7-7-23 Tonight on Gotmead Live, we're talking with Will Otte and Jacob Thill, both in Minnesota and meadmakers. They work with high gravity meads, and use several different nutrient protocols in their craft.
Will has dabbled in fermentation off an on most of his life, from helping his father and opa make mediocre wines (well, mostly vinegar to be honest) from Texas grapes during his childhood to brewing a bunch of mediocre beer in the late ‘aughts until Tennessee finally repealed it’s crazy prohibition era laws that kept most craft beer out of the state. He mostly swore off fermenting things until, after learning that the city he’d moved to in Minnesota allowed him to keep bees, he got a bumper 70lb harvest (leaving plenty for the bees!) his first year keeping bees in 2019. Not knowing what else to do with so much honey, decided to make a couple batches of mead.
Fortunately by getting off on the right foot, thanks in no small part to the Modern Meadmaking series on GotMead (thanks Ryan!) and the Reddit meadmaking community, those first batches were to his surprise entirely not mediocre and spawned an obsession. After the pandemic hit, he used the newfound glut of free time to really dive deep into the hobby. As an engineer by trade, he really enjoys digging into technical aspects of the meadmaking process; as a recovering academic, he really enjoys understanding the science behind the process, brewing experimeads, and educating others. You can find Will in The Mead Hall (https://discord.gg/the-mead-hall-627621875408961537) discord community, where he’s better known as Chef. He is also the current maintainer of the Modern Meadmaking wiki (https://meadmaking.wiki).
Jacob Thill is a passionate Minnesotan meadmaker who is on a journey with a dream of opening his own meadery alongside his wife. His meadmaking style spans from high ABV meads reaching 18% to hydromels and standard strength meads enjoyed at his Dungeons and Dragons table, but most of his showpiece meads are all sack mead. His current goals are accumulating local medals and developing a mead calculator to support both enthusiasts and professionals that will hopefully serve as a functional ERP for batch management, and one dedicated to accuracy in mead math rather than fitting in a solution from related brewing industries.
Join us to hang out and talk shop with these gentlemen!
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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), or tweet to @gotmeadnow.



Upcoming Shows

November 21 - Tom Repas - beekeeping and going pro
December 5 - Brian Galbreath, Unpossible Mead

Show links and notes

Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff
The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff
Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff

Upcoming Events

Nov 8 - Oppegaard Meadery, Tukwila, WA - Mead Making Class
Nov 9 - Apis Mead and Winery, Carnegie, PA - Hurry Up, Say Something Funny comedy show
Nov 10 - Adesanya Mead and Microbrewery, Grandville,