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Mead Lovers Digest #0930
From: mead-request@talisman.com
Errors-To: mead-errors@talisman.com
Reply-To: mead@talisman.com
To: mead-list@talisman.com
Subject: Mead Lover's Digest #930, 20 May 2002
Mead Lover's Digest #930 20 May 2002
Forum for Discussion of Mead Making and Consuming
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
A couple of questions from an aspiring mead-maker ("Doug Essinger-Hileman")
Mead and the New York City Homebrewers Guild (Phil)
("Scott N. Slatton")
Re: Mead Lover's Digest #929, 13 May 2002 (Arcturus)
Preserving rose petals? (Melinda Merkel Iyer)
Dehydration (nutwood@intas.net.au)
Dehydration and the olden days ("Peter Nolan")
replies to postings ("mmeleen")
NOTE: Digest appears when there is enough material to send one.
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: A couple of questions from an aspiring mead-maker
From: "Doug Essinger-Hileman" <revref@interior-castle.org>
Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 14:31:01 -0400
I am a beer brewer of intermediate skill, and a winemaker of moderate skill,
and have determined to make my first mead. Your opinions and
advice will be greatly appreciated.
Opinions first, please. In searching through the recipes available, I
have found that some recipes seek to give the mead acid and body
through the use of natural ingredients such as lemon zest and tea. One recipe
I have found along this line, for 5 gallons, is:
12 lbs honey
Zest of 5 lemons
5 tablespoons strong brewed tea
1 1/2 tsp grape tannin
4 tsp yeast energizer
1 packet Yeast
Other recipes favor adding acid and tannin through chemical additives. One
recipe for 5 gallons along this line is:
12 lbs honey
15 tsp malic acid
7 1/2 tsp tartaric acid
1 1/2 tsp grape tannin
4 tsp yeast energizer
1 packet Yeast
So, who has opinions on whether one way or the other is better?
Also, what is your favorite yeast to use in a basic mead?
Now advice. My parents will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary
in August of 2003. It is my intention to make this mead as a gift to
be served at the dinner that is being planned. Does this give enough
time for the mead to finish?
TIA
Doug
------------------------------
Subject: Mead and the New York City Homebrewers Guild
From: Phil <dogglebe@yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 11:45:36 -0700 (PDT)
In continuing with tradition, mead will be the theme
of the month for the New York City Homebrewers Guild.
At its monthly meeting, on Tuesday, May 21, guild
member and meadist extrordinaire Eileen Coles will
discuss the pleasures and secret behind the making of
mead. All are invited to attend.
The meeting will take place on Tuesday, May 21st at
Brewsky's (located at 41 East 7th Street) at 7:30pm.
Bring your friends. Bring your homebrew (and mead).
New members are always welcome.
Phil
=====
visit the New York City Homebrewers Guild website:
http://www.pipeline.com/~dogglebe/nychg.html
------------------------------
Subject:
From: "Scott N. Slatton" <sktyby@bellsouth.net>
Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 16:52:44 -0500
I just made my very first mead. I made a 3 galllon batch with 5 pounds
ov honey and 2 pounds of fresh strawberries(pureed). Using my home
beermaking experience and some of my methods of not using any chemicals,
I added water and champaign yeast, and thats all.The stuff started
fermenting almost imediatly and went strong for five days then pretty
much stopped on day seven. I checked it with the hydro and came up with
a reading of 1.003. My question is this. Having read several articals
and beer books with a few mead recipes at the end i thopught this stuff
was supposed to ferment for months. but my result was similar to the
primary fermentation of beer. I have racked into 2.5 gals off mead total
and i'm just going to put it up to clear. Any comments or suggestions,
or just to let me know if I'm on the right track to making good mead,
please let me know. thanks,
scott
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Mead Lover's Digest #929, 13 May 2002
From: Arcturus <arcturus@accesscomm.ca>
Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 16:08:37 -0600
I had a friend ask me a very interesting question that I would like to put
to the group: Has anyone ever done a Mead flavored with pine needles? Has
anyone heard of such a thing? What are everyone's predictions/experiences
with what such a Mead would be like?
Also, nobody chose to take a swig of my raspberry juice question, so I want
to pose it again: How can I guess at the sugar content of a juice added just
before bottling to gauge whether or not I will get glass grenades?
- --
*--Arcturus--*
A.K.A. Steve Wilde
My problem may be ignorance or apathy
Frankly, I don't know and I don't care.
------------------------------
Subject: Preserving rose petals?
From: Melinda Merkel Iyer <myn@iyerfamily.net>
Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 19:57:06 -0700
All the recent talk of rose petal mead (rhodomel) has me interested.
I have four heirloom rose bushes with very fragrant petals.
Unfortunately, four bushes is not enough to get me a bumper crop of
petals for brewing. What's the best way of preserving them for later
use in brewing? Should I dry or freeze them? Any suggestions?
thx,
Melinda
- --
Melinda Merkel Iyer
http://www.iyerfamily.net/
------------------------------
Subject: Dehydration
From: nutwood@intas.net.au
Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 19:42:54 +1000
On 13 May 2002, at 10:13, mead-request@talisman.com wrote:
>
> One figure I've seen indicates that approx. 1
> milliliter of alcohol will inhibit ADH enough to
> cause the loss of 10 milliliters of water. That's
> likely only a rough guesstimate, given the complex
> variations in body regulation of water going on
I'm interested to read the above as it tends to imply that if you're
drinking liquid with less than 10% alcohol you're actually gaining
water. In sillier days I used to go on caving expeditions to other
places. We used to spend the day caving hard (and drinking little)
and the nights drinking good tasmanian beer (best in the world!) to
excess and then repeating the process the next day for a couple of
weeks. The only time I ever suffered dehydration symptoms (and
I'm familiar with them) was when I went to bed early instead of
drinking till the small hours. This lead me to believe that I was
actually getting my fluid intake from the evening beer fest. I have
been much scoffed at for this belief.
Given that beer is around 4 -5% and I was drinking a considerable
quantity every night (3 -4 litres) would I be wrong in assuming an
actual net gain of H2O of 1.5 - 2litres.
If this is correct why shouldn't earlier drinkers of fairly low alcohol
drinks have got along very nicely thank you on a diet of alcoholic
drinks.
By the way I also don't see any reason why they shouldn't have
produced mead just as good (or better) as ours. They may not have
known why a particular result was achieved but they were just as
smart and as inquiring as us and nothing beats lots of
experimentation and the time to do it in!
Cheers Steve
------------------------------
Subject: Dehydration and the olden days
From: "Peter Nolan" <pnolan@bigpond.com>
Date: Tue, 14 May 2002 23:51:22 -0500
Greetings,
I have been following this discussion with interest and would like to
add a couple of points:
1. "The land of milk and honey" was an impossible ideal. Honey was not
a such a plentiful resource that people could afford to make strong mead
whenever they wanted. The colony in the skep was destroyed each year
and a new hive depended on the luck of finding a spring swarm. Only
your very well off Vikings were drinking themselves silly on a regular
basis. The rest would have to wait till payday.
You get an idea of how valuable (scarce) the resource was when you see
how many times the comb was washed - till it must have been producing
only a very very weak solution of fermentable sugar. Not many people
getting drunk on this small mead, I think. Malt took over very quickly
as a the main source of sugar in non grape areas as soon as agriculture
became efficient enough to produce reasonably cheap barley.
I suspect that the image of the viking in the mead hall was rather like
the image of Christians loving one another, something to aspire to,
rather than the stuff of everyday life.
2. There are zillions of people today who are getting on with badly
contaminated water. They don't drink alcohol instead of the water; they
just die more frequently, especially the children.
A little over a hundred years ago the last cholera epidemic swept
through Melbourne, and I imagine that North American cities still had
outbreaks then. It is only a recent phemomena that parents expected
that all their children would survive. If you had a family of ten
children you could reasonably expect that more than half of them would
die, not least because of diseases associated with bad water.
------------------------------
Subject: replies to postings
From: "mmeleen" <mmeleen@tiac.net>
Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 08:02:30 -0400
Hello all,
Just wanted to thank all who sent replies to my many questions. I found =
your replies very helpful, and plan to try reformulating a few recipes =
to see how it goes.
Thank you again!
Mel
------------------------------
End of Mead Lover's Digest #930
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