Adventures With Mead

In other far less heavy news, perhaps I should also report on some of the projects that have cheered me up as of late, just to mix things up. After all, you can't serve chipped beef for lunch EVERY day (well, actually, the Bubonic Plague Luncheonette can, but that's because it's run by a pack of hairy assholes who know that you keep coming back anyways, no matter how bad the food is).

After hosting Von Butternuts' 30th birthday bash last Friday, I noticed that my whole apartment had an odor to it. It smelled like a goth club (that is to say, it smelled like father-hating and shame). The funk was explained as I cleaned the entire place up and found about 3 empty packs of Djarum Blacks (and I will note for the record that I was not offered a single one) and an overflowing ash tray. I decided then and there that I had to somehow rid my apartment of that smell, and Febreeze just wasn't cutting it. The only sensible thing to do in this case was to overpower it with the smell of warm honey and almonds - in other words... it was mead time.

I finally started that batch of almond mead I have been planning on doing for almost 2 months now. Everything smelled so good while I was rendering the honey that I almost thought it was a shame to put it away for 3 weeks. I wanted a sweeter mead to compliment the flavor of the almond, since I didn't add any other spices. As such, I used a little over 3.5 lbs of honey for a gallon, as opposed to the recommended 2.5 for something lighter and more dry. This right here is what we will call an experiment, folks. In addition, I also dumped in two 1 oz bottles of pure almond extract, after cracking the seals on them for a week to let some of the carrier alcohol evaporate off, leaving the oils behind (as I had read from several sources that almond extract becomes more concentrated over time as the alcohol evaporates - once again, this could be a lie, but this is an experiment, folks). It could be a complete and utter bomb (but thankfully, only a one-gallon bomb).

Of course, as with all new mead recipes, there has to be some randomization factor that has an unknown impact on the final outcome, just to keep things interesting. My latest creation, was no exception.

I was attempting to balance the water line between the two bulbs in the toilet-pipe shaped gas-trap I was using (I'm pretty sure they just call it an S-shape, but in any case, like those better than the straight gas traps), and so I asked Tom (who claims to have had some brewing experience before) for some advice. He came over to the jug, forced around some adjustments, before becoming perplexed by the pressure differential, then accidentally pushed the cork all the way into the jug. DEET DEE DEE.

One coat hanger and one corkscrew later, after a huge amount of spazzing on his part (it was really all on his end. I think he was upset because he screwed up my project and because normally he is not that ham-handedly retarded. I, on the other hand, wasn't really actually upset at all - in fact, I found the whole thing quite high-larious), the cork went all the way to the bottom of the mead and forced me to sterilize my other one-gallon hill-folk jug and siphon everything out of the corky one into a pot, and then siphon everything back into the dry sterilized jug. Of course, this was after I'd tossed in the activated yeast and the nutrient, so I wasn't sure how much of it actually remained behind in the pot and the jug. I ended up dumping in another half teaspoonful of nutrient and the rest of the packet of yeast once the mead was situated in the new jug. I don't know if that was the right thing to do, or if this batch is going to end up being a yeast-bomb, but at least I will have something to warn people about when we crack open the first bottle several months from now. At the very least, I am hoping for a mead worthy of the appellation "Arschwein", as it is a name I cherish von ganzem Herzen (OH HEY! Look at that! I'm learning more German!).

Further bulletins as events warrant.