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Subject: Mead Lover's Digest #1030, 28 July 2003

Mead Lover's Digest #1030 Mon 28 July 2003

 

Forum for Discussion of Mead Making and Consuming
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor

 

Contents:

Pepper mead ("Chuck Mongiovi")
bottling teas (Michael Hetzel)
Pepper Mead ("Ariel")
Re: Mead Lover's Digest #1029, 21 July 2003 (Lofty@aol.com)
Re: A word for the day ("Dan McFeeley")

 

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Subject: Pepper mead
 From: "Chuck Mongiovi" <mongiovi@rcn.com>
 Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 13:39:09 -0400
 

Red pepper mead seems to be the consensus .. I'll tell y'all how it
turns out in about 9 months or so 😉

• -Chuck

 

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Subject: bottling teas
 From: Michael Hetzel <hetzelnc@yahoo.com>
 Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 13:46:28 -0700 (PDT)
 

Just found this digest, and haven't had the chance to look through all
the articles that matched my search criteria (too general probably) so
please bare with me. Besides, there doesn't seem to be much traffic on
the list so here's a seed for discussion.

I have two meads ready to be bottled, one a strawberry melomel and the
other straight orange blossom. I'm planning on doing sparkling with
both, and got inspired by Papazian's homebrew book to split the
batches. Specifically, I'm planning to prime both batches (5 gal and 3
gal respectively) with 2/3 cup corn sugar for the sparkles, bottle half
the batch and add some spices via a strong ginger tea for remainder.
Currently, my plan is to grate 1-2 ounces of fresh ginger, boil some
water, and throw them together with some lemongrass tea bags and let
steep for 5-10 min. I'm just making up the steps as I go along, so
please feel free to suggest alternative options.

My questions for the collective:
Have you tried this sort of batch splitting with success? How much
ginger would you use for a 2.5 gal batch, and would it require another
handful of months to mellow out? Most recipes I've seen add the ginger
in the 'boil'.. will this last minute addition (especially the ginger)
lead to cloudiness in the bottle?

Thanks,
Mike Hetzel

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Subject: Pepper Mead
 From: "Ariel" <niffleheim@earthlink.net>
 Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 18:48:4 -0700
 

Well I don't know about bell peppers, but I made a very nice habanero mead.
It's a very specialized taste I'd imagine, but habaneros have a very nice
flavor aside from being hot enough to melt eyebrows. It was nice and sweet
with a really nice hot pepper burn. Very complex flavor. I'm down to my
last two bottles and as soon as my current batch of mead is done, I've
planned to make another batch of the Loki's Kiss…s'what I named the hot
stuff.

Subject: RE: Pepper mead
 > From: "Janis Gross" <totallygross@hotmail.com>
 > Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 13:33:17 -0600
 

>

> I have tasted a red bell pepper mead that was quite good! I haven't made
> one myself, and I'm not sure who was the meadmaker of the one I tasted. He
> just showed up at our homebrew club's mead meeting about 5 years ago with a
> bomber bottle of this mead to taste. The pepper and honey aroma were
> tantalizing and the taste was well balanced between the two as well. If I
> were going to make a pepper mead, this is the one I'd do. It was
> delightful.

>

> Cheers!

>

> Janis

>

 

• — Ariel

• — niffleheim@earthlink.net

 

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Subject: Re: Mead Lover's Digest #1029, 21 July 2003
 From: Lofty@aol.com
 Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 09:47:19 EDT
 

Here is a question about Camden tablets and temperature .

The honey and water are heated on the stove and the surface is skimmed.
1. at what temperature is this mixture brought?
2. how long is it maintained at this temperature ?
3. It's then cooled. At what temperature do we add camden tablets?

Dr. Jim- Philly

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Subject: Re: A word for the day
 From: "Dan McFeeley" <mcfeeley@keynet.net>
 Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 13:57:05 -0500
 

On Mon, 14 Jul 2003, in MLD 1028, Chris Hadden wrote:

>Dan, please do us a favor and write a book detailing all of these
>wonderful morsels you've found during your research over the
>years. It would be an excellent complement to "The Compleat
>Meadmaker." As much as I like "Brewing Mead," I've been
>waiting for a more encompassing history of mead.

Thanks much for the compliment — it's appreciated. I have been
working on small articles, one historical essay published in Bee
Culture with a couple of others in preparation. I've considered a
book for some time in the future, but hadn't given it serious thought
other than a vague outline in my head. I'll take this as a prompting
in the right direction and give additional attention to organizing the
material I've got put together with that goal in mind. I think it would
take quite some time to put something together. Most of the material
I've been able to gather is scattered, focusing on select topics.

There's a lot of gaps that would have to be filled in. Mead histories
found in the more familiar books such as Gayre's Wassail! In Mazers
of Mead, or Acton & Duncan's Making Mead are not just Eurocentric,
they are myopically Eurocentric. The lore and traditions surrounding
meadmaking they write about are much broader. They are essentially
a part of European lore and traditions surrounding beekeeping, the
agricultural cycles and associated festivals, and the making of alcoholic
beverages overall, not just meadmaking. The warrior culture of the Celts,
Vikings, and Anglo-Saxons that tends to be promient in many mead
histories is only a small segment of that.

Third world cultures need considerable attention. You can catch a glimpse
of what the most ancient forms of honey brews may have been like by
looking at examples such as Ethiopian Tej. This may surprise everyone,
but what we think of as "mead," i.e., a fermented drink made from
honey, was not the first fermented beverage. The oldest archaeological
artifacts showing the use of honey in the making of fermented beverages
were mixtures of herbs, cereals, and honey. What we would call a traditional
mead seems to have emerged some time later. I think you can say with
reasonable accuracy that honey was first used in the beginnings of the
making of alcoholic beverages, but mead itself was not the first.

I'll keep working on it!

<><><><><><><><><><>
<><><><><><><><>

Dan McFeeley

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End of Mead Lover's Digest #1030

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