Ask This Old House

Kevin

Today on "Ask This Old House"...

Roger

This walkway is ugly, cracked, and crumbling. We'll give him a bluestone transformation that will last for years.

Kevin

Scott, I will admit that when I'm doing a wiring project, the wire nut that I reach for is the one I happen to have on hand.

Scott

That makes sense. The key to working with wiring around the house is connections. I will show you the perfect way to make a great splice.

Kevin

And we'll learn about the latest trend in home brewing that actually goes back thousands of years.

Dan

Would you like to try some?

Kevin

Yeah, sure. I've never passed up a glass of mead in my life, this being the first. That's next on "Ask This Old House." Whoa, Jen. Uh-oh. The bees aren't loose, are they?

Jen

They are not. But I just did a harvest from our hives downstairs.

Kevin

Look at all of that beautiful honey. That is awesome.

Jen

Those little pollinators did all the work.

Kevin

I'll tell you, everyone loves these stories you and Roger are doing on the pollinators, the bees, the honey -- it's terrific.

Jen

It's so important because when we plant plants for the pollinators, this is the gift that they give you.

Kevin

Well, I'm going to do my part. We're going to find a use for this honey. In fact, I'm going to see a guy who's making one of the oldest fermented drinks in the world, mead -- water, yeast, and honey.

Jen

This honey?

Kevin

Oh, yeah.

Jen

Isn't that what the Vikings use to drink?

Kevin

I think everybody drank it back in the day.

But I'm going to go find out. Jen

Awesome.

Kevin

So how about you? Another bee story?

Jen

Nope, I'm all set for the day, and Roger's off on some horror-scape story.

Don't get stung. Jen

All right. Thanks.

Dave

Hey, Roger. Glad you can make it out here today to our new house.

Roger

My pleasure. You see I brought the rain with me.

Dave

Well, hopefully it holds out. But this is the new spot. We just bought it. We think we got a good deal. We see a lot of potential in it. There are some issues with curb appeal. The landscaping -- We'd like to put some plantings in, some new grass. But our biggest issue right off the bat is the walkway. Seems to be an issue.

Roger

Well, if you got it at a good deal, we got some money to put a new walkway in, right?

Dave

Right. There we go.

Roger

The order of events should be to do the front walkway first. That way, you're not going to destroy the grass

or any of the plants you put in. Dave

That makes sense.

Roger

Take a look here. You've got some flagstone pieces that look like they're just set in topsoil.

Right. Roger

You follow them up and you can see it sank here already. Nice little trip step right here. So they decided to switch, put them in concrete. This is like in the late '60s or early '70s they would do something like this.

Dave

Right, and over the years, it's gone down.

Roger

Right. And just take a look at it. You can see it's separating on the edges from the concrete. Some are the pieces are already failing.

Right. Roger

So let me show you what we can make a really nice walk out of.

Dave

Okay.

Roger

All right, Dave, take a look at this. This is what I want to make your front walk out of.

Dave

These look awesome. Big stones.

Roger

Yeah, this is natural cleft bluestone. This is the way it's split out of the quarry,

and then it's cut to size. Dave

Oh, okay.

Roger

I like using bigger pieces, especially on a front walkway, so they don't move, they don't drift. And this is what your walkway is going to look like. It's 4'6" wide to match up with the staircase, and we're going to have a beautiful walkway coming in. And I love the way the stone is. This is a little rough, so it won't be slippery.

Dave

Right.

Roger

Now it comes at this point on every job where we stop talking and we start working. You ready to jackhammer?

Dave

Let's do this.

Roger

Let's go. It's an electric jackhammer, and we're going to use it to break the concrete walkup into manageable sizes, and then we're going to put them in the wheelbarrow. Instead of renting a whole Dumpster, we're going to take the concrete and put it in this Dumpster bag, and the trash company will come and pick it up and take it away. Okay, I'm putting this line up, Dave, and this represents this edge of your walkway. We pulled it off the foundation.

Okay. Roger

What we're trying to do is just get close so we know what we want to dig out, and we don't want to dig out more than we have to.

Dave

Okay.

Roger

So, right now, gonna have you -- Let me see the tape. Okay, go out. We have 4'6" plus 6 inches is 5 feet.

Dave

5 feet. Spray the line?

Roger

Make a mark there. This string line represents one edge of the new bluestone walk. But we want the base to be larger than that, so we're going to take a mark 6 inches out on each side of the walk, and we mark that with the orange spray paint, and we'll put one more right there. Perfect. And that's how far we have to excavate. Before you start digging, you have to call the utility locating service and have them come out and mark out any utilities that might be in the way. Looks like we're clear in front here. So, Dave, it looks good. You're down about 6 or 8 inches of loamy material you took out.

Dave

Mm-hmm.

I have a question. Dave

Shoot.

Roger

How tall are you?

Dave

5'10".

Roger

5'10"?

Dave

Yeah.

Roger

Okay. Let me show you a trick.

Dave

Okay.

Roger

What inevitably happens is that people forget to put in a way to get an electric line or an irrigation line through their yard under a brand-new walk. They have to dig up the whole walk. So what we're going to do is we're gonna come out 5'10". Perfect. Right there. Now, if anyone wants to do any work in your front yard, like running an irrigation or an electric line and they have to go under your new walk and rip it up? No, no. You now have a sleeve underneath the walk at 5'10", and you'll never forget that measurement.

There we go. Roger

All right, let's dig out a foot on each side and bury it in the ground.

Dave

Okay.

Roger

Okay for now?

Dave

Yep.

Roger

We're going to rake this nice and smooth, and then we're going to use the compactor to compact the base. Like any project around the house, the preparation is the key to a good job.

Right. Roger

So what we have is we have layers and layers of packed material. We had our subgrade all packed down, so we put this packed material on top, and it's stone dust and stone mixed together, and it drains really well. So we put down 2 or 3 inches, compacted that down until we got to a point where we were 3 inches below the line. That's going to be the height of our new bluestone. Now this pack is a great base. It'll hold everything together. So we set a line representing the height of our bluestone. What we wanted to do is have that line at a 90-degree angle to the house, so we use the 3-4-5 method where we measured out 3 feet this way, 4 feet that way, and then the angle was 5, and that's where we have that line.

It's true and ready to go. Dave

Excellent.

Roger

So we're going to start with a bluestone there and work our way right down. And it already looks better just with packing material here.

Dave

Yeah, it does.

Let's get bluestone in. Dave

Let's do it.

Roger

Remember I told you how good the top of the stone looked? Well take a look at this piece of bluestone on the bottom.

Dave

Wow. Look at that.

That is pretty rough. Dave

Right.

Roger

So what we have to do is fill in this, or we'll have a void under the stone, and it could rot or it could even crack right there.

Dave

Okay.

Roger

So we want to fill that in with a wet mix, and what we're going to use is 12-part stone dust mixed with 1-part portland cement. It'll take and fill the void when we hit it down with a rubber hammer. And then it'll harden up and hold the stone in place.

Dave

Right here?

Roger

Yeah. And give me another one over here. All right, I'm a little low in there, so I'm going to lift this up and have you just give me half a scoop.

Dave

Okay, you got it. Right here?

Roger

Yep. You can actually see some of the imprints from the bottom in the stone. But go ahead in the stone dust. A little more. That's good. Well, Dave, what do you think?

Dave

Looks perfect, Roger. I love it.

Roger

You know, we had a little obstacle. We had a lot of rain during the day. Slowed us down a little bit, but it came out great.

Dave

It did. And now the sun's coming up.

Roger

Yeah. Figure, huh?

Dave

Right.

Roger

Now the next step would be spreading polymeric sand in all the joints, and then you would wet it down. It would get hard and stop insects and weeds

from growing in the joints. Dave

Okay.

Roger

But it's moisture activated. If we spread it down now, it'd stick to everything and you'd have a mess. So what I'm going to do is leave you a bag.

Okay. Roger

Read the directions. And come out here. You put it in the joints and then blow it off. But make sure the walk is dry, a good two or three, four days

without any rain. Dave

Okay.

Roger

Then you'll have a perfect walk.

You'll be all set. Dave

Looks beautiful, Roger.

Roger

You've come a long way from that flagstone and concrete walk you had this morning.

Dave

Quite the transformation. Thank you very much.

Roger

You're welcome.

Kevin

Scott, I will admit that when I am doing a wiring project, the wire nut that I reach for is the one I happen to have on hand.

Scott

That makes sense.

Jen

And now that I look at them, I'm thinking, "Hmm, maybe I should know what the different colors mean."

Scott

Yeah, and they go small blue to big blue and in between. But the most common ones that we use every day are gonna be your reds and your yellows.

Kevin

So all the yellows are the same size, all the reds are the same size?

Scott

There's different styles. Some of them have wings on them. But, yeah, pretty much all the reds are the same. And they're rated to splice a certain amount of conductors together

and a certain amount of size. Kevin

And how do I know that?

Scott

Well, the package they come in gives you a great chart. It tells you which wires go with what combinations, how many you can put in, all that stuff.

Kevin

Well, that's awesome. So a yellow, for example, can fit two 18 gauge up to four 14's. And there's even an overlap between yellow and red.

That's right. Kevin

All right. So, how important is the actual splice?

Scott

All right, so, it started out years ago when they would just solder two wires together and then tape it up with electrical tape, but that ended pretty quickly. They don't want us to have torches.

Kevin

You guys should not be soldering.

Scott

The next step was this copper splice here where you would just put it on a wire like this, and then you would crimp it, and then wrap that up with the tape.

Kevin

So you're effectively getting, what, two things -- You're getting a connection between the two wires, but you're also reinsulating them, because you have exposed the bare copper?

Scott

That's right. The main goal here is to cover the copper. You don't want any of that exposed. So, like, for instance, if you took an orange wire nut like this, and you put it on, that's not good, 'cause it's exposed copper and that can lead to all kinds of problems.

Kevin

So that tells me it's too small?

That's too small. Kevin

Back that off?

Scott

Head over here. You grab a red one. Nice and tight. Everything has to be really tight. If you can't grab it that tight, grab it with your pliers and do that.

Kevin

And this is interesting, because you actually had those wires and that connection made before you put the wire cap on?

Yep. Kevin

That's all done there. So you're not relying on this to make the connection?

Scott

No, let me show you. So you want to match the insulations together. Strip it for whatever length you want, grab it from the top. Go like this, and then cut it to about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch. And that's your splice. It's perfect.

Kevin

You know which wire nuts I'm going to grab in the future?

Whatever ones I give you. Kevin

Thank you, Scott.

Scott

Good one. You got it.

Kevin

Hey, Dan. Kevin. Nice to meet you.

Dan

Hi, Kevin. Good to meet you.

Kevin

So you are the mead man?

Dan

I am.

Kevin

What are you serving?

Dan

Uh, this is mead. It's the oldest fermented beverage.

Kevin

Oldest, being how old?

Dan

Records in Asia date back about 9,000 years.

Kevin

All right, that's very old.

Dan

Would you like to try some?

Kevin

Yeah, sure. I've never passed up a glass of mead in my life, this being the first. And its ingredients?

Dan

Honey, water, and yeast.

Kevin

That's it?

Dan

That's it. And then you can add fruits and spices and herbs to them and make it different flavors.

Kevin

So what is its history?

Dan

So, Asia is the oldest records, but we know it from the Scandinavian and Medieval cultures. The Vikings were known to drink mead, as well as the Knights of the Round Table.

Kevin

Good for them. All right. And how did you get into it?

Dan

I went on a genealogy trip to Denmark, and I picked up a bottle of mead.

Kevin

'Cause they're still drinking mead in Denmark.

Dan

That's correct. And passed that around at a dinner table. Everybody liked it. Being a home beer brewer, I decided I wanted to try and make mead.

Kevin

So, we've brewed beer before, and that's a few ingredients and a couple steps. This is just yeast and honey. How does this stack up?

Dan

It's much easier. Great place for a home brewer to start, because it's just adding some ingredients together.

There's no heating involved. Kevin

All right.

Dan

Would you like to see how it's made?

Kevin

Sure,

I'd love to. Dan

Excellent. Follow me. And welcome to our production area.

Dan

Wow, look at you. So, what did you do -- just took over a two-car garage here? That's correct. Perfect for a small-scale meadery.

Kevin

All right, so a little bit more aggressive than the home-brew operation, but not overly commercial, either.

Dan

No. I have two 150-gallon tanks. And I have a few smaller tanks, as well. We're about ready to make some mead in here today, so I have a 60-pound pail of honey here. Wow. Never seen so much honey in one place. That's 70,000 bees took to make that. We're going to put six to seven of these. 1/3 honey, 2/3 water. 400 pounds total.

Laughs

Laughs

Dan

So now that we have our honey/water mix, we're going to add a little bit more water to fill up the tank. I'm filtering the water through a carbon filter. It will take out any of the chlorine. It's just town water. If it's good-to-drink town water, I think it's good enough to make mead. So we're going to finish letting this fill up with water. We're going to pitch some yeast and some nutrients in there and let it start fermenting.

Kevin

Okay.

Dan

Over here I have a tank we started several days ago. The yeast is consuming the sugar in the honey and converting it into CO2, alcohol, and heat.

Kevin

So all those bubbles that are coming up right there, that is the yeast doing its job?

Dan

That's correct. So I know it's healthy when I see a lot of CO2 bubbles coming up. So we're going to turn on this pump here

and do a pump-over. Kevin

Which is what?

Dan

We're pumping the must from the bottom of the tank to the top of the tank and releasing CO2 gas, and that will help to reduce stress on the yeast and make a better mead in the long run. And the other thing we want to do is we want to keep this unit cool. We want to keep the fermentation in the 60s.

Kevin

'Cause this is heating up just by the natural fermentation?

That's correct. Kevin

How do you cool it down?

Dan

So, we have this plate hanging down in here. That's a cooling plate. I have a chiller over here that's going to pump cold water up through the hoses and through the chiller plate. And the heat exchange will take place and will cool down and keep the fermentation around 68 degrees or so.

Kevin

Okay. And so how long is this process going to take?

Dan

Fermentation is going to take up to two weeks. And the next process after that two weeks is racking. Racking is moving the must or the wine now into the aging tanks in the back. And that's where it's going to sit for up to five, six months and age. And mead will get better with time. So, Kevin, you've seen what it takes to make commercial mead. Now we can do some home mead making.

Kevin

So this is all we need to do it back at the house?

Dan

That's correct. We got a pretty simple setup. We have a gallon jug. We have a source of water -- either tap water or spring water. You don't want to use distilled water. Honey. We need about 3 pounds of honey for one gallon. That'll make a 15% alcohol mead or so. And the last key ingredient is the yeast which I picked up at a local home-brewing store. It's just a wine yeast. So, you want to make sure everything's sanitized properly. I use a sanitizer that I get at a home-brew store. But you can use chlorine bleach if you want, as long as you rinse everything really carefully after you sanitize. So we're going to put about 1/3 of a gallon in here. And then we will mix the honey in, as well. That's about 1/3. That's good. Now we're going to add the honey. So, we have, like I said, 3 pounds of honey. And you can either buy honey at a local big-box store, or if you want to support your local apiary, look up a beekeeper in your area. I think it makes a little bit better mead. So you want to squeeze all the honey in here, and then we'll mix it up. So when we're done, what we're going to do is we're gonna cap the gallon jug and mix this really well. We're going to shake it. So, the honey needs to be dissolved into the water really well. And then this also is adding oxygen into the mixture, which at this point in the fermentation process is going to be important, so that's good. So, the next step is to add some yeast. So, I have my packet of yeast here. I'm going to add this to some hot water or warm water. It's 104 degrees. I'm following the instructions on the back of the package. So, while the yeast is dissolving, we can add some nutrients to our mixture over here.

Kevin

So this is not for flavor or anything. This is to help the yeast?

Dan

That's correct. Yeast really want nitrogen and other stuff to help reproduce and to do their job of producing alcohol, and this will make a clean ferment, so you want to make a clean as ferment as possible, 'cause that will make a nice mead.

Kevin

Okay. This is pretty close, I think.

Dan

Excellent. So now we're going to pitch the yeast.

Kevin

Get that for you. Now we got the yeast in there. And now we're going to top off the bottle with water. We don't want to fill it all the way. We want to leave a little bit of headspace, because once the fermentation starts, we want to leave a little bit of room for bubbles and CO2 to escape. So leave about 3 inches or so of air space. Finally, our last step is to add an air lock on top of this. So, an air lock is a device that lets CO2 escape and prevents oxygen from getting in. So we're going to seal this off, and then we're going to put a little bit of water in here, and then cover it up. And the water is basically creating the plug?

Dan

That's correct. So, what we have here now is mead that's been going for a couple of days. You can know that it's still fermenting because you're still seeing bubbles come out of the air lock.

Kevin

So that's the CO2 escaping right there.

Dan

That's correct. You want to keep monitoring this until it's done fermenting. This will slow down to nothing, and then the sedimentation here will start drifting down to the bottom of the gallon jug. And that point, we're ready to rack, which is a term for moving the mead from one container to the next.

Kevin

So, I don't see any bubbles coming out here, and it looks like everything's sort of settled to the bottom.

Dan

That's correct. So, what I have is a siphoning tube. You can pick this up at any home-brewing store, as well. We're going to siphon from here into a clean, sanitized, new jug. You want to leave it off the bottom a bit, 'cause we don't want to stir up the sediment. This siphon tube has been filled with water. The gravity's going to pull the mead from above. You don't want to introduce any oxygen, so you want to make sure this siphoning tube in the lower jug is all the way in. And you're correct. You're about an inch or so from the bottom of the sediment in the old jug. Great. So, we don't want to expose the mead to oxygen, so what we're going to do is gonna add some sanitized marbles in here. And that's going to fill up and take up the volume that we left behind in that last gallon jug. That's perfect. Now we're going to put the airlock back on. Probably want to leave this on for another month or so, then you can replace it with the cap. Just in case any more fermentation is going, you don't want to pressurize the bottle. You're going to set this down in your basement for 9 months to a year.

Kevin

Wow. That long, huh?

Dan

Yeah, the longer, the better with mead. It'll age and get better with time.

Kevin

Well, I'm a patient man. I like a good mead. So we'll wait. But I appreciate all the lessons. Maybe you'll send us a sample when it's all done.

Absolutely. Kevin

Thank you, Dan. Well, Dan was true to his word. He sent us a sample. So I want you guys -- Anyone had mead before?

Tom

Uh,

no. Richard

Don't think I have.

Kevin

All right, there you go. Ladies first. I mean Jen.

Jen

Thank you. Thank you.

Tommy. Richard

Don't forget.

Kevin

Oh, yes, absolutely. All right. Tell me what you think. Now, this is Dan's. Smell it? Ever had that before?

Jen

No.

Tom

A little bit like cider.

Kevin

No, it's a little -- Well, anyway -- So, he did his, but I went ahead and did mine. Bottoms up. Clean out those glasses. This is my brew. I mean, you can't screw it up, right? I mean, you saw the process. Honey, yeast, water. 10 months in my basement. Huh?

Jen

You made this?

I did. Richard

Smells sort of sour.

Kevin

What do you think?

All spitting

Laughter

Richard

Did you not pay attention?

You're trying to kill us. Kevin

What do you mean? No!

Tom

You made this?

Jen

How many months in your basement?

That's great. Kevin

Okay. Disregard what you saw there. And we'd love to hear from you, so keep your letters and your e-mails coming.

Until next time... Tom

Where's the good stuff?

Kevin

...I'm Kevin O'Connor.

I'm Richard Trethewey. Tom

I'm Tom Silva.

And I'm Jen Nawada. Kevin

Mmm!

Richard

Better living through mead.

Laughter

Kevin

"Ask This Old House."

Tom

You better stick to something else.

Pungent. Kevin

That's good.

Kevin

Next time on "Ask This Old House"...

Tom

Hand saws are versatile tools and inexpensive, but you gotta know how to pick the right one and know how to use it.

Richard

Every radiator in this house works perfectly, except for this one. I'll dive into this hot-water heating system to find a solution.

Scott

And sometimes a recessed light just won't fit. But I'll show you a paper-thin solution.

Kevin

And... This is a pitch pipe that we've used for many years with what we do on our show. Ready?

Richard

Ba-ba-ba