Non-Pro Tips!

[lwood]

When brewing mead, one should not propose to haul it thirty miles once the yeast has really started chowin' down, and certainly one shouldn't rack it, neither should one add more honey.

BUT!

If you wind up having to do all that because, say, you were exhausted enough to goof up the delicate difference between "add water to make five gallons" and "add five gallons", well...

The little bit of waste you generated when starting the siphon with your feeeeelthy mouth (and ejected into an alternate vessel, thankyouverymuch) will be really tasty honey soda pop. Hunh.

---

Last night at Hrafnar, we had a lovely informal Friggacentric evening--songs were sung, bellies were filled, and then...

I wanted to encourage the Maker/Crafter spirit, as well as fiber geekery. Yes, it's that Double Nerd Score.

To this end, I would lead whoever-showed-up in making their very own drop spindles--inspired by this one, but with the addition of a washer on either side of the rubber grommet to keep the whorl from sliding on the shaft. I would have liked to have drilled pilot holes for the cuphooks, but I had neither a drill press nor time. Shoot, I wound up having Ange sand the dowels, but it did all turn out, and most everyone got their head around how to spin on drop spindles, with bonus points for having made them themselves.

Further bonus? As I picked up my CD's (already burnt, without cases) from the East Bay Depot for Creative Re-Use, the cost to me, per-spindle, was about a buck--only close to two if you factor in the small hacksaw and my sanding sponges. I suggested that maiagirl inflict it on her hapless students. *grin*

Then, leaving all and sundry with their proto-yarn, I and a select crew went into that kitchen and rattled them pots and pans. The goal: while in a house with a decent head of Frigga-flavored buzz, start a plum melomel (mead with fruit in!) in her honor. A recipe I stumbled upon suggested 20 lbs each of honey and seeded, halved plums, which would make a sweet mead with an intense plum flavor--and this to me seemed right and proper. In Hrafnar, we usually toast Frigg with plum wine--white wine flavored with plum if we must, but Actual Plum Wine is best when you can get it, and Ranch 99 has the closest I've gotten so far. A plum melomel, with local plums, honey, and spring water, I ween, would be one step closer to that.

For bonus points, I've gone with the no-heat method suggested by Ken Schramm in The Complete Meadmaker (and seconded boarrider). Soon, I should start a matched pair of meads: one boiled for fifteenish minutes and chilled, as I was taught, and one no-heat--purely for testing, you understand.

(Plum wine and Frigga? UPG. Actually, it's worse than UPG, because the chain of associations starts with Hera and the Lupercalia. In our experience, other light, sweet, fruity things are pleasing to her, like Wyder's pear and peach ciders--but nothing too tart, that makes it more Freyja's. And, of course, if all you have is a can of Bud or a cup of water, then that's what you've got and good on you for sharing. Thus endeth the lecture.)

It all worked pretty well, but the carboy was one of our smaller ones, late of dealan_de's hoard, and it seemed pretty full once the must was all in. I paid it no never mind, slapped on a bung and an airlock, and scurried on home.

When I crawled into bed, I realized why it looked so full.

My math was wrong. Honey is 80% water (...ish, variable by batch, hive, varietal, etc, but you won't get fired for proceeding as though it were so). Twenty pounds of honey was sixteen pounds of water was sixteen pints was ONE GALLON, and I had added five gallons, so now the whole batch was six gallons.

Well...frack.

To make it right, I'd need to rack it to a bigger carboy and add four more (holy cats!) pounds of honey.

So, today, after work, I grabbed Eric and our Brew Hauler. Unfortunately, the yeast was out of its resting period, and the airlock was bubbling cheerfully away--not idea, but now was as good a time as any to haul the must back to Eric's place, where a spare enclosed shower stall has been outfitted with mighty wire shelving and hung with a towel to keep out nasssssssty lights, precious.

...also, dpaxson could now re-mop all the sticky parts of the floor once we'd, um, helpfully removed the thing making it stick. Yes. Helpfully!

So--while the mead runs now the risk of skunky oxidization, and, of course, of 'sploding out its airlock and terrorizing the populace, it is now back where it belongs, in an easily-cleaned environment, and may all be well for it.

Oh, hey! Triple Nerd Score! Awesome!

-- Lorrie

Comments

[brannen.livejournal.com]

Wait... 20 pounds of honey for a five gallon batch PLUS 20 pounds of high sugar fruits? Wow. That's going to be like drinking pixie sticks and sending smaller household members bouncing off the walls.

I may need to work something that sweet into my rotation...

[lwood.livejournal.com]

I know! That sounds crazy!

Yet, the forum where I found this said, essentially:

"The recipe I had said 20 pounds each of honey and plums, but I thought that was overkill, so I did it with [some saner number that I forget at present], but I was disappointed. Next time, I'll do twenty each."

Mind you, as I don't have that guy's source, that's all the recipe I have, although it's augmented with having trusty Schramm at my side--which is how I knew no-heat was okay, and what other things ought to go into the thing, and so on.

And I made a blueberry beer last month as a sort of proof-of-concept for fr00t b00ze. Five pounds of berries in a light ale (a Kölsch) gave a somewhat purple color and a hint of berry flavor--when what I'd wanted was blueberry DOOM.

Schramm says that more than ten pounds of plums will give a strong plum flavor, too. This, I know, will vary by variety, but he has suggestions for that, and I will take the book with me to the farmers' market when it's time to rack this cough syrup onto some fruit (the only time a plastic fermented will darken my doorstep).

It doesn't hurt that my brewing partners desperately want dessert wine, and are sad every time I propose "nigh-sweet". In our experience, Frigga (and the ancestresses) are fond of sweet things--on one hand, it's an ancient predilection, on the other, hey, it means we're doing well to be able to have so much honey to brew with, huzzah!

-- Lorrie

(edit for: typo)

[brannen.livejournal.com]

Schramm is my go to guide when I get stuck or need inspiration. Four pounds of honey per gallon I can pretty easily see, its my general ratio for a sweet mead. It was just that much plus that much fruit that made me step back for a moment. The closest I've gotten to that sweet is my ginger-peach from last summer. 3.5 pounds of honey per gallon, 15 pounds of fresh, peeled peaches, and about half a pound of fresh, skinned, mashed ginger.

You have to post how this turns out. ;> As for blueberry doom, it can be done with mead, but I never tried with ale. Are you going to aim for a lambic style?

[lwood.livejournal.com]

The blueberry Kölsch is already brewed and bottled--and mostly drunk, as I took it to a co-worker's crawfish boil last week. A Kölsch is a pale ale, but not zomg bitter and hoppy like your IPA and such. It's intended to be a light, drinkable, summer thing, as a lager might be (but an ale, so not fussy) and is best drunk chilled--and I usually prefer my ales room temperature.

The local blueberries are done, and I'm not going to pay the premium for Canadian blueberries. Perhaps next year, when I see how the plum has come out, I'll try a blueberry melomel.

Sure, my local brewing store has fruit flavorings, and my grocery frozen fruit...but it's summer in California! Hooray local fresh things!

We'll see how it goes--the yeast is an ale yeast, but a fairly tolerant one (Lalvin 71B-1122), and the plums, of course, aren't just sweet, but will be quite acidic, which will help counter that cough syrup feeling. ;)

-- Lorrie

[murstein.livejournal.com]

. . . the yeast is an ale yeast, but a fairly tolerant one (Lalvin 71B-1122) . . .

Huh. This is the first time I've heard of that referred to as an ale yeast. Lallemand calls it a yeast for red wines. Are you referring to fermentation temperature range, and/or ester production?

[lwood.livejournal.com]

You're right, of course--it's usually for wine, and Schramm specifically suggests it for melomels with assertive fruit, and lists plum. 8-)

Somewhere in my head, all yeasts that are not champagne or lager are ale--where lager is "any yeast that needs refrigeration and other weird fussy handling" and champagne is "wheeHEY my alcohol tolerance, let me show you it!", thus "ale" is "all other yeast". 8-P

-- Lorrie

[knittingwoman.livejournal.com]

check out the spindles this guy has made:)
http://tiltawhorl.blogspot.com/

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Those are adorable!

I admit, stuff in the maker vein tends to me more "functional" than "aesthetic", but both is always nice when you can get it.

-- Lorrie

[keristor.livejournal.com]

A plum melonel? That sounds very decadent...

[lwood.livejournal.com]

It does! I hope it comes out and isn't skunkified by my bad handling...

-- Lorrie

[faeryl.livejournal.com]

Mmmm...plums(you didn't perchance use the Greyhaven ones?) The Frigga evening sounds like it was lovely. :-)



By the way, where does one buy a carboy around here? Daniel's picked up a good, solid six pounds of cherries(on top of the three already in our fridge) that he wants to booze-ify. :-)

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Re: Hrafnar's Frigga Evening

Yep, it was, even with A stomping into the middle of it and having a Technicolor fit because she couldn't find her bleu cheese...well, you know how she is, and she was very much that. We lifted our skirts and carried on, of course.

Re: Greyhaven plums:

The Greyhaven plums aren't used by much of anyone for anything because they're nearly all pit (srsly) and, as they're not fertilized or watered, are quite bitter. I ate one, once...urghk.

I've had that very same thought...and so has dpaxson, and so has jon_decles. Decades ago. Don-Jon tried to preserve the house plums by turning them into jam, but even with all the added sugar one adds to make jam, the result wasn't edible, even by dpaxson, even when they were a lot poorer than they are now.

Re: brewing equipment:

There's a bit more to buy than just a carboy, but you can get it all from Oak Barrel (http://www.oakbarrel.com/), which is in Berkeley on San Pablo between Cedar and Gilman. The "basic" kit is $105, and the "deluxe" kit is $145--I went with the deluxe, because the extra equipment is very useful for little things like "cleaning guck from your carboy" and "checking your work with SCIENCE!"--and then kept adding more things after that, I think I have somewhere between $500-$1000 of gear by now, but I split the cost of everything, 50/50, with my brewing partners, and that helps a lot.

"Just" a carboy is $47.95 for the largest size, but you won't have any way to make it sterile, or to efficiently get stuff into it, or yeast to throw in, or...

So, maybe to start, you should find someone you know who brews, and say, "I have nine pounds of cherries! What would I need to make [???] from it, and can you teach me a thing or two?" Or even "hey! I have nine pounds of cherries, you want it? I'll give it to you for a share of what comes out!" This would depend, of course, on how keen you two were to learn how to brew.

Now...if all you want is boozey cherries, what you do is pop 'round to BevMo and get yourself a big old bottle of Myer's Special Dark Rum (for nine pounds of cherries, get the 1500 mL jug!). Then wash and pit the cherries (you can borrow my cherry pitter), place in an airtight container, and add rum to cover. Keep in a dark, room-temperature place, and devour.

-- Lorrie

[nicanthiel.livejournal.com]

The Frige-sweet/Fréo-tangytart makes sense to me...

If you ever do something re: brewing for Nerthus/Jörð or Holda, you might want to work with blackberries. I've had great results.

And bad Lorrie. No cookie for you until you remember your conversions ;)

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Now, me, I would put blackberries in with Freyja.

For earth goddesses, especially when there's a watershed/swamp/mud connection like Nerthus, Jord, Nehelennia, and so on, I wouldn't go for mead. Instead, I'd want a deep, dark, beer, like a porter or stout (Guinness is an example of this kind of beer).

I'm doing something similar in the near-ish future for Thor (after all, he's a son of Earth), but with a lot of oak characteristics, as lightning is strongly associtated with oak trees.

Devotional booze ftw!

-- Lorrie