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Mead Lovers Digest #0345
Subject: Mead Lover's Digest #345, 1 September 1994
From: mead-lovers-request@eklektix.com
Mead Lover's Digest #345 1 September 1994
Forum for Discussion of Mead Making and Consuming
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
Lemon-ginger metheglin (Joyce Miller)
Bullingbrook's white Metheglin (Joyce Miller)
Elderberry Wine Request (Roger Grow)
re: Tun of Metheglin (ehlert@msuces.canr.msu.edu)
Re: Mead Lover's Digest #344,... (MEADMSTR@aol.com)
Honey, Chile(again), and Smoke(!?) (Steven Rezsutek)
Some questions about my first mead (Sam Shank)
pyment (Dick Dunn)
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------------------------------
Subject: Lemon-ginger metheglin
From: jmiller@genome.wi.mit.edu (Joyce Miller)
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 1994 09:45:23 -0400
LEMON-GINGER METHEGLIN
Ingredients for 5 gallons:
7.1 lbs honey (2.5 qts)
5 lbs sugar
3 Tbs sliced ginger
1- tsp ground mace
1+ tsp fresh rosemary
8 large lemons
4 slices of whole-wheat bread
Vierka Mead Yeast (started)
Procedure:
Dissolve sugar & honey in water, heat, and skim. Just before the boil, add
ginger, mace, rosemary, bread, the grated peel of the lemons. Peel the
pith from the lemons and throw it away. Cut the lemons in half, squeeze
them into the wort, breaking them up into smallish pieces. Put them in the
wort, too. Pasteurize all at about 180F for 20-30 minutes. Force cool,
put all into carboy, top up to 5.5 gallon-mark with pre-boiled and cooled
water, if necessary. Pitch yeast starter.
Comments:
The bread was a wierd idea I had to avoid using yeast nutrient. It
certainly didn't seem to hurt!
09-04-93: O.G. = 1.086 @ 78F = 1.088.
10-07-93: S.G. = 1.028 @ 74F = 1.030. Mild lemon aroma, some bitterness
from the ginger.
10-10-93: Bottled (had seemed to stop bubbling). F.G. = 1.026 @ 68F =
1.027 (before 3/4 cup priming sugar). Tastes okay; young, not too dry
(lemon seems to make it taste drier than SG indicates).
11-01-93: Pretty drinkable, very small amount of bitterness. Should be
really good in 1 month.
08-15-94: This mead won 2nd place in the Metheglin category of the 1994
Mazer Cup Competition.
This recipe was originally for 3 gallons, and it's from:
_Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book, Elizabethan Country House Cooking_, by
Hilary Spurling, Elisabeth Sifton Books-Viking Penguin, New York, 1986.
ISBN 0-670-81592-6.
Elinor was the wife of Sir Richard Fettiplace of Appleton Manor in
Oxfordshire, and she put her recipes in a small handwritten book in 1604.
--Joyce
------------------------------
Subject: Bullingbrook's white Metheglin
From: jmiller@genome.wi.mit.edu (Joyce Miller)
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 1994 09:45:31 -0400
A recipe from Kenelme Digbie, 1669:
The Countess of Bullingbrook's white Metheglin.
Take eight Gallons of Conduit-water, and boil it very well; then
put in as much Honey in it, as will bear an Egge, and stir it well
together. Then set it upon the fire, and put in the whites of four Eggs to
clarifie it; And as the scum riseth, take it off clean: Then put in a
pretty quantity Rosemary, and let it boil, till it tasteth a little of it:
Then with a Scummer take out the Rosemary, as fast as you can, and let it
boil half a quarter of an hour; put it into earthen pans to cool; next
morning put it into a barrel, and put into it a little barm, and an Ounce
of Ginger scraped and sliced; And let it stand a Month or six Weeks. Then
bottle it up close; you must be sure not to let it stand at all in Brass.
<end>
------------------------------
Subject: Elderberry Wine Request
From: grow@sumatra.mcae.stortek.com (Roger Grow)
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 94 08:22:08 -0600
Good day,
I am searching for an elderberry wine recipe.
Either a straight wine or a melomel recipe would
be great.
Insert favorite clever quote here (keep it clean).
TIA,
Roger
------------------------------
Subject: re: Tun of Metheglin
From: ehlert@msuces.canr.msu.edu
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 1994 10:54:19 -0400
>A Receipt to make a Tun of Metheglin.
>
> Take two handfuls of Dock (alias wild Carrot) a reasonable burthen
>of Saxifrage, Wild sage, Blew-button, Scabious, Bettony, Agrimony,
and the listing goes on...
Joyce: Unless something has changed since Digbies time, wild carrot
is not dock. They are two very different herbs.
I was going to take the list of herbs you posted earlier and do a
brief history of each, uses, etc. Maybe it is a good time to do such
a thing. Most of the herbs listed for this metheglin are probably
being used for medicinal. Many of them have little to contribute as
far as aroma or flavor or color. Interesting...
Oh, and thanks for transcribing Digbie. It is very interesting and
soon I will have an electronic copy :-)
Brian Ehlert
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Mead Lover's Digest #344,...
From: MEADMSTR@aol.com
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 94 11:06:30 EDT
>>Subject: Raising PH
>>From: Mark Ottenberg <marko@cap.gwu.edu>
>>Date: Mon, 29 Aug 1994 17:36:24 -0400 (EDT)
>> So, what is a nice optimum ph for a nicely fermenting mead???
>> -- Mark
Wine / mead yeasts ( this does not include beer yeasts ) are optimized
for fermenting in a pH range of 3.0 - 3.8.
------------------------------
Subject: Honey, Chile(again), and Smoke(!?)
From: Steven Rezsutek <S.Rezsutek@baloo.gsfc.nasa.gov>
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 1994 13:56:41 -0400
Greetings,
First off, let me sing a bit of praise for the high quality of the
digest. I've found an incredible wealth of information in the archives.
I'm also enjoying the snippets of Digby that Joyce is sending from time
to time.
I'm a recent subscriber, and a recently begun mead maker, though I've
quite a few years experience making other fermentables :^). In fact, my
first attempt, a Scotch Bonnet (chile) metheglin(?), is fermenting away,
and has been for about 5(?) weeks.
At this point, the beverage is delightfully, yet tolerably, hot. (It has
a nice "nip", but it doesn't burn) . Unfortunately, I can't tell how
much of the fruit aroma/flavor is there, as what might exist is still
obscured (I hope!) by the tastes and smells of an ongoing ferment. I
suspect that it will be pretty subtle, even in the best outcome.
[For the curious: I started at 24 Brix, and added 4 chiles/gallon (I
made 3). The chiles were a variety C.Chinense sold in the Jamacian
markets around DC as simply "hot peppers". I used only the yellow
or orange ones. I estimated the heat by tasting each pepper as I
cut it up and stopping when I'd had enough :-). Epernay-2 yeast.]
At any rate, not being one to give up, I've decided for my next attempt
that "delicacy be damned, full flavors ahead!". The thought of fall,
falling leaves, the smoker puffin' away (<sigh>...), brought to mind
_chipotles_. The only problem I have is, is "which honey?" Buckwheat
seems a good choice, but the combination with smoke may be _too_ much,
and then again, there are a _lot_ of honeys I've yet to taste, so...
I'm looking for advise and/or historical reference on matching honey
with smoked ingredients (ANY smoked ingredients -- the fact that it's a
chile is secondary at this point) as a starting point for my
experiments. Has anyone ever made or tasted a rauch-mead or rauch
braggot?
Any and all thoughts welcome.
Thanks,
Steve
[BTW, I noticed that a while back there was some light discussion on
what to call mead-with-chile. I've been referring to it/them as
"capsaiglin", which I humbly offer as my contribution to the ongoing
debate.]
...................................................................
Steven Rezsutek Steven.M.Rezsutek.1@gsfc.nasa.gov
Nyma / NASA GSFC Code 735.2 Vox: +1 301 286 0897
------------------------------
Subject: Some questions about my first mead
From: sammy@biochemistry.BIOC.CWRU.Edu (Sam Shank)
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 1994 11:57:25 -0600
Hi. I started my first mead during the heat spell we had here in NE Ohio at
the beginning of June, and have a few questions.
I used 15.5lbs clover honey, 4 good sized lemons juiced in a Juice-Man
(juice, rind and all were added), acid blend (probably didn't need it?),
and yeast nutrient (probably didn't need this either?) in 5 gal total
(boiled the honey and some of the water). I used 1 pack red stap pasteur
champagne yeast, and the mead has been racked once.
The OG was 1.092, and the other day I took a reading and it was 1.030.
About 3.5 weeks ago the SG was 1.032.
Is it fermenting too slowly now? Is it stuck, or is this characteristic of
meads-- a slow fermentation towards the end? I have not seen any air
bubbles coming out of the air lock.
There is no noticable yeast cake on the bottom now, but there was when I
racked it the first time. Should this tell me something or not?
Should I rack it again to re-aerate or not? I am not sure wether this will
be beneficial or not.
I have not measured my pH, but plan to tonight.
My plan of action is to measure the pH tonight, and decide if this is
effecting it. Then decide wether or not I need to pitch some more yeast or
not.
ANY suggestions/comments are appreciated.
Also, one more quickie: what exactly is in the yeast nutrient? I assume
some ammonium chloride maybe? and potassium phthalate? sodium phosphate?
There must be a nitrogen source of some kind in there? Which do you perfer,
and how much do you add?
Thanks,
Sam Shank sammy@biochemistry.cwru.edu sls16@pop.cwru.edu
------------------------------
Subject: pyment
From: rcd@raven.eklektix.com (Dick Dunn)
Date: 31 Aug 94 23:21:06 MDT (Wed)
punnishment [sic]...
One of the curious rituals of the wine world is "Nouveau Beaujolais": Each
year, France's Beaujolais region turns out some very young wines. In the
same year as the harvest, wines are released at the end of November (the
actual earliest release date governed by law) and there is a big party-
thing to celebrate these young wines. They're fresh and fruity--ready to
drink because they're made young--and it can be a lot of fun.
For a while it got trendy, and of course this made the prices spiral up to
where it was silly to play the game. ($10 US is OK for a good mid-range
wine with some character and a bit of depth, but not for vintage-last-week.)
The last couple years it started to lose the trendiness and prices backed
down to sane levels, where it could be fun again.
Last week I started a pyment (grape mead) from a bunch of grapes from
friends' parents vines, and this year's honey from orchards. It's coming
along *very* fast...I racked it two days ago at 1008, and I expect to be
able to bottle it in a few more weeks. So we might have a pyment, vintage
the current year, to serve at the same time the Nouveau Beaujolais hits the
stores.
I figure to call ours Nouveau Bee-jollies.
---
Dick Dunn rcd@eklektix.com -or- raven!rcd Boulder, Colorado USA
...Simpler is better.
------------------------------
End of Mead Lover's Digest #345
