In Praise of Fermentation

[Elok]

So, my wife and I bottled our first successful batch of mead a few weeks ago. Okay, technically it's something called tej, or Ethiopian honey-wine, but mead is simpler. We had one batch come out as basically the most generic booze imaginable, which is weird since we were trying for a metheglin with that batch. The wife insists it was the "inferior" honey we used that time.

Anyway, the latest batch is quite nice, like a good white wine only (naturally) with no fruity notes and a hint of honey flavor instead. If I were one of those liquor experts I'd probably say it has hints of chocolate, turpentine and squirrel piss or something. As I'm not, I'll only say: yum. And to top it off, I opened one of our bottles last night and POP! Bubbling mead. Hell yeah.

I asked my wife (who's the "expert" here) if maybe we could make whisky next, but she says good oak barrels are hard to come by. Regardless, homebrewing

[SlowwHand]

Squirrel piss, huh? Well, congratulations on that.

[Al B. Sure!]

Moonshine! Right up Sloww's back alley!

[Dinner]

I need to do another batch of home brew. Over at CG I've been mulling over the idea of trying to make some authentic medieval English hedgerow mead.

http://www.counterglow.com/forum/showthread.php?t=44620

[Thoth]

If you need a taste tester for the mead, send me a bottle and I'll be happy to try it out for you.

[Elok]

I don't think we have a recipe for anything known as "hedgerow mead." Our booze is about as simple as it gets--one part honey to four parts water, I think. We discovered by accident that grated lemon peel will somehow clarify the beverage without noticeably altering the flavor. It bonds with the crud in the beverage and sinks to the bottom of the container, so you have double the sediment but a more attractive yellow beverage. Maybe it'll work for your stuff too. Anyway, good luck with your burdock-hunt, Oerdin!

[DanS]

I'm curious. Have you heard of anybody fermenting maple syrup?

[Elok]

I haven't, but I'm by no means an expert. Certainly there's no reason I can think of why it shouldn't ferment; it's pure sugar. I'm not sure it'd be what I'd call tasty, though. Maybe if you used grade A syrup--I normally eat B on pancakes, because it has a richer maple flavor, but that might not be a good thing here.

[DanS]

I guess using sap before it is boiled all the way down to maple syrup would be a better route.

[Jon Miller]

You can use rich molasses too.

JM

[Elok]

Well, I certainly wouldn't suggest fermenting pure syrup. Our mead is only one-fifth honey, IIRC (the rest is water). A similar treatment should work for maple-booze, and be much simpler than procuring raw sap. As for molasses, that would be rum. Well, weak rum, anyway.

[Elok]

Turns out my wife has such a recipe in one of her books--"Sacred and herbal healing beers," by Stephen Harrod Buhner. Seems early Americans (not Natives, European settlers) sometimes got hammered off fermented maple. There are three recipes. One, from 1846, calls for "spruce essence," another starts with raw sap, and here's the third:

MAPLE BEER

3 lbs maple syrup
1 gal water
yeast

Heat water until maple syrup will dissolve. Cool to 70 F, pour into fermenter, add yeast and ferment until complete. Prime bottles, fill, and cap. Ready to drink in seven days.

Yeah, pretty terse. I assume those "seven days" are after bottling, because it'll take a good sight longer for the yeast to stop kicking. Our mead took several months; then again, our mead had no yeast added, we took in the wild varieties. In any case, bottling prematurely can lead to exploded bottles, so CYA. The book doesn't say anything about flavor, but I'd forgotten that "birch beer" (the preceding recipe) was originally an actual beer, so hey, why not?

[Hauldren Collider]

Is this technically moonshine?

[Dinner]

Turns out my wife has such a recipe in one of her books--"Sacred and herbal healing beers," by Stephen Harrod Buhner. Seems early Americans (not Natives, European settlers) sometimes got hammered off fermented maple. There are three recipes. One, from 1846, calls for "spruce essence," another starts with raw sap, and here's the third:

MAPLE BEER

3 lbs maple syrup
1 gal water
yeast

Heat water until maple syrup will dissolve. Cool to 70 F, pour into fermenter, add yeast and ferment until complete. Prime bottles, fill, and cap. Ready to drink in seven days.

Yeah, pretty terse. I assume those "seven days" are after bottling, because it'll take a good sight longer for the yeast to stop kicking. Our mead took several months; then again, our mead had no yeast added, we took in the wild varieties. In any case, bottling prematurely can lead to exploded bottles, so CYA. The book doesn't say anything about flavor, but I'd forgotten that "birch beer" (the preceding recipe) was originally an actual beer, so hey, why not?

Birch was used for just about everything in traditional European folk medicine and folk crafts. It even has asprine in the bark so peasants used to chew on the bark or make tea out of the bark to cure minor aches and pains.

[laurentius]

Yeah generally mead is good for you. Just filter it well. Here in Finland its the traditional New Year and mead is of course the drink of the season.