As I am writing this, I am listening to 'Sunday Baroque' on National Public Radio, and sipping a nice, hot, heavenly cup of choclatey coffee... Outside, it looks as though the sun is doing its very best to poke its face through the clouds and lift our spirits a bit..
This morning, I am writing letters, posting to this blog, and working on some writing assignments for my coursework.. in a bit, I will go outside and wander about in my garden and see what's been happening through the week that I may have missed. Right now, we have snowdrops, daffodills, forsythia and crocuses blooming.. the irises and hyacinths aren't that far behind... and within a month or two, this place will be a profusion of flowers, butterflies, dragonflies, birds, and bees! There is noplace like Thistlebright Cottage in the spring and early summer, and its a time that I look forward to all winter long... through the winter, our thoughts have turned inward, and we have dreamed, and planned, and schemed... now, after the spring equinox, all of these dreams naturally turn outward, and we begin to put our plans into action and give them substance... it's the most hopeful time of the year, with everything new, and clean, and young! It seems as though anything is possible, and, at least for now, it is!! I can feel myself waking up, stretching, and climbing out of the long winter hibernation... Where I have just wanted to curl up under a warm blanket with a book, I am now feeling the urge to get out, breathe some fresh air, and move around! I want to feel the pleasant ache in my muscles after a day of working out in the garden... I long to smell the fecund soil, dig my fingers into it... and watch the world come alive all around me!
Later on today, we plan on 'racking' the two batches of mead that we have going right now.. We have ten gallons of mead fermenting away... the wee yeasties have been working their little yeasty asses off turning honey into mead for us... this creates a sediment as the cloudy mixture settles out... racking is the process of siphoning off the clear part, emptying the sediment (which we pour onto our plants! It is extremely rich in vitamins and nutrients, and the plants love it!! They send us thank you cards in the mail... okay, that last part was a small exageration, but they do love it, and they show it by thriving and growing tall and lush and lovely!!), and transferring the clear golden mead back into the carboys (five gallon glass bottles - they're called carboys. For my fellow geeks, here is the etymology: Persian qarAba, from Arabic qarrAbah demijohn
: a large container for liquids - I know.. I'm pathetic... I can't help it, I need to know everything.. I have no explanation.. Its how I was put together..).
ANYway.. after about seven more months, and perhaps another racking, depending upon the clarity of the mead, we will then bottle the stuff. It is wonderful, delicious, and we made it with the help of gazzilions of flowers, scads of bees, tetrabazzillions of wee yeastie-beasties, and Brogan! Brogan is a human. We are clanfolk (that is the Scottish/Irish Clan - meaning 'Children' - not the hateful kind that begins with K - ick!) and we make mead together... its a family thing.
We drink it for fun, we use it as a sacrament, and I can't say enough good things about it. Ingredients? Honey. Water. Yeast. (You can add other stuff if you like.. for different results, and we do.. but this is the recipe for basic mead.)
Mead, by the way, is the root word for 'Medicine' (SVN/PRN - are you listening?!). This was most likely the very first alcoholic beverage known to man, and probably one of the first medicines.
Most likely, herbs and other stuff was steeped in it and it was used to heal the poor sick proto-humans.
In Bear's mind, here's how it went down; Once upon a time, there was a tree.
This was a very special tree, because it had a hollow bit inside. The bees particularly liked this tree, because it was extremely well suited as a place to build a hive, raise a huge family, and produce honey!
One day, a sky god happened to be floating by, got stung by a bee, which pissed him or her off immensely, and which cause him or her to summon up a huge lightning storm, striking the tree with a big fat bolt of lightning, and fixing the wee verminous bees little asses for buzzing about and stinging gods for no good reason! (Who do they think they are, anyway?!)
The tree slit neatly in half, fell down, and rain poured into the open basin formed by the top of the tree falling over. (All of the bees who managed to survive the initial cataclysm packed up their shit, and headed for the hills... leaving the ruins of their happy home behind. Poor, sad, fresh little bees!)
The fresh rainwater hung out in the tree, mixed with the honey that was left behind, and basically, got fairly well acquainted.
When the storm passed, and the sun came out, it dried stuff out just well enough for yeast spores to float about in the air. One little spore (who was to grow into a little yeast named 'Roger') landed smack in the mixture of honey and water... along with perhaps ten million of his brothers, sisters, and cousins... and they all settled down to a nice yeast-feast of sugar.
Being yeasties, they produced a waste product called 'ethanol' . This process took place over the course of months, and the water and honey was transformed into the very first batch of mead!
Not long afterwards, a Cro-Magnon, not inappropriately named 'Grog' came tramping by looking for something to kill, and, seeing the open tree basin, decided to get a drink. He drank the water, which was a tad strange, but quite tasty, and decided to drink a bit more!
THIS water made him very happy!
Being a generous, happy, sharing type of lad, he went and got the rest of his tribe, and they all drank the yummy water, tied on the first drunk in the history of mankind, and everybody got laid!
Grog, being pretty quick on the uptake decided that getting smashed and then laid, was almost as good as killing something with a spear or crunching its skull in with a boulder. He saw the remnants of honeycomb floating around in the water, and figured that the honey had something to do with it. So. Grog, and perhaps nine hundred generations of his ancestors pooled their brainpower together over a couple thousand years, and managed to figure out how to replicate this process, and the art of brewing was born!!
I, myself am a descendant of good old Grog, and we brew mead unto this very day!! As a matter of fact, I myself have lofty plans of drinking mead and getting laid in the not too distant future. Because this, my friends, is a much better plan than killing something with a spear, no matter which way you look at it!!
Got Mead?
Sláinte Mhaith! (Good Health!)
2 comments:
Listening loud and clear!
This, BTW, was totally hilarious, "Being a generous, happy, sharing type of lad, he went and got the rest of his tribe, and they all drank the yummy water, tied on the first drunk in the history of mankind, and everybody got laid!"
Thanks to you I learned something today. Very interesting.
Me thinks I must try me a spot of mead someday and find me a Grog so we both can revel in the happiness of the results...LOL
.... Or... you can *make* some!! It only takes ten pounds of honey, some yeast, some bleach (to clean everything with!), a couple of carboys and airlocks and tubes and thermometers and somesuch nonsense... and about 8 or 9 months! Voila! Mead!! Yummy!! We make it right on the stove!
Most commercial products labled 'mead' are actually mead/wine. Reason being that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms grants three licenses for commercial manufacturers/distributors, Brewery, Winery, and Distillery.
You must have a building and you must submit a recipe and a sample before the license is granted. The sample is tested to ensure that it includes what is in the recipe. Now here's the rub; If you are a brewery, your recipe *must* include malt and hops. If you are a winery, your recipe *must* include grapes (there *is* a mead in which grapes are included, its called a 'pyment' - but the ratios of ingredients don't meet the licensing specs), if you are a distillery, there are *all sorts* of strict requirements, but, the main problem with this is that mead is not distilled, only fermented. So... mead slips between the cracks for the commercial folks. (Unless something has changed in the licensing requirements lately....).
The good news is that as a private citizen, you are allowed to produce 100 gallons per person per year. (That's about 17.53426 ounces of mead per day for the year, in case you needed to know.. .. .. as if....)
Basic, garden variety mead is made with honey, water, and yeast.. plus some TLC. That's it. That's all. Thank you for playing. Good evening.
Post a Comment