finishing
Mead Architecture: Tannins in Mead Making
Honey is generous. It gives you sugar; it gives you aroma; it gives you that ineffable floral complexity that makes mead worth making. What it doesn't give you is structure. No tannins. None. Zip.
Matthew Chrispen
Matt Chrispen | Accidentalis Brewery. Overly serious home brewer sharing long-form articles on beer, mead, and gear. Passionate about historical and modern techniques and systems. Documenting the ongoing journey to mastering craft from my garage.
Mead
The Magic of Oak: Wood in Beer, Cider, and Mead
There's a moment in every barrel-aged batch where something clicks. The harsh, tannic edge softens. The fruit comes forward. A faint vanilla warmth settles into the background like it was always there. You didn't add vanilla. You didn't add anything — you just waited, and the wood did the work.
brew day
System Efficiency - Lab-First Principles
In the "Lab-First" brewery, efficiency is not a high score to brag about. It is a diagnostic tool for variable isolation. If you do not know exactly where your sugars are being lost, you cannot reliably replicate a recipe — and replication, not bragging rights, is the entire point.
Mead
Introduction to Mead Making
I've seen so much bad advice given to first-time mead makers that I feel like I should offer a primer that is more respectful, open, and encouraging.
The Mead Stability Manifesto: Delle Units and Beyond
In the pursuit of the perfect sweet mead, the "bottle bomb" is the ultimate horror story, except maybe broken glass carboys.
The Lab-First Paradigm: A Framework for Consistent Making
To bridge the gap between a lucky batch and a repeatable masterpiece, we must disentangle three terms that are often used interchangeably but represent distinct physical realities in the brewhouse: Accuracy, Precision, and Consistency.
Rambling
Malt Conditioning Exploration
This is a minor revision and edit of the article published in 2017.
Lab-First
Bochet & Brewing Sugars - Reduction and Browning
Intentional browning of sugars has a long tradition in brewing and mead-making. Here's the science.
Lab-First
The Lab-First Series: Calibrating the Human Instrument
A guideline to using Sensory and the Lab to troubleshoot or verify common brewing issues.
Lab-First
High-Gravity ABV and the Precision Gap
A data-driven look at why standard ABV formulas fail in high-gravity fermentation and how to implement higher-precision models.
Nice to meet you - Again.
Pull up a chair and crack open a beer. Hi, my name is Matt, and I make craft beverages.
A Change of Venue: Relocating the Brewhouse
After 13 years and a deliberate philosophical shift, I traded corporate demands for a quieter, simpler life. Here is the plan for the new cellar.