That's what really messes with experience brewers who're looking at mead I find. Talking to people at the brewclub, it's totally inside out thinking for them to make something that takes almost no time to put together (barring melomels, which always take hours for me) but then requires so much attention during fermentiong.
Pitch into an unboiled, unpastuerized, unsulfited must?! Crazy talk!
Surprised they didn't burn you as a witch!...
No starter? More insanity! What's this rehydration you speak of? (all the LHBS around here either sell liquid yeast only for serious brewers, and dried ale yeast is for non serious people who'll just toss it in apparently...)
See, the LHBS I went to for my first round (and subsequent rounds) of hardware advised me to use the liquid yeast, since it can give you a better product... For a few dollars more, you get something better? I said... Yup... Gimme...
Aerating often until the 1/3 mark in the ferment? This is pure dangerous voodoo to people who fear oxygen like they fear bullets (and rightly so with beer, though I hear some "big" beers are aerated some nowadays).
Taking SG readings DURING the fermentation? Same deal, brewers generally don't want to even touch the thing during fermentation, let alone actually put something into it!
Add nutrients, and sometimes in multiple steps? Seems like a lot of work to someone used to working with malts tht provide all the nutrients a yeast could want.
It's pretty funny sometimes. ;D
(and not that they don't know about fermenting, it's just such a different process for them that it takes them some getting used to. Just like doing beer freaked me out for quite a while coming from a mead background)
See, that's why I'm glad I decided to start both at roughly the same time... I see the benefits both processes have for each product, as well as how each works... Beer is a 'hot and fast' method to me... You do all the heavy lifting at the start, then have a couple of weeks to recover... Mead, is almost no lifting up front, and medium level work until the 1/3 break, then it's light duty to completion.. Granted, you're talking more than a few weeks (typically) and then forget about getting something in under a few months (with a few exceptions, or depending on what you're making)...
If you think of it like painting, beer is [mostly] paint by numbers, where mead is oil based paint on a stretched canvas... Both are art, but some people appreciate what goes into the oil painting... While others just want to get ripped right NOW!
While I do plan on making sure I always (now) have a supply of beer on hand, I'm looking forward to the development the mead will go through... Trying to get an used freezer for the current batches to age inside of once they're ready... I've figured out the perfect spot to put a 5cf chest freezer, or a little larger if that's all I can get... Just don't want to buy something brand new... Would prefer to have a smaller one, so that I can (maybe) get another later to 'cold brew' some beer...
Or at least ensure it's closer to the optimum temperature when in secondary...
Oh, and learning to make mead made me brave enough to tweak the porter I have going when I racked it into secondary... Also mead making/engineering, has made me want to check on the beers more often... I want to test them to see what's going on... I have to hold myself back right now to let them do what they need to... But man, it ain't easy... Looking forward to seeing how the porter comes out... ;D
Show Spelled[broo] 
