9-20-22 – The Minnesota Mead Mafia

9-20-22 - Tonight is a night of mead and madness, as we welcome the Minnesota Mead Mafia gang to the show. Right on the heels of the Valkyries' Horn Mead Competition, this bunch of maniacal mead makers have a lot of great info to bring, and even more craziness. Matt Weide likes to make mead. He is also on the AMMA home board, Founding board member of the Valkyries Horn Mead Competition, 2014 Mead Maker of the Year and a BJCP endorsed mead judge. However, he mostly likes to drink mead. Nathan Steigman is a Saint Paul resident. He got into Mead making back in 2017. Nate is a recovering competition addict. He appreciate all categories of Mead, discovering “new to him” honey, and experimenting with fruits, yeasts, spice flavors and wood/barrel aging. He still drinks the mistakes and eats his broccoli often. He sometimes asks profound questions and sometimes gets profound answers. Josh Holbrook has been home brewing for since 2011 and making mead since 2013. He discovered mead at his local homebrew club when a club member brought a bottle of an attempt at Curt Stock’s Triple Berry Melomel. Clouds parted, angels sang, and Josh became obsessed with mead. Josh has won numerous medals for beer, cider and mead, including AMMA National Mead Maker of the Year in 2020, and a couple Best of Shows at competitions such as Minnesota Mashout and Hoppy Halloween. He is also a certified BJCP judge and mead judge as well as a novice beekeeper, and one of the organizers for Valkyries Horn Mead Competition. One of Josh’s long term mead goals is to make mead with each of the 300+ varietal honeys found in the United States. He has 44 under his belt already and shows no signs of stopping. Al Boyce has been a homebrewer since the early 1990’s.  He tasted his first mead at Bunratty Castle in Ireland, and was hooked. Orange Blossom is his favorite honey, Sangiovese is his favorite grape, and 71B is his favorite yeast. He is obsessed with Jamaican Sorrel (hibiscus), and vows to keep making Sorrel meads until he finally gets it right.  He recently moved to a lake home in central Minnesota where he lives with his wife Beth and his Golden Retriever Cooper. In November of 2017 Adam Bystrom suddenly got a craving for that sweet nectar we all know; mead. With no meaderies in the area and little to no availability at liquor stores he decided to learn how to home brew. Since then mead has been the exclusive beverage he's fermented with a particular focus on session meads. He's been fortunate to win awards in a number of competitions all around the country and is a proud member of the Minnesota Home Brewers Association. Josh Mahoney has been making mead since 2008. He is a BJCP mead judge, and is addicted to collecting Mazer Cups. Josh thinks JAOM is underrated, and his favorite spice is vanilla. (and extra points if you can tell us who that pic looks like). This show should be both info-rich and a riot. Join us!! This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] [break]Click here to see a playable list of all our episodes! Sponsor: Honnibrook Craft Meadery. Rated the very best winery in Colorado! Visit our state-of-the-art meadery and tasting room south of downtown Castle Rock, Colorado, in a converted man cave. Mention the Got Mead Podcast this month for a free draft taster!  Google H-O-N-N-I Brook for hours and directions. They love visitors!  www.honnibrook.com If you want to ask your mead making questions, you can call us at 803-443-MEAD (6323) or send us a question via email, or via Twitter @GotmeadNow and we'll tackle it online! 9PM EDT/6PM PDT Join us on live chat during the show Bring your questions and your mead, and let's talk mead! You can call us at 803-443-MEAD (6323), or Skype us at meadwench (please friend me first and say you're a listener, I get tons of Skype spam),