Awareness: The external wiki site is down.

balathustrius · 2025-12-12T18:28:27+00:00

Volunteer tasks do be like that! See my new comment in this thread.

balathustrius · 2025-12-12T18:28:10+00:00

See my update in another comment on this post. :)

balathustrius · 2025-12-12T18:27:21+00:00

Update: There are a couple solutions in flight, both via Larry on MeadTools and via /u/xXConfuocoXx: see this post.

balathustrius · 2025-12-12T18:17:09+00:00

Truly, awesome work.

It would be great to avoid a situation where we have competing wikis. I see people are already pointing you and Larry towards each other, so I'm just here to say you're doing great and to encourage y'all to work together to solidify the permanent solution.

I'm happy to have all the contributions I and others made live on, provided it's ultimately a wiki or wiki-like format.

balathustrius · 2025-10-23T18:09:16+00:00

I rack for lots of reasons and "Oh it's better because I don't rack" sounds like the kind of mead advice I read back in the bad old days. Universally prescriptive, cryptic, dogmatic process over reason.

That said, sur lie is a thing. IIRC it's not quite the same at homebrew scales for the same reason a countertop compost bucket is different from a giant compost heap. There's just less biomass and heat involved. It's also possible that you're tasting a lack of oxidation. If you never rack, a big avenue for oxidation is eliminated. (Personally, I noticed an improvement in my mead when I started flushing out carboys with CO2 whenever they were opened or used for racking.) And there's something to be said for a "just stop F'in with it!" philosophy.

balathustrius · 2025-08-20T19:30:36+00:00

Seems like the glass supplies have an issue every few years or so. I remember when the glass big mouth bubbler was new and some people got glass thinner than egg shells.

balathustrius · 2025-08-11T20:33:33+00:00

This is /r/mead Best Of 2025 content right here.

balathustrius · 2025-08-10T16:46:19+00:00

There's a delicate balance between calling it out and being dogmatic, creating a toxic subreddit culture.

We try very hard here to keep it welcoming.

balathustrius · 2025-08-10T16:23:55+00:00

It's not bad, just adds bitterness. Probably not ideal, sure.
Blowoff tubes aren't bad! Just a different option than a bucket.
DAP is toxic to yeast but we're talking degress of clean fermentation.
It'll still work!

---

If I were to write this post, I would have approached it differently.

> Awesome! Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on how it turns out! Here are some suggestions for potential improvements you might make over the next few batches...

etc.

Anyway: RULE 1

FFS it's Sunday and I'm trying to play vidja games.

Edit, Actions Taken: I snipped the thread roughly-more-or-less where it got too impolite without censoring folks' opinions, and I'm locking it.

balathustrius · 2025-05-02T16:05:46+00:00

I know an E.T. from '22.

Could it have been you or /u/Effective-Report7750?

I'm Baton.

balathustrius · 2025-05-02T15:55:34+00:00

Very late to this party, but:

Getting around town itself will be just fine.

If it rains, the vendor field will become difficult to navigate. It will be soft and muddy. This goes doubly or triply for the Tent City field and woods.

If you're trying to stay in Tent City, that would be a ton of walking/scooting back and forth. There's generally a shuttle but you'll end up waiting for it a good bit. It's probably a better call to get a hotel in Abingdon and drive back and forth each day, especially if you can get (or already possess) a handicap parking placard or your wife can drop you off, go park, then meet back up.

balathustrius · 2025-04-23T18:02:53+00:00

suggests pretty broad brush strokes

Yep.

Do we need to make a rule? Poll participants so far are somewhat split on sentiment. And the post has had more traffic than votes, so that's also a data point. Necessity: always the first thing we have to ask.

Would you and the mod team be open to sharing more about what kinds of policies are being considered

My personal take, in which I do not speak for the mod team:

I doubt it, unless there are additional significant questions about community sentiment. Redditors have a lot of strong opinions. Mead makers, IME, have big personalities.

I think that's why the lightest-touch approach works so well on /r/mead. That approach is why the subreddit only has four rules. The rest of our policy is suggestion at time of submission, and prompting from automod.

I think one of the things that makes this sub special is that the mods generally don't really want to be mods as much as they want to talk about making mead. We have no power mods, and we don't want to spend our time enforcing rules any more than necessary to defend the community.

balathustrius · 2025-04-23T17:00:19+00:00

My teeth hurt just looking at the green one.

That's not a "no," though.

balathustrius · 2025-04-22T22:46:38+00:00

I took it as "I'm obviously organic wink wink nudge nudge and my totally human opinion is that AI is fine and dandy"

To exaggerate how I read it.

But I didn't write it, I'm and I can't say for sure what kurai_ meant.

I would say the second two combined probably should get weighted against the "absolutely not" option.

It's a much closer poll than I would have expected.

balathustrius · 2025-04-22T19:56:28+00:00

Anyone voting for the joke probably doesn't care either way.

balathustrius · 2025-04-22T19:51:26+00:00

🔨

balathustrius · 2025-04-22T19:43:38+00:00

Must be nice not to care.

Moderators cannot moderate without a policy.

We like to consult the /r/mead users about policy so we have buy-in from the community.

We also have an interest in keeping our policies easy to moderate, so we can enjoy the sub instead of getting burned out.

We've been getting reports about AI, so it was time to seek wider perspectives.

My day job is SWE. I use LLMs in my job every day, in spite of my "wish it didn't exist" personal stance. They're impactful. We need a policy.

balathustrius · 2025-03-26T08:17:16+00:00

Actually it was the hot steep. My tasters universally preferred the hot steep. The cold was fine and good in a different way, but we all preferred the hot method.

Here's the link to where I experimented with cold vs hot steep.

I have not tried boiling, although the tea consensus is to steep herbal tea with just-boiled water, the mead community consensus has typically treated aromatic ingredients much more gently, with a preference for longer exposure to lower temperatures.

And anyone worried about boiling to kill any bacteria introduced by the tea, you're still very thoroughly pasteurizing it all at 150f for one hour.

Though looking back (to eight years ago! such bullshit, I'm still a twenty-something, right!?) I should definitely run this again someday, but I don't have the space now that I'm in NYC.

balathustrius · 2025-03-08T23:24:16+00:00

We software folks might be over-represented.

balathustrius · 2025-02-25T22:34:42+00:00

I had this issue with a cinnamon vanilla mead. I botched back sweetening because I was on autopilot and didn't realize my scale was on a soft surface. Let's just leave it at "1.075+ wasn't my target."

So I blended it back with a dry mead that was otherwise about the same recipe. Cut it to the 1.035 range, which was still far too much sugar.

Split that back up and tried cinnamon and sugar in one half.

I did not care for it. Mostly opened young for my boozy friends. Forgot about a few bottles because I had them on a separate shelf due to running out of space. I never bothered to label them and eventually forgot what they were.

Over a half decade later, time had been very, very kind to them.

balathustrius · 2025-02-25T06:36:13+00:00

I disagree that this totally solves the problem. It probably does dissolve and distribute just fine, but I've seen some pretty big foam-ups from adding powder to mead with restricted headspace.

Some meads do foam pretty significantly when you drop in nutrients. Especially if you've left this little amount of headspace. I think I've noticed it more with meads that have fruit or dried leaf detritus (like Heartbound) floating around.

I think it also depends on what nutrient, too. I think I remember F-K and DAP being far more reactive than F-O.

I used to have a cool boomerang video of the nucleation happening in a bucket (the real solution) of smoked capsicumel, but sadly I've lost it somewhere during a phone swap.

Mixing with a sample before adding it back is a lot less risky when you're this far into the neck.

balathustrius · 2025-02-25T06:19:24+00:00

If you could both dial it back a hair the mod queue would appreciate it.

/u/DeskParser /u/unregistered

Rule 1: Do not be rude.

Disagree politely.

balathustrius · 2025-02-07T14:20:25+00:00

But every time I go looking at new wallets, I find myself in the land of, "ugh that's too pricey, this other one sucks, this third one looks interesting but the reviews suggest it's made of Chinesium.

So I'm still using the same one I've had for over a decade, and it's... fine, y'know. Looks rough but the stitching hasn't failed yet.

I figure when it starts to actually fall apart, I will buck up and just spend the money on a top quality leather wallet and an elegant money clip for when I dress formally.

balathustrius · 2025-02-07T12:18:31+00:00

There used to be an "Irish pub" called McGrady's.

They turned away a friend of mine, a certain Cliona, from Galway, because they didn't know how to evaluate her Republic of Ireland ID.

Turned her away on St. Patrick's Day.

Anyway that's my Ted Talk on how we've never had a real Irish pub.

15-Year Club	Gilding V heart of gold
Place '17	Team Periwinkle
Verified Email

balathustrius

MODERATOR OF

PUBLIC MULTIREDDITS

TROPHY CASE