notes, trying to figure out what it all means.
Cheers
Transcript
Andrew Roy (00:02.515)
Yeah, I guess you could. Who knows, who knows? It’s technology, it only works like 50 % of the time. Yeah. Oh, cool. So yeah, up here it’s crazy. We get these random storms, it’s like 5.30 in the morning, we have a blow through. Yeah, sirens going off and then just, yeah. So I got like branches all over the yard, it’s fun. Oh yeah, that’s Oklahoma too, yeah.
Garrett (00:08.556)
Right, Yeah, man.
Garrett (00:20.555)
Interesting.
Garrett (00:27.726)
That sounds, mean that’s, yeah, Oklahoma, ours are, we get those too. Maybe less often, but it’s all seasonal, of course. So.
Andrew Roy (00:37.395)
that. Well cool I’m just gonna go for it. Do you have any time limits or anything I should know about?
Garrett (00:45.238)
No, I probably need to be done by 1030 if possible. mean, yes, there’s a time limit. So if that works for you.
Andrew Roy (00:49.523)
That’s, yeah. Well, yeah, you’re being polite, but yes, 10.30. No, that’s fine. I’m off today, but that means I actually get some time to split with the A &s, so that’d be nice. And yeah, people that watch the show, it’s mostly service industry. Not a lot of meat-happy drinkers. I’m gonna ask you a lot about what meat is, you know, and yeah, so.
Garrett (01:03.426)
Yeah, yeah, cool man.
Garrett (01:17.56)
That works for me, that sounds fun.
Andrew Roy (01:19.399)
Yeah. So you want to let’s just do it. So all right, Garrett. I don’t drink a lot of mead. And I think a lot of people that listen probably think of mead as kind of a secondary category. It’s not even clear where it lands in the world between wine and beer. Like what got you into mead? And for the unintroduced, you know, muggle in the audience, what is mead and why do you love it so much?
Garrett (01:23.022)
Yeah, let’s go for it.
Garrett (01:47.182)
Yeah, that’s a great question. what is mead? Mead is a honey based beverage that if you do a quick Google of it, tracks back to Vikings and historical events like that. And, know, everyone says that the Vikings drank it and the Bud Light commercial that they ran a couple of years ago did that too. And all the things it’s really older than that, but essentially it’s honey water and yeast. I don’t think there’s really any like concrete evidence evidence of when it was started, but somebody at some point.
stumbled across a fermented puddle of honey water and decided to drink it and then figured out what it was. And from there we started to make it more, yes it’s associated with Vikings, they would use it often as a, as they’re sailing across the seas, you know, if you have a barrel full of water, not as safe because of bacteria, but if you ferment it, if it’s got some alcohol content, then it’s going to be safer. So they would often use mead as
honestly drinking water as weird as that sounds it was safer to drink than water and then it became yeah
Andrew Roy (02:50.643)
I mean, to interject, there’s a reason prohibition had to happen. Yeah. That’s what everyone was doing for years and years. Yeah.
Garrett (02:55.103)
Right, right.
Yeah, so obviously that that circled back in the end, but then people eventually started making it probably less out of necessity and more out of enjoyment. And from there, I think the resurgence of it’s really kicked up recently. I don’t know the like the last, you know, if it was big in 1700 or whatever. But as we’ve come to know more about it, we’ve grown to make it more than honey water and yeast. It’s been.
adapted to be fruited or spiced and there’s a whole host of categories, mead categories that mead could fit into. And essentially anything that you can ferment can be turned into mead. Now, if you do a quick YouTube search, you’re gonna find some crazy combinations and I think the new thing on YouTube meta is to make outlandish things, make a Doritos mead and ferment Mountain Dew and you know.
do stuff that is probably less akin to the origins of it, but it’s all still mead if it’s honey based. So that’s a short history of it. It’s an interesting, it’s a really fun drink. mean, I really like it.
Andrew Roy (03:55.132)
Yeah.
Andrew Roy (04:02.301)
Yeah.
Andrew Roy (04:08.403)
The flexibility is unique, think. I mean, you do get weird spices in like beer. I did see an ad for like a jalapeno pineapple wine, but I think the range that you get in me, on your channel, I watched you brew a Kiwi and paprika me on your canopy meat series, I believe. So it’s, yeah. And it’s weird because I come mostly from a wine background and
Garrett (04:29.899)
Yeah, yeah.
Andrew Roy (04:38.013)
part of that wine background is the classic spirits of the world. And part of their methodology and theory is like the high end stuff is the unadulterated like pure. And so it’s very weird to see a category where it’s like, no, throw things in here. Like let’s go, everything can pass, know? Yeah.
Garrett (04:41.516)
Mm-hmm.
Garrett (04:56.257)
Yeah, it’s I like that it’s expansive, but I do. I think the best mead is stuff that is closer to the original stuff. That being what we call a traditional mead, which is honey, water and yeast. And the cool thing about mead and what got me into it was one, it’s easy to make. It’s it is so much simpler than beer in that the process is quicker. You require less equipment. The materials are are easier to it’s
Andrew Roy (05:15.219)
Okay.
Garrett (05:26.101)
water, whatever you got at home, generally some wine yeast and go find some honey. And honey is pretty well available if you are looking around, you can find it locally or online. So I got into it for those reasons. But when I try and promote mead to people and have them try it, especially when we do stuff like pouring events or someone who’s just fresh, I say let’s drink a traditional mead to see what it tastes like. Unadulterated, no fruit, nothing crazy. And what’s cool is all the honey varietals in the world.
Andrew Roy (05:51.527)
Mm-hmm.
Garrett (05:56.199)
make me more interesting. Lots of people think, I’ve had honey before. I’ve had, I’ve had one honey. I’ve had them all.
Andrew Roy (06:02.963)
The clover honey at the grocery store, yeah.
Garrett (06:04.937)
Yeah, you’ve had that you might have had the bear, the honey bear, and that’s great. Awesome honey, whatever. That’s one of hundreds of varietals of honey out there. And we call them monofloral when they come from a single flower source. And then we have poly floral, which is, course, lots of floral sources. Anything that a bee can pollinate on can be turned into honey. A carrot blossom honey comes from the carrot blossoms that the bees have pollinated on. It’s vastly different.
Andrew Roy (06:08.903)
Mm-hmm.
Garrett (06:34.733)
than something like blueberry blossom honey or you know, the list goes on and on. So that was kind of fun to find out. Also overwhelming because when you’re like, oh my gosh, now I have to try 100 honeys? Well, you don’t have to, but it’s fun to see the differences between them, if that makes sense.
Andrew Roy (06:49.971)
You
Yeah, yeah. No, that does make sense. It’s, I’m wondering, because of my head, I haven’t brewed, you know, meads. My brother is more into it than I am. Would going for like local honey be like the polyvarietal honey? Like if you find like a local honey in a specialty store? Yeah. Usually, okay.
Garrett (07:15.789)
So a lot of people suggest, well, local honey has, they are pollinating on the things that are local to you, of course, which generally means that it, from what I understand, I’m not an allergenist or whatever the term is for the allergy people, but they say that it helps your allergies if you eat local honey because it’s something about it itself.
Andrew Roy (07:41.907)
That’s why I know about it, yeah.
Garrett (07:44.863)
And there are some honeys that promote a medicinal property. There’s one called Manuka and it’s like unbelievably expensive. I bought, I did a video one time that was, I think I bought maybe 12 ounces of it, which is maybe like a honey bear size, know, nothing huge. For 70 bucks, something like that. And I made.
Andrew Roy (08:09.511)
Peace.
Garrett (08:10.796)
Essentially a half gallon of mead which turned out to be like three or four bottles and I did it for a video No, just for fun to say let’s make the world’s most expensive mead but a big thing about that honey is that it says it’s medicinal and I don’t know I’m not gonna begin to speculate on what’s happening there because that’s not my territory, but I don’t think it’s gonna cure you of any Anything in your world if you’re eating it
Andrew Roy (08:36.083)
I mean, the clickbait appeal of this meat will cure your cancer. like, yeah. Yeah, no, let’s talk about the YouTube channel too. So Man-Made Meat, I was impressed looking at it. 75,000 subscribers, almost 6 million views. Yeah, all for meat. Something that’s like 1 % of the alcohol production. Yeah, so.
Garrett (08:42.571)
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Garrett (08:54.252)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Garrett (09:02.962)
Yeah, the niche of a niche for sure.
Andrew Roy (09:06.161)
Yeah, yeah, when did you start the YouTube and did you always know you were going to go heavy on me or did it kind of evolve as you were doing it?
Garrett (09:14.858)
You know, my origin story with that is kind of funny because I have been brewing for eight years and I’ve been doing YouTube for eight years, the exact same amount of time because I went out to Texas for my first job when I first graduated from college and I wanted to brew and do something. I had brewed a couple beers with my brother and then I was like, maybe I’ll get into beer brewing. I started Googling, hey, what do I need to brew beer? And it was like, you need a…
big pot and all these things. And I got overwhelmed by the amount of equipment needed. And so I ended up deciding was like, I’m going to try to find a different route. Stumbled across a couple people talking about mead and they said you need like a glass carboy or some fermentation vessel, some honey and water and yeast and you shake it up and you’ll walk away. And I was, I was sold because I was like, that’s easy. I can do that. I can figure this out. So in tandem, I decided
Andrew Roy (10:08.915)
You
Garrett (10:13.1)
Well, if I’m going to do this, I’m going to, I’m not going to call it a documentary style, but like I’m going to document the process of me learning how to do this. So my very first meet I ever made was also on my channel, made on my channel. And it’s me talking to a camera, fumbling over words, trying to figure out what I’m doing and just being like, I’m making this today, you know? And so I started this, the YouTube channel. Yeah. It’s like, I don’t know how it’s going to turn out, but we’re going to see.
Andrew Roy (10:36.915)
We’ll see.
Garrett (10:42.348)
So I started making videos and essentially just recorded every batch. And the first year was honestly just intended to be a documentation of how things had turned out. And it was just kind of fun for me to do. And then I started to get a couple of views. And then I saw people say, like they were following the path along with me and they were curious. And so I kept making them. At some point it switched when I got.
confident enough or competent enough in mean making to where I could start to speak on topics and make it more educational. So then I started to switch my videos to today we’re doing this and here’s why I’m doing this and I made my channel more educational and now I’ve made the total flip I would say. It’s fun content, know, that’s hopefully fun to watch but my intent is that my channel takes all aspects of mead making and
Andrew Roy (11:17.457)
Hmm.
Garrett (11:40.983)
Troubleshoots them, puts them to the test and lets people learn something from my videos, whether it be a recipe or an A-B style test to see what happens when you do this or this. And yeah, I’ve been doing it for eight years. It’s just been a slow churn. You know, it’s not, like you said, meat is a niche of a niche. It’s super small. So I’m not pulling like the Mr. Beast 25 million views, you know, the first 24 hours.
Andrew Roy (12:02.802)
Yeah.
Garrett (12:10.348)
I’m happy if I get a couple hundred to thousand on a video, but it’s still fun and I quite enjoy the challenge of it and surprisingly, even after 500 something videos, I have still yet to run out of content to produce. So it’s kind of cool.
Andrew Roy (12:11.036)
Sure, sure.
Andrew Roy (12:26.127)
sure, yeah. I’m sure that you could probably go into any grocery store or even just like special grocery store walk around and like, can it be me? That’s the whole can it be me there. So what’s your craziest combination so far?
Garrett (12:36.288)
Yeah, yeah. Yep. Hmm. So the one you referenced earlier, the Kiwi Paprika came from a series called Can It Be A Meat? I started it like four or five years ago. I put some ingredients on two wheels and I essentially let the wheels decide what was going to be made. And so it was a fruit wheel that has all the fruits and options on it. And then one with spices.
In a recent video of one of those, ended up, the wheel landed on like, know, spin twice, whatever. And so it was watermelon and lemon for my fruits. And then the, also landed. Yeah, which I was like, okay, cool. And then the spice one turned out to be habanero pepper, habanero and sage.
Andrew Roy (13:17.637)
stood so bad.
Garrett (13:32.64)
So watermelon, lemon, habanero, sage. And I was like.
Andrew Roy (13:35.539)
Doesn’t sound horrible still. Like the sage is the one question mark, but yeah. I could see a watermelon lemon habanero, even salsa. Doesn’t sound too bad, yeah.
Garrett (13:39.99)
Yeah, yeah, and I-
Garrett (13:46.314)
Mm hmm. Right. So that’s probably the craziest one in that it just was like outlandish, but I have done my fair share of like dumb candy ones. I’ve fermented Twizzlers. I’ve done, you know, Sarah Patch Kids. I’ve done Starburst. You like I’ve done all those candies just as like a let’s see what happens. You know, just kind of fun. But the most regular, regular weird one is probably that.
Andrew Roy (14:11.059)
Okay watermelon habanero lemon sage It could make a good drink I’m like faking in my head so I am more in the wine and spirits and cocktail world and I’ve Played around with turning different colored candies into like syrups. I find they always turn like gray Do you have a similar problem like when you cook them down or if it’s like multicolored?
Garrett (14:31.755)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Roy (14:40.305)
just for some reason, when you try, guess if it’s like Twizzlers would probably turn red, but it’s when you do like kaleidoscopic colors, they usually just default to gray, melt them down.
Garrett (14:40.468)
Yeah.
Garrett (14:45.161)
Yeah.
Garrett (14:51.847)
I’ve noticed it, I noticed that with the specifically with like Starburst when I had done that one, I individually unwrapped each color and you know, and did a yellow Starburst and a red and it started off like in the video, like they were the exact color that was there of the Starburst. And then after fermentation, the pigment was lost, which was kind of interesting. And I’ve noticed that with other things as well, like some fruits do that. Dragon fruit is a beautiful
Andrew Roy (14:58.706)
Look here.
Garrett (15:20.811)
purpley pink color, which is just super, super unique. Post fermentation, I don’t know what it is. I don’t know the science behind it, but it loses a lot of that color and it turns into like a really muted purple, you know, something that’s just less appealing in that way. So I don’t know what it is, but I’ve never had gray. I wouldn’t say gray, but I’ve had lots of color.
Andrew Roy (15:41.363)
Yeah. Yeah. That might be from cooking it. I actually tried to make it into a syrup too. Yeah. don’t know. Fermentation, yeah, no one really knows, I think, everything that happens in fermentation, but I could see some color aspects muting or changing.
Cool. I did want to ask you about Meet Stampede. Where did that start? And that’s how me and you actually got to meet each other. That was super cool and crazy. I think it was 432 entrants, if I remember correctly.
Garrett (16:07.243)
Mm-hmm.
Garrett (16:11.263)
Yeah, that was wild. That was fun.
Garrett (16:18.507)
So we had 369 entries delivered. Mead’s Namepeed for anyone who doesn’t know is a mead competition hosted in Oklahoma City. It’s one that my buddy BC and I, who runs a YouTube channel called Doing The Most, we started it five years ago and it wasn’t our brainchild. It was actually someone from our Discord who, his name is Nick, super nice guy. He was like, hey, I would love to like.
Andrew Roy (16:22.385)
Okay.
Garrett (16:44.619)
help you guys with this and spearhead this, but I think a meat competition in Oklahoma City would be really cool. And so we kicked off our first year with with Nick and a couple people from our community. And we had, I don’t know, 120 something entries that year, which was still a significant amount for. For a competition now, you’re five, we’ve gone up to two, we had four hundred and twenty something that were.
Andrew Roy (17:03.347)
That’s a sizeable, yeah.
Garrett (17:15.273)
like entered into our system and paid for and then we had about 370 that were actually delivered. yeah, so we had ended up with sorry, 370. This is my dog. He dog walked in the room and made noise.
Andrew Roy (17:22.451)
Oh, that’s where I got the 400. Okay, gotcha.
Andrew Roy (17:30.067)
Is that a cat, dog, Oh yeah. This is probably the most important part of the podcast. What kind of dog, what’s his name?
Garrett (17:39.332)
This is Boon and he’s a labradoodle. He’s about five years old and finally hit his point where he’s calmed down enough to not be a psychopath. So it’s kind of good.
Andrew Roy (17:42.269)
Great.
Andrew Roy (17:48.755)
I’ve got a great day in Zeus and if a squirrel goes by, we will hear him in the distance. yeah, it’s all right.
Garrett (17:54.816)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah So we got to 370 this year. It was fantastic meat competitions if you do make one it’s a really easy to enter you just go on whatever website and There are categories you have to put a mead under for example, Not all meat is just gonna go into into a meat category. It might be fruited So it has to go to a certain thing. It might be fruit and spice it might have watermelon, you know all those things and
some sort of element that makes it really crazy. And so you throw it into something called experimental, but essentially we just divvy out all the categories to where each meat falls into one. And then we gather a bunch of judges and we taste them. We give the people feedback for their brews. And then because it’s a competition, we award a first, second, third place, and then a best to show. And it’s pretty fun. It’s a very prestigious thing to obviously win those awards when you’re among
Andrew Roy (18:28.903)
Mm-hmm.
Garrett (18:52.971)
50 people in a category, but it’s a great event. It was super fun to meet you there.
Andrew Roy (18:55.015)
Sure, Yeah, I mean, it’s super cool, because not everyone can travel in to be present at the competition. So it was super cool to be there. you know, if you you’ve got to imagine everyone said, again, I think it’s three bottles. And so if you don’t get past that first taste of ground at the end of it, we’ve got just hundreds of bottles. And so I actually ended up with a couple of cases that
Garrett (19:04.821)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Roy (19:22.451)
I gave out to a lot of my coworkers at work just to try different things. so, yeah, a lot of people were like, I’ve never tried mead. I said, transparently, I haven’t tried these either. So like, they’re gonna be good or bad. Like, good luck. Yeah. Oh man, I don’t remember if you remember there was a pickle mead that someone entered that I got to try at the event. And I thought that was a very interesting.
Garrett (19:25.173)
Cool.
Garrett (19:33.333)
Right. Yeah. Exactly.
Garrett (19:44.607)
Hmm. Okay.
Andrew Roy (19:51.763)
combination of flavors. I was like trying to think of a nice way to say that.
Garrett (19:56.425)
Yeah, people like to get ambitious with those things, but I don’t think I tried that one, but I have had them before and it’s I’m not a big like pickle juice guy. You know, I know a lot of people like to just drink the pickle juice. I’m not quite there, so it wasn’t as appealing to me, but I could see where people would like that, you know.
Andrew Roy (19:59.539)
to you.
Andrew Roy (20:05.765)
Same, yeah.
Andrew Roy (20:12.659)
When you’re introducing people to meats, do you go more, I think it’s called the mel-a-mel, do you say do you go more traditional or is there something that you found like the newbie meat drinker really latches onto or?
Garrett (20:18.442)
Mm-hmm.
Garrett (20:28.05)
So my buddy BC and I, do a ton of pouring events and like we have one in September we’re gonna do and we often will take a traditional mead for the sake of like when we find the person or someone is walking up, we can kind of gauge where they’re at. If they are somebody who’s looking to quickly try it and run away, we normally give them something that’s gonna be fruited, fruit and spice. Something to where that kind of hooks them in. If they want to really dive in and figure out what mead is,
then we walk them through and say, let’s start with the traditional and you know, then we’ll stair step you to try these other things. It really just depends on like the gauge of the person. Most people tend to like fruit, fruit spice, meads more than the traditional ones because it’s just how we are. People like fruit, fruit things, you know, so, so yeah.
Andrew Roy (21:19.129)
Yeah, I mean it’s you know because I operate in the wine world. It’s like Cabernet Pretty much everyone in the world likes a Cabernet, know, like it’s easy to understand It’s got some pan and it’s got some fruit your wine Advanced drinkers are gonna be the earthy peanut ores and that’s where you’re like, okay This is the range of what we have kind of thing Yeah Yeah, I’m also thinking like beer maybe like Pilsner would be your like
Garrett (21:25.033)
Mm-hmm.
Garrett (21:39.838)
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Garrett (21:46.921)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Roy (21:48.487)
That’s your fruit. Everyone’s going to drink this on a hot day. Okay, yeah. I was going to ask you to, the back-to-back brewing you did pre and post fermentation, I that was really cool for a meat champagne. Do you mind talking about that a little bit?
Garrett (22:05.108)
Hm. Mm-hm.
Yeah, so in the fermentation process, with anything that there’s a stage that we call primary fermentation, which is where for mead, it’s where you’ve mixed up your honey, your water, your yeast and your blueberries, let’s say, and you’ve put them all into that first fermentation. And it’s going along, it’s fermenting, it’s doing its thing. That’s what we call primary. That’s the beginning. The latter half is what we called secondary fermentation, which is where
After the primary fermentation is done, you generally need to move the liquid out into a new container to get it off of yeast or if there’s like blueberries, there’s a bunch of blueberries still in there. You know, you want to get it off of that sediment is what we would call it. If you add more fruit, add more sugar that causes the yeast to either refirm it or it’s just an addition.
and self, that’s called secondary fermentation. So what I did for a test for a video that’s still in production is I took 15 different fruits, I bought a ton of fruit and essentially tested how fruit reacted or tasted in primary with a bulk of fermentation on it versus secondary with less fermentation.
and I was able to have some bottles at Mead Stampede for people to try. And so people could go along and say, here’s an apple Mead that had fruit in primary and taste it and say, I pick up these notes. This is fun. And then alongside try the one that was secondary. for specifically with that test, their fruit was only incorporated in those steps. So only incorporated in primary fermentation for one and only incorporated.
Garrett (24:02.953)
and the secondary for the other. Which essentially means that half of the batches I made for that test started off as a traditional mead, just honey water yeast, until the fermentation was done. And then I added the fruit and the other half was inverted essentially.
Andrew Roy (24:20.499)
Cool. I found that I almost exclusively enjoyed the secondary editions of the primary. Do you find that people have different preferences like that or is it really just like depends on the fruit kind of thing?
Garrett (24:28.414)
Hmm.
Garrett (24:34.972)
It depends on the fruit a lot of like at its core without getting super deep into it because it gets it gets wild. Primary fermentation when you ferment on fruit like you’d ferment on wine on the skins and wine, you’re going to get something that’s a lot more tannic that there’s going to be a lot more tannins presented. You also your your yeast choice for wine and mead making make a huge difference. And so when you use the right yeast,
with the right fruit, those yeast and the fruit, they’re jiving together and they’re gonna spit out the flavor profiles that you want. Something that’s gonna push out more blueberry or push out more whatever in that fermentation process, the primary fermentation. There’s less of that that happens in the secondary. You get less tannin from your fruit when you put it in secondary. You still get a little bit, but it’s less.
Andrew Roy (25:26.93)
Good
Garrett (25:31.272)
and you get less of the playing of the yeast with that fruit. So it’s more of like, I think of it like it’s a juicier profile for a fruit in that circumstance. And the primary, you’re still gonna get a juicy blueberry. We’re using that a lot, but blueberry taste, but you’re gonna have more tannin and just a little more playing with the yeast in that circumstance.
Andrew Roy (25:41.576)
Yeah.
Andrew Roy (25:59.059)
But if, and trust me, it’s been a couple, a couple of weeks and I think there was alcohol involved, but from what I remember, I feel like the flavor, like if, I was blind tasting these meats, I felt like in most of the primary, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you with certainty that this was brewed with XYZ fruit. Whereas in the secondary, I got a little bit more of that fruit. Like, like the fermentation almost would change the character enough that I was like,
Garrett (26:06.13)
Hahaha.
Garrett (26:24.68)
Interesting,
Andrew Roy (26:28.711)
blind, I don’t know if I would have said that was guava. I forget the exact words you used, but yeah.
Garrett (26:33.161)
Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s true. Like in fermentation, a lot, as I’m sure lots of people know, a lot of our taste comes from our smell. And so in fermentation, because essentially there’s creating of CO2, which is a byproduct of the alcohol that’s being created in the yeast and all the things you’re blowing out aromas that are important to those fruit. And so there is a little bit of a loss in that regard.
Andrew Roy (26:55.847)
Winner.
Garrett (27:02.077)
when you ferment on fruit, especially if you don’t use a significant amount of fruit. It’s kind of like, you know, the La Croix idea of like, you you, waved a lemon around a glass of sparkling water. Like if you just put, if you just put like, you know, four or five blueberries into your mead, you’re not gonna, you’re not gonna get a blueberry tasting mead. And so you have to use a significant amount, which often entails two to
Andrew Roy (27:16.871)
That’s about all you got, yeah.
Garrett (27:31.219)
four pounds of fruit per gallon for mead making. it’s significant and that’s for something that’s I’ll say a standard strength brew for what you want to do. If you want to make something that’s like, I’m gonna switch fruits. If you want to make something that’s like a strawberry bomb that just tastes like you’re biting into a strawberry that’s huge, you’re gonna have to use 12 to 15 pounds of blueberries or strawberries per gallon, which is
Andrew Roy (27:35.1)
Which is a lot, yeah.
Garrett (27:59.835)
a psychotic amount, but it just depends on what you’re creating.
Andrew Roy (27:59.869)
you
Andrew Roy (28:03.667)
Yeah, if you’re entering a competition, you probably will. Um, wow. That is just a ton of strawberry. So let’s, let’s imagine the listener out there who’s really interested and thinking, okay, you know, I’ve thought about bring beer, beer sin complex. seems kind of cool. Maybe I’d be into this, but I haven’t tried to be, are there any like commercial producers that you really recommend or for the unintroduced?
Garrett (28:13.543)
Yeah.
Garrett (28:32.521)
Yeah, so here in Oklahoma, we have limited scope of what we can get. And I’ve been fortunate enough to try lots of things from around because I’ve just I’ve been able to travel some. I’m trying to think what’s like widely available. There’s a company called Meridian Hive that’s located in somewhere in Texas. They do a lot of canned session meat is what we call it. It’s a lower strength, six and a half percent.
and lower, which I know some people said six and a half. That’s still high. That’s that’s low for mead. You know, most mead sits in wine territory for people. Meridian high. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah, and there’s not a lot. Mead stampede, you know, no one’s really putting, hey, watch out, this is 17 % on it. You know, it’s it’s hey, try this. And the next thing you know, you’re you’re blasted, but.
Andrew Roy (29:09.469)
Which, yeah, if you go to Mead’s Stampede, remember that. Do not make my mistake, yes.
Andrew Roy (29:25.735)
No, I got back to my home and I worked the next day and I told everyone, I think I’m done with drinking. I think I did it and I’m fine now, yes. Yeah. Okay, well, maybe like find a reputable bar, maybe a reputable package store that has a decent selection. Google the means.
Garrett (29:32.553)
This was the straw, yeah.
Yeah.
Garrett (29:49.17)
I will suggest there’s two that, or there’s a company I would stay away from. A lot of people try Mead for the first time and they try a commercial company that they might not like and then they give up. And Mead’s not cheap. mean, if you’re gonna buy a 375 bottle, 750, it might be the same price as going and buying a wine bottle, especially if you’re buying from certain producers. So when you get something, obviously that’s not great.
you kind of bail on it. There’s a company called Trossers that is very out there. I mean, they have a very good scope of product all around the US. If you try it, just know that you’re you might be disappointed. It’s not the best, in my opinion. It’s it is very mediocre mean. And it’s not worth not buying, but just understand that that’s probably not the best thing that you could try. There’s a company called Superstition.
Andrew Roy (30:46.835)
sure.
Garrett (30:48.637)
that is a little bit better, in my opinion. They are more expensive. They’re located in, I don’t remember, New Mexico or something, but they have a good scope of getting bottles out there. If you can just find something at your local store, you’ll be able to try stuff. But also, homebrew clubs are super, super fun. And you don’t have to be a homebrewer to go to a homebrew club.
Now, eventually they want you to homebrew. mean, that’s kind of the intent of the club is that you’re eventually going to learn how to do this thing. But like my personal club I go to, there are quite a few people I know of that might brew a batch of something a year and they still come to events and they hang out and they try the homebrew. You might have a mead maker in your midst at a homebrew club that is putting out great stuff, but obviously they’re not commercial. So you’re never going to try their stuff unless you’re able to go and access it.
Andrew Roy (31:17.747)
Yes.
Andrew Roy (31:41.351)
Thank
Garrett (31:43.879)
That’s probably the best place to try things is an event like that where you can have people who have access to it or are making it themselves.
Andrew Roy (31:54.291)
That’s funny. Me and my wife actually went to a how to brew beer class that Homebrew Club put on. It was just like a cheap thing and then you like, you the whole thing, you boil the water, boil the, you know, just like start to finish. But one of the people in the class was an on the side mead brewer. And so the first time I tried mead was at a Homebrew and how to brew beer class. Yeah, so it’s, they’re out there. Yeah.
Garrett (32:01.523)
Mm-hmm.
Garrett (32:19.847)
Yeah, I mean, it’s it’s still hit or miss on like quality. You know, you might have somebody who’s very fresh. Like, you know, if I took my first batches to some to a home brew club, I would feel bad for them knowing now. And so you just have to like temper your expectations that this is still homebrew. This is not a commercial product, but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to be good. It just might mean you get somebody who’s less experienced or you might have the dude that’s been there for 25 years and he’s been brewing since, you know,
however long and he’s done a hundred thousand batches and he might be just super good. You just never know.
Andrew Roy (32:56.403)
Yeah. So besides going onto your website and finding all the things that you recommend for brewing, how would I start brewing today? Like, what would you recommend I do?
Garrett (33:06.887)
Yeah, for for mead making specifically, there are lots of mead kits out there. That’s really blown up since Covid. A lot of companies, companies have started making mead kits being something that comes with like a glass carboy, just a big glass jug, essentially, and all the equipment you need to start your batch. I would shoot you to a company called Crafter Brew, which is they do stuff beyond mead. They do beer, wine, cider.
Kabucha, but they have a kit that is my buddy actually helped produce and curate. That would be a great starting point for people. And they also have a ton of videos that are in tandem for their kits. So I’m sure you could find on that website, a mead making kit. And then, you know, can reference a video from Manmade Mead or a Craft-A-Brew video that talks about their, I don’t know, name, name a mead. know, they,
Andrew Roy (33:51.307)
cool.
Garrett (34:06.973)
I probably have a video on it as well. So you can start to buy stuff. The thing with mead is most people don’t sell in those kits like the honey itself. And that’s for your benefit, I will say. Honey is expensive. If you decide to get into the hobby, just know that you’re gonna have to throw down a little cash for honey itself. There is a significant amount of honey needed to make mead, generally between a pound and a half to three pounds per gallon.
Andrew Roy (34:09.107)
Okay.
Andrew Roy (34:28.103)
Mm. Yeah.
Garrett (34:37.768)
And, that’s, that’s a fair amount of me. I’m trying to find a reference point. I’ve got, I’m sitting with, all this honey in front of me. I’m trying to find a container that like this right here is a honey bear. Probably this is a two bound to a pound and a half honey bear. This probably costs. I don’t know. 15, 20 bucks, I would say. And you’re needing to buy. Yeah. And you’re needing to get double that. So.
Andrew Roy (34:43.163)
shit.
you
Andrew Roy (35:00.413)
for high quality honey.
Garrett (35:06.748)
Just know that you’re gonna be biting off a large purchase there. It is definitely in your interest to do research so that you can make a quality batch and not waste your money and then also just be frustrated if it turns out poor. But Crafta Brew is the company I would say to start like buying a kit from and then you can buy ingredients separately from that.
Andrew Roy (35:21.139)
you
Andrew Roy (35:29.939)
And I mean if you are a wine drinker or beer drinker if you consider you’re not really Tacking on me you’re kind of drinking mead in place of the wine Theoretically, so that comparable amount like for a good quality wine. You’re probably saving money, honestly Yeah
Garrett (35:43.666)
Yeah, yeah.
Garrett (35:49.097)
Yeah. And that’s the thing is if you want to get it like wine, I’ve started making more wines myself and it’s still expensive to make it produce it. But like I found a company that sells, um, grape juice, like quality grape juice in like a five gallon bucket. I ferment it myself. It costs like a hundred bucks to buy the, the five gallons, but I’m going to make what’s the math on there? 20 bottles of wine from that. So, you know, it comes out to like.
Andrew Roy (36:18.803)
We found bucks a bubble. Yeah. That’s not anything crazy. Yeah.
Garrett (36:20.326)
Yeah, it’s like, it’s pretty, it’s cheap, comparative to going out and buying all the stuff. Now you do have to learn the craft to make the quality stuff, but that’s part of the fun.
Andrew Roy (36:30.035)
Yeah. And that actually kind of goes back to your, know, caveat there. You don’t want to mess it up. Ending up with zero bottles at the end, 500 for zero bottles is a painful trade if it gets messed up. Yeah.
Garrett (36:45.628)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s thing is like you’re gonna I want to be a realist with anyone listening who wants to make mead. You hopefully will make a fantastic batch when you first start. There’s also a good chance though things could go south. You mess up a step. Something happens and it doesn’t turn out to be exactly what you wanted. Don’t let that deter you from trying again. Just because like my first few batches looking back on them I
Because they were like my babies, you know, I started them and I made them as my own little craft. Like I had this special love for them that was like I saw through all the flaws and I was just like, it tastes amazing. In hindsight, after I got more experienced, I realized, those weren’t actually that great. Like I just, I had.
Andrew Roy (37:28.435)
Hmm.
Andrew Roy (37:32.371)
Yes, no balance, no, yeah.
Garrett (37:39.154)
So it’s like good if you love your stuff in the beginning and the best way to know if your stuff is good is not your opinion. It’s to go to somebody in your life who will speak a true thing to say, to try something and be willing to hurt your feelings. If you can have that person who’s gonna be real with you, then you can grow as a home brewer. But if you hand stuff to your Uncle Bob who just wants to get hammered, you know, he’s probably not gonna be telling you.
Hey, this is, this needs this or.
Andrew Roy (38:11.111)
This is fundamentally flawed. Yes. Now, and you know, it’s, it’s, you know, the mistakes that you make to there’s, there’s a spectrum, I think, you know, between undrinkable and then I wanted it to be a little different. And like, I was even thinking in the competition, one of my brother’s needs was a jalapeno line. And his big thing was he didn’t think the jalapeno came through enough. It was a little lime dominant. It was like, if that’s the problem with the batch, like,
Garrett (38:13.063)
Yeah. Yeah.
Garrett (38:37.608)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Roy (38:41.383)
I mean, that was eminently drinkable. That’s fine. You just wanted it to be a little bit more polished or different.
Garrett (38:44.326)
Right, yeah exactly. Yeah.
Garrett (38:50.236)
Yeah, it’s definitely like, I think everybody listening, watching has tasted something, whether it be alcoholic or non alcoholic that you’ve gone, ooh, this is weird. When it comes to alcohol, there are definitely signs of things being weird, like in wine, you know, when you get that cardboardy taste, we know it’s been oxygenated and it’s gone bad in that regard. Obviously if it’s.
Andrew Roy (39:12.775)
Might be some TCA, yeah.
Garrett (39:15.12)
If it’s like acidic, you’re like, uh-oh, so you know, there’s, there’s something it’s starting to get this vinegar side, like, this is like, you can, you can taste those things pretty comfortably. Obviously there’s a spectrum where it gets really deep and you know, the, the sommeliers in the world are able to taste and say, well, that cherry, whatever that was used in here added a funky flavor. Like that goes really deep, but at its core, like you can, you can determine if something’s flawed or.
Good. For the most part.
Andrew Roy (39:48.125)
For the most part, yeah. That is actually kind of a cool question, something I did want to ask you. Have you ever done any like formal tasting things or have you just developed your palate as you’ve kind of brewed and interacted with different brewers?
Garrett (40:07.647)
I haven’t done any like classes or anything official I would say. I often just try my own stuff, try stuff from people that just developed my palette through that. And then one cool like video series I like to do with my buddy is we called it, we started it like probably three or four years ago. I called it Palette Expanders.
And I realized that was also after making the series and then Googling things, I was like, this is a terrible name for a brewing thing. Cause all it comes up with is, you know, orthodontist dental things. Now, when you look up pallet expanders. Yes. But the point of the series is that he would bring a bottle of homebrew mostly mead. And we would keep it unlabeled. And then I would bring something and we would taste.
Andrew Roy (40:42.675)
I mean, SEO, but not the right direction. Yeah.
Garrett (40:57.607)
the stuff without telling each other anything about it. And we’d have to determine the fruit, if it’s fruited, the spice. Like we would have to find out what it is by tasting. And profoundly difficult as we’ve found. We’ve done 20 episodes now and I think I’ve been right, maybe 50 % if that, cause it’s so hard.
Andrew Roy (41:21.043)
I think I remember I saw one where you brewed I think it was Mead with Merlot grapes and he actually almost got that one and like he was complaining that he was like couldn’t smell or something it was like actually you’re almost right
Garrett (41:29.627)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Garrett (41:35.559)
Yeah, Yeah, exactly. It’s it’s really hard, but like that to me has been the greatest way to grow my palate. It’s very hard to do, but it is for anyone who’s interested in doing that. Find a buddy, have them go out and buy a bottle of wine of sorts, you know, let’s say or mead if they have that availability and you buy a bottle of wine or mead or whatever. And then you both pour some. You don’t tell each other what you’ve brought and you make each other like.
try and like determine what was given there. Obviously if you buy the bottle and you pour it, you’re going to know what you got. that you have to have a friend go drink with her friend is what I’m trying to tell you to do basically.
Andrew Roy (42:15.303)
Yeah, I mean, that is why blind tasting is so big in the wine world. I think it’s similar principle. You don’t realize how much you bring into it when you know what it is, but when you taste it blind, it’s like to name the fruit without anything else. Yeah, it’s hard.
Garrett (42:25.308)
Mm-hmm.
Garrett (42:33.227)
It’s it’s hard on the homebrew level, especially when you’re the guy who’s created it, because there’s lots of times I’ve brought stuff and B.C. has tasted it and, you know, it was a blackberry and whatever oak blackberry mead. And he starts saying like, wow, this tastes a lot like strawberry. You’re like. you know, like, am I am I off? You know, what did I do here? So and it could be I’ve done it where I’ve got total wrong fruits. I’ve said, hey, this tastes like.
Strawberry and he’s like, that’s a great meat, you know, that’s it’s like, well, I apparently I just don’t know what I’m doing. learning that though the hard way is what really has helped be grow the palette.
Andrew Roy (43:13.939)
We’re coming towards the end of our time. What’s in the future for May May Meet? What do you got going on and what should we be looking out for in the near future?
Garrett (43:24.913)
Yeah, so we’ve kind of touched on the one of the big videos I’ve been working on and that’s this primary versus secondary fruit. I’m doing some large tastings, gathering data and putting together this video that’s gonna be essentially just an educational way for people to learn sensory wise what has been perceived in 15 different fruits. And so that’ll be on the channel. I’ve converted my channel and decided I wanted it to be more of a tests.
theory crafting sort of things. So like when there are things in the mead world that are untested, for example, that fruit one, I like to put those to the test. So what happens when you do this A B testing? I do have a huge video that I started this year. That was a I’m sitting in front of me. No one can see them, but I’ve got 50 different honeys from or 55 different honeys from 55 different locations around the U S and outside of the U S.
I did this wildflower honey test, which was really fun. I brewed essentially a mead, a traditional mead with a wildflower honey from every state. And the end goal here is to do a large scale tasting to see what the taste differences are because every state’s gonna have different honey. It looks to be fun. Yeah, I mean, like it’s gonna be arbitrary like results because like it’s still personal preference, but it’ll be fun to taste through them.
Andrew Roy (44:40.947)
Do you like Maryland? Are you Virginia guy? Cool.
Garrett (44:53.455)
And then I’m going to do a video essentially put them through brackets of sorts and crown a winner, a winning state or location. And I’m sending that, that, that person, because most of the honey here was donated to me, but via some people, I’m going to send them whoever the winning state person was a hundred dollars essentially. So they, they win a prize for this, but the goal of it is just to have a fun video that talks about here’s all these honeys.
Here’s what we noticed. I’m sure that there are flaws in this because like we said earlier, honey is so expansive, even from different sides of your town. If you go get wildflower honey from your east side of your town, it’s gonna taste different from the west side. So this is not an all encompassing Florida has the best honey in the world sort of situation.
Andrew Roy (45:44.691)
yeah.
Garrett (45:46.471)
But that’s the other big one. And then I’m just plugging away. I still make lots of recipe videos if you’re interested in specific things, like you really want a blackberry, lavender mead. Maybe that’s something I could arrange to do on my channel. it’s just, I’m just putting out new things. That’s basically what’s happening.
Andrew Roy (46:08.083)
Awesome. Yeah. And for anyone listening and don’t, you know, you don’t have access to a and paper or your phone, I will have a link to, uh, Garrett’s website and it has links to all these things. I’ll also link to the YouTube channel just to make sure you can find it. Um, yeah. Thanks for taking a little bit of time to talk about me with me today. Yeah.
Garrett (46:28.487)
Yeah, of course. I really recommend if people can just because it’s a, it’s a different beverage. Go look in a, um, in a not a brew shop. They’re not going to be selling that stuff. Liquor store, go find her home brew club. Find a way to access mead and give it a shot. You might find something you like within it. And then if you’re really wanting to dive deeper, making it is very easy. It is super simple. It does cost a little money, but it’s like any hobby. You know, you invest some money.
The good thing about this one is that you have a byproduct at the end that you can drink, you know, you’re not necessarily just throwing away money.
Andrew Roy (47:03.429)
Yes. Yeah. No, and yeah, you get a cool community of people that are into this, this niche product that, yeah, it’s almost forbidden, forgotten by time, but being resurrected in front of our eyes. So, And then I wanted to say some point in the podcast, I was surprised and pleasantly, happy to find that not all means are sweet. So just, just so it’s worth saying you hear honey, but it’s the same way as like grapes have sugar too.
Garrett (47:16.027)
Right. Yeah, man.
Garrett (47:25.947)
Yes. Yes.
Andrew Roy (47:33.093)
So not all wines are sweet either. Yeah. You do have some sweet meats. Yeah. Just like you have some sweet wines. Yeah.
Garrett (47:35.855)
Right. There’s a bulk of what you’ll find commercially is going to be sweet. So if you like drier stuff, you’ll have to do a little more searching, but it is the same spectrum as wine. You you’re going to have your dessert wines, you’re going to have your dry stuff. Same thing for mead. You’re going to have the whole spectrum. For sure.
Andrew Roy (47:55.699)
And the problem with the commercial thing is sugar can hide a lot of flaws. it’s easy to throw some sugar in there and call it a Pinot Grigio and you’re good. Or, yeah, yeah.
Garrett (48:06.179)
That’s the same for me. There’s a lot of stuff that is hiding behind a back swinging. Yep.
Andrew Roy (48:11.921)
Awesome. Well hey, thank you for joining us today.
Garrett (48:15.419)
Yeah, man. Thanks for having me.
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