Is mead brewing for me?

WHY are we still making beer?" It was said half-jokingly, of course, but the point finally struck home that mead-making is a LOT simpler and less time-consuming than brewing. Yeah, you can shorten those beer sessions down considerably by using pre-extracted grains (malt syrup and DME) but you lose some of the quality, imo. Mead making is almost an afterthought after doing a bunch of long all-grain mashes. I'm not knocking anyone who likes to make complicated meads; I'm just saying that for me it's a whole different type of process, much simpler, and doesn't involve the potential for dumping a few quarts of boiling hot wort inside your shoe!!

Beer is pretty damn forgiving so I'm not sure about any major advantages of mead-making over beer in that respect. But I also have a pretty extensive chemistry and clean-lab technique background, so I'm a natural at cleanliness and sanitization. It just comes natural after a lot of repetition. But, that doesn't mean that I don't catch myself sometimes dropping a stirring spoon and going, "Crap, the sanitizing solution is 40 feet away..ahh, screw it." And in it goes without a second thought anymore. Ok, I have to admit, there have been a few occasions where I'm lying awake at night wondering if that one flub is going to destroy my $60 batch of strawberry pizzazz or not. But you do learn to live with some things and not sweat them too much. This is supposed to fun, dammit.

Meadmaking is definitely easier, but no less rewarding for me. As an example, I kind of got a brew crew together and we started brewing beer awhile back.. 3 batches later, the subject comes up (from me, and from them) on several occasions to try making some different types of mead. We're done and cleaning up after a batch of mead making and someone says, "This is SOO much easier than making beer... 4 hour sessions, 5 times as much crap to clean up.. We just sanitized and put ingredients together for 4 different batches of mead in the time it takes to mash grain and get the boil started for our last beer...are we still making beer?" It was said half-jokingly, of course, but the point finally struck home that mead-making is a LOT simpler and less time-consuming than brewing. Yeah, you can shorten those beer sessions down considerably by using pre-extracted grains (malt syrup and DME) but you lose some of the quality, imo. Mead making is almost an afterthought after doing a bunch of long all-grain mashes. I'm not knocking anyone who likes to make complicated meads; I'm just saying that for me it's a whole different type of process, much simpler, and doesn't involve the potential for dumping a few quarts of boiling hot wort inside your shoe!!Beer is pretty damn forgiving so I'm not sure about any major advantages of mead-making over beer in that respect. But I also have a pretty extensive chemistry and clean-lab technique background, so I'm a natural at cleanliness and sanitization. It just comes natural after a lot of repetition. But, that doesn't mean that I don't catch myself sometimes dropping a stirring spoon and going, "Crap, the sanitizing solution is 40 feet away..ahh, screw it." And in it goes without a second thought anymore. Ok, I have to admit, there have been a few occasions where I'm lying awake at night wondering if that one flub is going to destroy my $60 batch of strawberry pizzazz or not. But you do learn to live with some things and not sweat them too much. This is supposed to fun, dammit.

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