mead: super tasty
Apr. 3rd, 2008 10:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7Today I am drinking the first mead I have ever brewed. It is damn tasty, if I do say so myself. I am going to give you the recipe, because I am generous and kind.
The recipe only claims to take four days, but I took longer than that.
And the second bottle was better than the first, because the second bottle had a tighter seal so the mead is carbonated, which makes it more interesting and less sweet.
The recipe is taken from an ancient one (well, old-- Sir Kenelme Digbie's Closet, which is I think 1631), but is filtered through two interpretations I found on Ye Olde Inter-Nette. It is "quick" in that it is sparkling, but it is also quick in that it takes under a week to make, while most mead takes at least four months.
1 lb. honey
5 quarts water
Bring to a boil, stirring thoroughly. Skim off any scum that rises to the surface. Boil a half-hour or so, until no more scum rises. (This also reduces the quantity of water somewhat.)
Meanwhile, sterilize a 1-gallon carboy, or in my case, two empty half-gallon growlers you never returned to the gourmet beer store for your deposit. You'll also need two pierced rubber stoppers and the fermentation locks to go in 'em, so sterilize those too. (That'll set you back about a buck fifty.) For sterilization I was recommended B-Brite, an "active oxygen" type powder. Don't forget that you should also sterilize your funnel and your measuring teaspoon (1/8 tsp if you've got it). Sterilize your candy thermometer, while you're at it, if you've got one. Heck, sterilize your skimmer too. Just sterilize most of your kitchen implements and you should be golden.
Once you've done that, go up and chop up a bunch of ginger (about 2 tbsp, coarsely chopped), and juice a lemon. I didn't have a lemon so I used bottled lemon juice, and some orange juice because I had an orange, and I stuck 8 cloves through a slice of the orange peel. After half an hour, chuck those all into the mixture and boil it 15 more minutes.
Put the pot on your cold stone basement floor, with a lid on, or set it in your laundry sink in a bath of cold water, or set it out on your sunporch (securely covered) in the cold to get the temperature down. After a while, test the temperature with your clean candy thermometer. If it's less than about 90, you should be good to go. (They say 85. If you don't have a candy thermometer, it should be lukewarm but colder than your skin. But don't go sticking your filthy finger into the pot. If in doubt, leave it, well covered, overnight.)
Using your clean skimmer, fish out the cloves and the ginger bits and all that stuff.
Dump (carefully) the room-temperatureish mixture into your clean carboy/growlers. Put the rubber stoppers on, and use hand sanitizer so you can stop up the holes with your finger. Agitate the growlers to get some air into the mixture.
Then pull the stoppers back out, set them somewhere that they'll stay sterile, and carefully add the yeast to your fermenting containers. I used 1/8 tsp each, because the whole thing is supposed to take 1/4 tsp and I had half in each container.
Let it sit for two days. I had it sitting in my basement and nothing much was happening, so I brought it upstairs and stuck it on a dark back corner of my counter, where it started bubbling merrily. I wound up leaving it an extra two days to make up for that.
After two (or, in my case, four) days, go sterilize a bunch of small bottles. (I had a screw-top wine bottle, a screw-top liquor bottle, and two small glass juice bottles.) Sterilize two yards of half-inch or quarter-inch plastic tubing.
Set the carboy/growlers on a higher surface. Put the bottles you're siphoning into on a lower surface. Realize you're going to have to suck on that sterilized tube. Try your damnedest not to backwash, because you can't think how to sterilize your mouth.
Siphon all of it into the smaller bottles. Keep the tip of the siphon out of the gunk at the bottom of your fermenters.
Leave the smaller bottles somewhere for two days. After two days, stick them in the fridge. They'll have sediment at the bottom, but I think racking them (siphoning the mead out into yet another clean bottle) would destroy the carbonation, so just pour carefully.
It's really good, though I don't think there's much alcohol in it. It's light, gingery, faintly sweet, and sparkly. Whee!!
I am really not being very productive this week. My boob still hurts. I caught an elbow in the other boob tonight at practice, and landed on my good knee but something didn't feel right, so I skated another lap, failed to catch the pack, and went a bit shakily to sit out the rest of practice. I've no idea what I did. My right boob had been feeling fine but that's because I hadn't been moving at all; the pectoral muscle is quite sore and moving my right arm any amount hurts.
But I know there's nothing seriously injured, so I don't know why I'm being such a wuss about it. It's not serious pain. It just bothers the piss out of me.
I did some cooking today, some fairly creative cooking, and I put the first two coats of paint on a wooden chair I'm repainting to match the bedroom, and reupholstering. I had been waiting months for it to be warm enough that I could paint out on the porch, and on Tuesday it was warm enough for me to strip and prime it. Two coats of primer, because, why not? So now it's got two coats of red, except the back panel is going to be purple. And then the seat is going to be black velvet with gold embossed flies, or bees. (I thought it was flies, but Redfox made her wedding gown out of the red version because she thought it was bees and she, coincidentally, brews her own mead. I suppose it doesn't really matter; it's half-inch-long gold line drawings of insects, which is rad.) I also have two little silver buttons of the same insect, whatever it is, so I have to think of a way to use them-- trim or something?
But mostly I farted around on the Internet. I'm obsessed with going to Pennsic. I don't think I really want to sign up for the SCA, so I don't suppose I really need my own character and everything. But I've started really wanting one. I want to be an Irish Viking. Is that weird?
Well, that's a stupid question, but I can't think of any other way to phrase it.
Fortunately that means I can farb the fuck out, because the Vikings got around, so if anything existed in the world at that time, I can plausibly claim to legitimately have it.
Do SCA people talk about farbs? I don't know if I've mentioned on here recently that I am the lovechild of hardcore re-enactors. My parents met during the American Bicentennial, and my dad was in a really hardcore group that ate all authentic, and used all authentic materials. He made the buttons for the waistcoat in which he was married himself. He stopped going to re-enactments when I was a fairly young child, but I do remember helping him cast his own bullets-- he may have been doing that later on for someone's science project or some educational thing. I have only dim memories of the reenactments I attended as a child-- straw hats, the smell of black powder and woodsmoke, lots of guys running around, the unique color of sunlight filtered through canvas.
This is how my parents met. They started in 1975, back when there wasn't a whole lot of precedent. My mother was a museum curator, by the way, professionally, at that point. And my father worked for the New York State Department of Historic Preservation, mostly on site security and on exhibit preparation. Museum staff, both of them.
And for us, the Revolution is local history-- the pivotal Battle of Saratoga was five miles from my house, and we'd go up there several times a summer and walk past the painted posts marking where the two armies made their emplacements-- white with red for Burgoyne, white with blue for the various groups of Americans. I could probably recite you some of the recorded voice-overs from the dioramas, I pressed those little buttons so many times. It's inextricably linked in my head with long grass and hot sun and the buzz of summer insects. If anyone's ever in the area, there's a gorgeous view of the Hudson River from about midway through the battlefield tour, which you can do on foot or on bicycles.
I'm digressing, but this is my background. So the whole idea of the SCA is... well, my parents claim they did this as historians. My dad was only recently back from Vietnam, and he and his buddies puzzled through that whole manual at arms until they could do the entire marching order. They were battle-ready, these guys. Four volleys in five minutes or whatever the standard was, I forget. All fourteen steps it took to load and fire a flintlock musket, they could do on the move if they had to. (That is why you never rest the butt on the ground.)
I'm sure they did it for fun too. It was less fun with babies, so they stopped, and now they're too old. (Though about five years ago my dad took a World War I re-enactment group to a ceremony at the Pentagon. He'd never been to Washington before. There exists a wonderful black-and-white newspaper photo of him and the other guys, and it looks entirely period except the civilian standing beside them-- a descendant of the poet Joyce Kilmer-- is wearing a plastic nametag on his jacket.)
Anyway. My mother thinks anything that's not homespun is farby, so I've got a lot of baggage coming into this. I know she owns most of the books I see referred to in people's costume diaries-- at least the ones that contain 18th-century information-- but I almost hesitate to ask her advice, because really, I mean, how serious do I want to be?
And maybe I should do Tudor anyway. I don't know who I'll camp with, but that seems a more... um, bosom-friendly period. I dunno, a heavy-busted hourglassy size 16 might not be done any favors by the apron-dress thing. A straight-sided tube? Hm. But I don't know if I can make a Tudor corset. My mom could, but working that closely with her might destroy me.
I can blame her for all this, though. When I was 13 my best friend's family was way into visiting Colonial Williamsville, so I'd go to theme dinners at their house in my mother's Rev War kit, minus corset. It was the first clothing I ever wore that flattered my shape-- even at 13, I didn't need panniers, but was still small enough up top that the bodice lacing could support me. I knew I looked good, too, and it blew my tiny mind. It was another five years before I so much as entertained the notion that normal clothing could flatter me too.
The recipe only claims to take four days, but I took longer than that.
And the second bottle was better than the first, because the second bottle had a tighter seal so the mead is carbonated, which makes it more interesting and less sweet.
The recipe is taken from an ancient one (well, old-- Sir Kenelme Digbie's Closet, which is I think 1631), but is filtered through two interpretations I found on Ye Olde Inter-Nette. It is "quick" in that it is sparkling, but it is also quick in that it takes under a week to make, while most mead takes at least four months.
1 lb. honey
5 quarts water
Bring to a boil, stirring thoroughly. Skim off any scum that rises to the surface. Boil a half-hour or so, until no more scum rises. (This also reduces the quantity of water somewhat.)
Meanwhile, sterilize a 1-gallon carboy, or in my case, two empty half-gallon growlers you never returned to the gourmet beer store for your deposit. You'll also need two pierced rubber stoppers and the fermentation locks to go in 'em, so sterilize those too. (That'll set you back about a buck fifty.) For sterilization I was recommended B-Brite, an "active oxygen" type powder. Don't forget that you should also sterilize your funnel and your measuring teaspoon (1/8 tsp if you've got it). Sterilize your candy thermometer, while you're at it, if you've got one. Heck, sterilize your skimmer too. Just sterilize most of your kitchen implements and you should be golden.
Once you've done that, go up and chop up a bunch of ginger (about 2 tbsp, coarsely chopped), and juice a lemon. I didn't have a lemon so I used bottled lemon juice, and some orange juice because I had an orange, and I stuck 8 cloves through a slice of the orange peel. After half an hour, chuck those all into the mixture and boil it 15 more minutes.
Put the pot on your cold stone basement floor, with a lid on, or set it in your laundry sink in a bath of cold water, or set it out on your sunporch (securely covered) in the cold to get the temperature down. After a while, test the temperature with your clean candy thermometer. If it's less than about 90, you should be good to go. (They say 85. If you don't have a candy thermometer, it should be lukewarm but colder than your skin. But don't go sticking your filthy finger into the pot. If in doubt, leave it, well covered, overnight.)
Using your clean skimmer, fish out the cloves and the ginger bits and all that stuff.
Dump (carefully) the room-temperatureish mixture into your clean carboy/growlers. Put the rubber stoppers on, and use hand sanitizer so you can stop up the holes with your finger. Agitate the growlers to get some air into the mixture.
Then pull the stoppers back out, set them somewhere that they'll stay sterile, and carefully add the yeast to your fermenting containers. I used 1/8 tsp each, because the whole thing is supposed to take 1/4 tsp and I had half in each container.
Let it sit for two days. I had it sitting in my basement and nothing much was happening, so I brought it upstairs and stuck it on a dark back corner of my counter, where it started bubbling merrily. I wound up leaving it an extra two days to make up for that.
After two (or, in my case, four) days, go sterilize a bunch of small bottles. (I had a screw-top wine bottle, a screw-top liquor bottle, and two small glass juice bottles.) Sterilize two yards of half-inch or quarter-inch plastic tubing.
Set the carboy/growlers on a higher surface. Put the bottles you're siphoning into on a lower surface. Realize you're going to have to suck on that sterilized tube. Try your damnedest not to backwash, because you can't think how to sterilize your mouth.
Siphon all of it into the smaller bottles. Keep the tip of the siphon out of the gunk at the bottom of your fermenters.
Leave the smaller bottles somewhere for two days. After two days, stick them in the fridge. They'll have sediment at the bottom, but I think racking them (siphoning the mead out into yet another clean bottle) would destroy the carbonation, so just pour carefully.
It's really good, though I don't think there's much alcohol in it. It's light, gingery, faintly sweet, and sparkly. Whee!!
I am really not being very productive this week. My boob still hurts. I caught an elbow in the other boob tonight at practice, and landed on my good knee but something didn't feel right, so I skated another lap, failed to catch the pack, and went a bit shakily to sit out the rest of practice. I've no idea what I did. My right boob had been feeling fine but that's because I hadn't been moving at all; the pectoral muscle is quite sore and moving my right arm any amount hurts.
But I know there's nothing seriously injured, so I don't know why I'm being such a wuss about it. It's not serious pain. It just bothers the piss out of me.
I did some cooking today, some fairly creative cooking, and I put the first two coats of paint on a wooden chair I'm repainting to match the bedroom, and reupholstering. I had been waiting months for it to be warm enough that I could paint out on the porch, and on Tuesday it was warm enough for me to strip and prime it. Two coats of primer, because, why not? So now it's got two coats of red, except the back panel is going to be purple. And then the seat is going to be black velvet with gold embossed flies, or bees. (I thought it was flies, but Redfox made her wedding gown out of the red version because she thought it was bees and she, coincidentally, brews her own mead. I suppose it doesn't really matter; it's half-inch-long gold line drawings of insects, which is rad.) I also have two little silver buttons of the same insect, whatever it is, so I have to think of a way to use them-- trim or something?
But mostly I farted around on the Internet. I'm obsessed with going to Pennsic. I don't think I really want to sign up for the SCA, so I don't suppose I really need my own character and everything. But I've started really wanting one. I want to be an Irish Viking. Is that weird?
Well, that's a stupid question, but I can't think of any other way to phrase it.
Fortunately that means I can farb the fuck out, because the Vikings got around, so if anything existed in the world at that time, I can plausibly claim to legitimately have it.
Do SCA people talk about farbs? I don't know if I've mentioned on here recently that I am the lovechild of hardcore re-enactors. My parents met during the American Bicentennial, and my dad was in a really hardcore group that ate all authentic, and used all authentic materials. He made the buttons for the waistcoat in which he was married himself. He stopped going to re-enactments when I was a fairly young child, but I do remember helping him cast his own bullets-- he may have been doing that later on for someone's science project or some educational thing. I have only dim memories of the reenactments I attended as a child-- straw hats, the smell of black powder and woodsmoke, lots of guys running around, the unique color of sunlight filtered through canvas.
This is how my parents met. They started in 1975, back when there wasn't a whole lot of precedent. My mother was a museum curator, by the way, professionally, at that point. And my father worked for the New York State Department of Historic Preservation, mostly on site security and on exhibit preparation. Museum staff, both of them.
And for us, the Revolution is local history-- the pivotal Battle of Saratoga was five miles from my house, and we'd go up there several times a summer and walk past the painted posts marking where the two armies made their emplacements-- white with red for Burgoyne, white with blue for the various groups of Americans. I could probably recite you some of the recorded voice-overs from the dioramas, I pressed those little buttons so many times. It's inextricably linked in my head with long grass and hot sun and the buzz of summer insects. If anyone's ever in the area, there's a gorgeous view of the Hudson River from about midway through the battlefield tour, which you can do on foot or on bicycles.
I'm digressing, but this is my background. So the whole idea of the SCA is... well, my parents claim they did this as historians. My dad was only recently back from Vietnam, and he and his buddies puzzled through that whole manual at arms until they could do the entire marching order. They were battle-ready, these guys. Four volleys in five minutes or whatever the standard was, I forget. All fourteen steps it took to load and fire a flintlock musket, they could do on the move if they had to. (That is why you never rest the butt on the ground.)
I'm sure they did it for fun too. It was less fun with babies, so they stopped, and now they're too old. (Though about five years ago my dad took a World War I re-enactment group to a ceremony at the Pentagon. He'd never been to Washington before. There exists a wonderful black-and-white newspaper photo of him and the other guys, and it looks entirely period except the civilian standing beside them-- a descendant of the poet Joyce Kilmer-- is wearing a plastic nametag on his jacket.)
Anyway. My mother thinks anything that's not homespun is farby, so I've got a lot of baggage coming into this. I know she owns most of the books I see referred to in people's costume diaries-- at least the ones that contain 18th-century information-- but I almost hesitate to ask her advice, because really, I mean, how serious do I want to be?
And maybe I should do Tudor anyway. I don't know who I'll camp with, but that seems a more... um, bosom-friendly period. I dunno, a heavy-busted hourglassy size 16 might not be done any favors by the apron-dress thing. A straight-sided tube? Hm. But I don't know if I can make a Tudor corset. My mom could, but working that closely with her might destroy me.
I can blame her for all this, though. When I was 13 my best friend's family was way into visiting Colonial Williamsville, so I'd go to theme dinners at their house in my mother's Rev War kit, minus corset. It was the first clothing I ever wore that flattered my shape-- even at 13, I didn't need panniers, but was still small enough up top that the bodice lacing could support me. I knew I looked good, too, and it blew my tiny mind. It was another five years before I so much as entertained the notion that normal clothing could flatter me too.
