Jacob Galley writes on Rue, a new topic,

• I have a little rue plant [soon to be a big rue plant? DW] , and I love the

aromatic, bitter flavor of

• the leaves.

I too love rue. I have never tried to make anything of it, but soaking the
leaves in wine or mead is very good. It gives a nice bitter flavor.

Wormwood (in moderation) is also good for this. For a little cucumber

flavor and lots of cheer, float some borage flowers on top.

CAUTION:
Many people have very strong reaction to rue if it gets on the skin and the
skin then gets exposed to sunlight. My wife brushed against the rue plant a
couple of years ago and got huge oozing blisters on her arm. It has taken a
couple of years for the scars to go away. In short, don't put rue into
anyone's cup without assurance that they don't have problems with it.
Dale

David Prescott- Lprescot@sover.net writes:

>in MLD428, Sam Bennett writes:

Actually that was me that wrote the following

>>"Light raisins are sulfphited. Getting a ferment started with these things in
>>the must is a bitch. The one time I used them (dandelion wine) it took a week
>>and 3 pitchings before there was any activity."

>Shouldn't sulfites be easily washed off by hand prior to adding to the must?

I tried soaking some light raisins for about 10 minutes in warm water then
rinsing them. Then I put some in with the usual mixture for yeast starter.
There was no activity. So if sulphite *can* be washed off, it takes more than
a 10 minute soak in warm water.

>Does anyone know if they exist on other fruits… for example, the commercial
>blueberries that I just (washed and) used for a melomel? I like to think that

To my knowledge, whole, fresh fruit is not sulphited. If these were dried
blueberries, then they may have been sulphited. If the ferment took off
without any problems, then your blueberries almost certainly weren't sulphited.

mattm@teleport.com (Matt Maples) writes:
>I substitute 1 cup white wine concentrate for a lb of light rasins.

Thanks! Is there any reason light grape juice concentrate (like Welch's)
wouldn't work also?

As a (slightly) related note, don't have a brain cramp like I did and decide to
use the light raisins in raisin bread, since you can't use them for wine.
Bread yeast can't deal with the sulphite any more than wine yeast (duh). Of
course this didn't occur to me until I took the resulting mess out of the bread
machine.

• —

Joel Stave
stave@ctron.com

re a couple of comments in the last digest about measuring:
> Finally, how do you measure accurately? Careful distillation (for
> scientific purposes only, wherein any alcohol produced is discarded 🙂
> can be used…
…and later…
> lets see… we could fractionally distill it and measure out the
> resulting brandy…. not that you'd want to do this to drink as we all
> know that would be illegal…. in the US anyway….

I had thought along these lines in the past, but came to the conclusion
that I don't even want to *think* about having anything that looks remotely
like a distillation setup. (Go ahead, call me paranoid.)

Someone suggested that you could measure by a sort-of-reversed process:
instead of extracting the alcohol and measuring it, just boil the alcohol
out of a sample, with readings before and after. In slightly more detail:
measure a sample–either take SG or weigh a known volume. Heat it enough
to drive off all the alcohol. (You can tell by watching the temp–it will
climb until you hit the bp of ethanol, hang there a bit while that boils
off, then start climbing again.) Afterward, either take a second SG
reading, or reconstitute to the original volume and weigh again to
calculate the amount of alcohol that was replaced with water.

NOW…in theory this makes sense, but I haven't tried it and I don't know
whether it is sufficiently accurate in practice. Anyone?

• —

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

…Simpler is better.

An alcohol determination can be done quite accurately using

distillation. Put a known amount of mead/wine etc. (say 200 ml.) into a
flask connected to a condensor and heat until the temp. of the vapours
coming out of the flask and entering the condensor have reached 212 F (100
C). At this point the vapour coming off the liquid is almost entirely
water as water's boiling point is 212 F (100 C) and ethanol's is much
lower. Take the condensed liquid and make up to the original volume with
distilled water. Measure the specific gravity and read the ethanol
concentration from a table. This is the procedure used commonly in
industry to determine % alcohol by volume. Unfortunately I don't have this
table any more as it was many years ago that I did this in a food analysis
lab course.

Eric Urquhart, Centre for Pest Management,
Department of Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University,
Burnaby B.C. CANADA V5A 1S6
e-mail: eurquhar@sfu.ca

I am currently working on a project tracing the history of mead from the
ancient to the present. My sources are the literature and mythology of any and
all cultures. If you know of a mention of mead or any mead lore anywhere,
please contact me and tell me about it. Thanks in advance.

Gregg Carrier
stu_gjcarrie@vax1.acs.jmu.edu

The "jackboots" comment was a fairly tasteless attempt at levity.
I have no affilition with the NRA and am not a satisfied customer or
anything.

> I'm leaning toward the third option, but would welcome any feedback. Having
> only made two other batches, my experience is limited.

I always like reading about (and drinking about!) new (to me) varieties of
honey. If I were you, I would try to brew it with exactly the same recipes
and procedures of another mead you made with a different honey, and then
compare, and try to take maturity effects into account.

A rule of thumb I've read, but haven't thoroughly tested, is that darker
honeys tend to be stronger in flavor and take longer to age to maturity.
I have found that darker honeys are stronger in flavor. Tupelo tends to
be pretty strongly flavored for it's light color, and matures rather quickly.

I'm looking forward to hearing how this honey tastes.

I, too, brewed one of these, but for drinking, not cooking. It's fermenting
right now, rather vigorously, I might add.

Basilisk, a metheglyn

~3.5 lbs. clover honey
4-5 cups fresh sweet basil leaves, loosely packed, picked about a week earlier
"the house yeast"

First, I boiled a few pints of water with the basil leaves, to make a tea.
Leaving the leaves (pardon the pun) in the pot, I added the honey. The temp
was right about 150F at that point, so I let it sit for a few minutes to
pasteurize. I covered the pot, and put it in a sink filled with ice water.
About 20 minutes later it had cooled to about 60F, and I transfered it to a
1-gallon jug which had the dregs from a dandelion wine in it. The dandelion
wine was the fourth or fifth reculturing of a yeast I've been using for about
a year now. It's a mix of Wyeast European Ale yeast and Wyeast Champagne
yeast, probably pretty heavy on the Champagne at this point, due to alcohol
levels. Possibly contaminated, but a sip of the dandelion wine told no such
tale. (Though it was very immature, it didn't taste contaminated.)
I topped it off with pre-boiled and partially cooled (could have done better,
but it mixed in okay) water.

2 days later, it still hadn't started, and then I remembered that I had
forgotten to aerate it. There was an airlock on the mead, so I wasn't
terribly worried. I shook that jug mightily, aerating with vigor. It is now
fermenting merrily, about 1 week later. I think this should probably be the
last time I use that yeast.

Keep up the good work, Dick.

• -R

I've made two batches of mead using 12 pounds of black locust honey and a 42
or 46 ounce can of burgandy grape juice concentrate (Alexanders, I believe).
The first batch, over a year in the carboy, is stuck at a gravity of 1030.
I sulfited it originally, and used a liquid mead yeast in a starter 24 hours
later. A few days of waiting saw no fermentation so I added some dry
champagne yeast. This started it going but did not ferment to completion.
I've since added several packs of dry yeast with no luck in getting the
gravity down.

The second batch I made about 2 months ago. I didn't sulphite this batch,
just heated it to 170F for about 10 minutes. I pitched dry champagne yeast
and got quick fermentation. After only 3 weeks, the gravity was down to
0.999. THis is as quick as I've ever seen a mead ferment. The taste is
excellent already.

My question is this…is there anything I can do to the first mead to bring
down the gravity? I'm convinced that I'll never use sulfites again. I
think not using it help the lively fermentation and early drinkability in
the second batch. Any suggestions for the first batch?
Let no man thirst for lack of real ale.

Hi all,

I split a 5 gal batch of traditional mead into 3 parts, 1 gal Kiwi melomel, 1

gal

Strwberry melomel and I botlled the rest. The kiwi and strawberry meads are
the same age and have had the same procedures. The strawberry is very clear
and the kiwi has a slight haze to it. I'm getting ready to bottle and I've
been
thinking about doing something to the kiwi. I'm thinking this is a pectin
haze
but I'm not sure. Some things I'm considering:

1) Adding pectic enzyme to kiwi.mead. I don't know if that's a good thing to

do at this point though.

2) Try fining with polyclar.

A side note: I didn't fine with ployclar on the traditional portion of the
batch
and I bottled it as a still mead. Guess what, I have sparkling traditional
mead.
The mead had been stable for a couple of months before I bottled. I've seen
this
mentioned before on the digest, but I'm wondering if fining would help keep
this
from happening.

Suggestions/comments welcome.

Cheers,
Mike

Mike Clarke
Seattle, WA. USA
eMail: MClarke950@aol.com

Regarding all the raisin stuff: is there any reason that no one has
yet mentioned using organic, unsulfured, unsulfited sultanas?

My grocery store sells them in 1 lb. canisters, in the

refrigerated section. I have used them in breads, in conjunction with
a colonial era bread rising-starter, but not (as yet) in mead.

And, now, requests: does anyone have recipes for mead using any

of the following:

juniper berries
turk's cap fruit
ju-ju-bes (they're a fruit that grows in TX)
mallow root
persimmons
fresh figs

Unfortunately, I missed most of the wild mustang grapes this

year, being preoccupied with other things (crenshaw melon meads, mostly),
so I shall have no grape wine for mulling. Aside from standard apple
ciders and straight meads, what mulls well?

And finally, any suggestions for spices to add to cherry cider?

TIA
sylverre@tyche.lib.utexas.edu

He was mead in the lees, and shaken in his cups; truly, a sot for sour
wines.

Dick Dunn our illustrious janitor said:

>>However, the notes about high alcohol levels (20% or over) using
>>standard yeasts are hard to believe.

I too am suprized, but! I just returned from another trip to the UK.
They seem to have a very large homebrew following. I saw a number of
high alcohol kits available that claimed to produce 21 % by volume or 37
proof. (I'm not quite sure how to relate these two figures). I picked
up a couple of issues of "Homebrew Today"; a very well done free
publication covering everything fermentable. Two particular
advertisements are:

 

---

The Vodka Kit

5 gallon high alcohol kit

37 proof, 21% by volume

Baily Drive, Norwood Industrial Estates, Killamarsh
Sheffield S31 8JF, Tel (0742) 47 06 60, FAX (0742) 47 06 95

CONDESSA

Bryn Maethlu, Llanfaethlu, Anglesey, Gwynedd, LL65 4NW,
Wales, U.K. Telephone (01407) 730933

I have no personal experience with these, but thought it interesting.

Cheers!

I think it depends on what kind of mead you are making. When I made
my first melomel, for instance (a strawberry), I used 15 pounds of
strawberries for a 5 gallon batch, which should be plenty. But I also
used some Mahlava Wildflower honey from the local health food store.
The result was a pleasant beverage, but the honey flavor completely
masked out the strawberry. If you're making a melomel, I recommend
sticking to lighter honey. A plain mead, or certain kinds of metheglins,
might taste very good with a darker. more strongly flavored honey.

• –Greg

This idea of using polyclar and sparkaloid as fining agents sounds wonderful and

I'm desperate to try it. I can find polyclar here in Australia (if I look hard
enough), but NOBODY has even heard of sparkaloid! Can somebody give me an
alternate name for sparkaloid and/or a home brew shop which not only stocks
sparkaloid but is also willing to do international mail order.

Regards,

Craig Jones.

drake.morgan@caa.gov.au