Mead Lover's Digest #83 Fri 05 February 1993


Forum for Discussion of Mead Brewing and Consuming
John Dilley, Digest Coordinator

Contents:

Metheglin spices (Christina Callihan)
apple juice (Dick Dunn)


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Date: Thu, 4 Feb 93 9:41:55 PST 
From: Christina Callihan <c-chan@mcl.mcl.ucsb.edu>
Subject: Metheglin spices

I've been considering trying my hand at making a metheglin and was
wondering which spices might be the favorites of you fellow meaders.
I was thinking of trying something other than the "standard" cinnamon,
nutmeg or ginger, or maybe just adding something different to one of
the above. Has anybody tried allspice in mead? Cardamom? Something
else? Any recommendations on honey proportions to go with certain
spices?

Thanks in advance,


If You Know What | Christina M. Callihan | Doing STRANGE THINGS
You're Doing, | AKA C-chan, Bwee, Chrystal- | in the name of Art,

It's Not | Elf & Who Knows What Else | and STRANGER THINGS
Research! | (I sure don't) | in the name of

=> => => => => | c-chan@mcl.ucsb.edu | CHOCOLATE


When life gets weird, the weird get a life. 🙂


U.C. Santa Barbara doesn't know that I exist, let alone my opinions!


Date: 4 Feb 93 23:30:34 MST (Thu) 
From: rcd@raven.eklektix.com (Dick Dunn)
Subject: apple juice

I have some cyser that's been blorping along for almost two months…it's
close to fermented out, and it seemed a bit bland, so I had been wanting to
add a bit of tang to it. I thought a tart apple juice would do the trick…
after several rackings, there was too much headspace anyway, so I could
afford to add a substantial amount of some juice.

Try to find an apple juice that you can tell will be tart. Try to get
any sort of clue what apples are used to make a commercial apple juice!
Obviously I was looking in the healthy-food stores so that I'd get non-
preserved minimally-processed juice…and in fact the labels tell you a lot
about what they do (or don't) to the apples and the juice, where they're
grown, how they're grown and picked, and on and on…but nothing more about
the varieties than "a carefully selected blend of juices from sweet and
tart apples" and usually less than that. Puzzling…there are hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of different varieties of apples. The range of tastes
is astonishing, yet once they're pressed, they're all anonymous.

(sort of like walking up to the meat counter and seeing cuts of red meat
accompanied by the life history of the animal from which they were cut, but
without any indication of whether they're beef, pork, or lamb…)

But one recent article in HBD pointed me to a frozen juice by Seneca that
is identified as all from Granny Smith apples…just what I wanted for
tartness. I'll see if it works out as I expect, but it's nice to know of
one source of apple juice from identified varieties of apples. Are there
others?

Dick Dunn rcd@eklektix.com -or- raven!rcd Boulder, Colorado USA

…Relax…don't worry…have a homebrew (or mead)



End of Mead Lover's Digest