{"id":1120,"date":"2017-05-10T15:42:28","date_gmt":"2017-05-10T22:42:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/?p=1120"},"modified":"2017-05-10T15:42:28","modified_gmt":"2017-05-10T22:42:28","slug":"making-mad-mead-part-5-judgmental-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/?p=1120","title":{"rendered":"Making Mad Mead Part 5: Judgment(al) Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>For those following along at home, you can check out my mead series here<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/?p=1054\">Making Mad Mead Part One<\/a><\/em><\/li>\n<li><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/?p=1068\">Making Mad Mead Part Two: Honey, I\u2019m Home<\/a><\/em><\/li>\n<li><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/?p=1091\">Making Mead Part 3: The Meadening<\/a><\/em><\/li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"entry-title\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/?p=1110\" rel=\"bookmark\">Making Mad Mead Part 4: Post-Fermentation Processing<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>After initial hostilities and threats to my person, traditional mead makers seem to have accepted my presence in their midst, and I have come to see the interplay of their dominance battles within the tribe and the constant quest for honey \u00a0and authenticity with the detachment of a rational anthropologist. I can only hope to retain the trust of these gentle, beautiful creatures in the future.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1121\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1121\" style=\"width: 1000px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/vancouver.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1121\" src=\"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/vancouver.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"750\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/vancouver.jpg 1000w, http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/vancouver-300x225.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/vancouver-768x576.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/vancouver-624x468.jpg 624w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 767px) 89vw, (max-width: 1000px) 54vw, (max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1121\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jewel on the Columbia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>With my mead clear, stable, sweet and carbonated to deliciousness, it was time to pack up the station wagon and head down to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pnwhc.com\/\">Pacific Northwest Homebrew Conference<\/a>. You may recall I was on the hook for a seminar on Meadmaking, one I chose to title, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pnwhc.com\/2017\/sessions\/delicious-historic-beverage-or-spoiled-bee-vomit\">Mead: Delicious Historic Beverage or Spoiled Bee Vomit?<\/a>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s held in Vancouver Washington, which is immediately north of Portland Oregon, where most of the brewing clubs and a lot of the brewing action in the Pacific Northwest happens.<\/p>\n<p>Why hold it in Washington if Portland is so darn awesome? Money: doing it in Portland would probably double costs as with popularity comes great price tags. Still, although Vancouver is a tiny little burg it&#8217;s not a bad place at all. Best of all it&#8217;s only about a 5-1\/2 hour drive from Chaos Manor, just over the border from Washington in Canada. With a car full of jockey boxes, CO2 apparatus, kegs and bottles, I wedged a suitcase and a spouse in there for the journey.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1122\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1122\" style=\"width: 960px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/voodoo.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1122\" src=\"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/voodoo.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"960\" height=\"960\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/voodoo.jpg 960w, http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/voodoo-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/voodoo-300x300.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/voodoo-768x768.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/voodoo-624x624.jpg 624w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 767px) 89vw, (max-width: 1000px) 54vw, (max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1122\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">That much happiness can only occur in the presence of donuts<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Portland is not without its charms, and I killed a couple of days hitting Voodoo donuts, parks, museums and shopping. I was also lucky enough to have time for my friends Emily and JT, a delightful couple of Oregonians who not only make great beer, but are also cool in many other ways. That&#8217;s pretty much the best part of working in the industry I&#8217;m in: you meet so many wonderful, gracious and lovely people, and long after businesses are gone and deals are done, they&#8217;re the ones you remember.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually I had to put the beer down and go to work. The seminar was a success, with a couple of dozen folks listening to my lecture (you can check out a copy of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pnwhc.com\/sites\/default\/files\/slides\/PNWHC17_MeadMeadmakingForGeeks_TimVandergrift.pptx\">my presentation here<\/a>), enjoying Ancient Fire Mead and my own creations. Everyone agreed that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ancientfiremeadcider\/\">Ancient Fire<\/a>&#8216;s meads (generously donated, if you recall, by Jason and Margot Phelps) were superior examples of the craft, while my bone-standard traditional mead was (generously) described as &#8216;icky&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>The Barkshack was very well-received, with some participants asking for thirds, a very gratifying circumstance. I had a lot of really great questions from the crowd, who were keen to make their own mead, authentic and drinkable. While I&#8217;m only a winemaker trying to understand all kind of fermentation, I hope my message that mead&#8211;heck, any fermented beverage, for that matter&#8211;doesn&#8217;t exist in a vacuum on it&#8217;s own, but needs to be seen as part of the family of fermented drinks that we can all share, whether it&#8217;s dandelion wine, Russian Imperial Stout, or Cabernet Sauvignon. Tradition is great, because it teaches us where we come from and how we got to where we are, but it&#8217;s innovation and sharing ideas that will take us where we&#8217;re going next.<\/p>\n<p>After the lecture was done, it was time for club night. If you&#8217;ve never been to a brewing conference club night, you&#8217;re really missing out. If you&#8217;ve been to the one at BrewCon (I was there the last time it was in San Diego) it&#8217;s a glorious riot of beer craziness. PNWHC club night is smaller, but they go all-out crazy with beautifully decorated booth, some of which are more like small brewpubs than little club gatherings.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1123\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1123\" style=\"width: 940px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/PNWHC-booth.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1123\" src=\"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/PNWHC-booth.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"940\" height=\"1000\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/PNWHC-booth.jpg 940w, http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/PNWHC-booth-282x300.jpg 282w, http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/PNWHC-booth-768x817.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/PNWHC-booth-624x664.jpg 624w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 767px) 89vw, (max-width: 1000px) 54vw, (max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1123\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tim, Alvaro and Nathaniel, representing Vanbrewers and the Tri-Cities brewing clubs. Seems legit.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Our own booth was a bit more modest, as it was me straddling the fence for the Tri-Cities Brewing Club and for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/groups\/107165103956\/\">Vanbrewers<\/a>, along with Alvaro and Nathaniel. We&#8217;d like to make a big show of it, but with the US exchange rate and transportation costs all of us were combining it with business trips or vacation time. We were up 50% in attendance year-over-year, a trend we hope will continue.<\/p>\n<p>We were\u00a0pouring Nathaniel&#8217;s Vickie&#8217;s Smoked Porter, a really solid porter made with Miss Vickie&#8217;s smoked potato chips, Alvaro&#8217;s Pisco Sour (I think it was a Saison base, but boy howdy was it delicious) as well as his new world Pilsner with modern German hop varieties, as well as my Barkshack Ginger mead.<\/p>\n<p>My own prediction was that while the blockbuster Imperials and Double IPA&#8217;s were going to be early favorites with the crowd, the mead, balanced to off-dry, fruity and refreshing, would get more popular as the night progressed.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1125\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1125\" style=\"width: 841px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/PNWHC-customer.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1125\" src=\"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/PNWHC-customer.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"841\" height=\"1000\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/PNWHC-customer.jpg 841w, http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/PNWHC-customer-252x300.jpg 252w, http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/PNWHC-customer-768x913.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/PNWHC-customer-624x742.jpg 624w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 767px) 89vw, (max-width: 1000px) 54vw, (max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1125\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">In the spirit of the thing! Glad you enjoyed it, Wendy!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Turns out I was right. By the end of the evening most of my keg was gone, with the folks enjoying it coming back for fourths and fifths (not to worry: everything took place in the hotel and nobody was driving anywhere, and there wasn&#8217;t anyone overserved&#8211;lots of little samples instead).<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1126\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1126\" style=\"width: 1000px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/denny-mike.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1126\" src=\"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/denny-mike.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"698\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/denny-mike.jpg 1000w, http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/denny-mike-300x209.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/denny-mike-768x536.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/denny-mike-624x436.jpg 624w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 767px) 89vw, (max-width: 1000px) 54vw, (max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1126\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Straight-up legends, Mike &#8216;Tasty&#8217; McDole and Denny Conn<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Two very welcome visitors were Denny Conn and Mike McDole, who both tried the Barkshack and appeared to enjoy it. Denny&#8217;s comment was that it was the first mead he&#8217;d tasted in years, and that he didn&#8217;t mind it was the highest praise I could have asked for.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1127\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1127\" style=\"width: 625px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/booth.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1127\" src=\"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/booth-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"625\" height=\"469\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/booth-1024x768.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/booth-300x225.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/booth-768x576.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/booth-624x468.jpg 624w, http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/booth.jpg 1080w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 625px) 100vw, 625px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1127\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Obligatory fanboy picture<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>After that it was all over but for the packing and tidying and tripping back up to Canada. I&#8217;d like to think I learned something on my mead journey, both from making it, teaching people about the history of fermented honey, and the fallout from a tiny minority of mead makers who really took offense at me approaching &#8216;their&#8217; beverage with humor and cynicism.<\/p>\n<p>People love what they love. And we beer geeks, wine dorks and mead maniacs love what we do so passionately that we&#8217;re willing to share both our brews and our knowledge with others, so they can catch the bug and make it a part of their lives&#8211;or at least so they can understand something we consider amazing and wonderful.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s a thing worth investing your time, your passion and your self-identity into. And I&#8217;ll drink to that.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1116\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1116\" style=\"width: 563px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/beauty-shot-glass.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1116\" src=\"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/beauty-shot-glass.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"563\" height=\"1000\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/beauty-shot-glass.jpg 563w, http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/beauty-shot-glass-169x300.jpg 169w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 563px) 100vw, 563px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1116\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cheers to you!\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For those following along at home, you can check out my mead series here Making Mad Mead Part One Making Mad Mead Part Two: Honey, I\u2019m Home Making Mead Part 3: The Meadening Making Mad Mead Part 4: Post-Fermentation Processing After initial hostilities and threats to my person, traditional mead makers seem to have accepted &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/?p=1120\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Making Mad Mead Part 5: Judgment(al) Day&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1116,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,138,30,125,124,31,75,144,98,57,48],"tags":[146,145,149,42],"class_list":["post-1120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alcohol","category-america","category-brewing","category-canada","category-conference","category-homebrew","category-lifestyle","category-mead","category-northern-brewer","category-seminar","category-travel","tag-honey","tag-mead","tag-pnwhc","tag-tim-vandergrift"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1120"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1128,"href":"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120\/revisions\/1128"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timvandergrift.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}