rant - elitests

[Brimminghorn]

Very very well said Mr. Schramm.

Cheers,
Jon

 

[Matrix4b]

Honestly, I haven't really encountered any of the type that you say.

Personally, I like knowing that I have whole ingredients that I went from raw honey, raw fruit/spice, and other ingredients. I may short cut a little using a comercial concentrate or an extract that I haven't used before.

The one horror that I came across was at a Ren Fair where they were selling mead in the craft show using Kool-Aid as the flavoring (for those not in the States, Kool-Aid is a kids drink consisiting of an artificially powder that you mix with sugar and water).

I supose the reason why I didn't come across someone that was an elitist is that I am not a part of any clubs and have relied on my own judgement after reading Ken's book and started on my own, with some advice and research of my own on websites such as this. Looking at recipies, comments and the like.

If some wish to use Ocen Spray, Concentrated Juice, or something else, then fine by them. I don't know how good my stuff is compaired to those that do sumit their Mead to contests but I brew for my taste and the taste of my friends and I like it sweet, prob more than most judges.

I am aways interested on how others do it but you do get the blow hards that don't know anything about a subject that they are talking about but insist that they know best. Agree with the smile and nod and walk away.

Matrix

 

[wildoates]

There's never any accounting for taste.

That's what my mom always used to say, and it's true. I can appreciate the awesomeness of someone who is able to go it from scratch, but the fact that good results can be had from many different ingredients is good enough for me. There is a place for it all, sez I.

 

[Chevette Girl]

One of my best early-on wines was from bottled juice, pomegranate and elderberry. There's no shame in anything you can ferment, as long as it tastes good at the end! I always report on my labels whether it was made from fresh fruit or bottled juice or wine kit or whatever so I do my best not to mislead anyone about my ingredients and their origins.

Really, using bottled juice in a mead is no more "cheating" than using grape juice from a wine kit, and plenty of people I know claim to make wine and have never processed a grape themselves.

You do what you can do, and whatever you can't do, you buy... and not everyone has the facilities to beekeep or grow all their own produce, if I put myself under that restriction, I could never even try JAO!

I claim to be a winemaker, I don't claim to be a good one, I don't think my tastes align with the rest of the world's, but I'm in this to make stuff I like to drink, because in general I like what I make better than I like what's on the market, and that's what's important to me.

 

[BBBF]

"As for me, all I know is that I know nothing."
Socrates

If Socrates was that smart, I should just shut the &^% up, but alas, I can't.

If your mead is good, then your mead is good. Congratulations, kind sir. Nice work. I don't think that ends the discussion, though. The semantic question lies in whether you made it, or someone else did, or helped. The other semantic question is whether you're cheating if you aren't in a game with rules.

I have no objection to someone using all manner of commercial product in a mead, but there is a limit to how much credit you can take for it if someone else took care of the blend of fruits or the degree of sweetness that blend creates. Some competitions frown on that kind of behavior for exactly that reason (don't enter anywhere, and you're not cheating).

The same can be said for any other creative endeavor. It takes some developed knowledge to find sources of truly great bacon. It is another skill and knowledge level entirely to raise pigs and cure your own. You and the guy next to you say you have totally homemade BLT sandwiches. You both made the bread, and grew the lettuce and the tomatoes, but you bought your bacon, and he's a farmer who raised and ground the wheat, raised pigs and made his own bacon (I know people like this - they are "gods" to me). Who wins the truth in advertising comparison here? And for that matter, sitting next to a guy who busts his butt and gets his fingernails dirty in ways it's hard to imagine, it takes some serious hubris to call him a snob.

That level of acknowledgement and obligation to divulge extends to wine - you can't say it is from estate grow fruit if it is not, and you can't say it is estate bottled if it is not. But you can still call it wine. Maybe we need to address those naming delineations in the nascent world of mead.

So your mead has commercial ingredients. That doesn't give anyone license to be rude to you. It's a delicious mead. You just might not be able to enter it into some competitions.

The other thing I will say in defense of the so-called "elitists" is that someone does actually have to grow and harvest and juice the fruit, and create the flavor/acidity/sweetness/tannin blend that is so satisfying. In the wine-making world, there is great and deserved reverence of those people. Grow your own grapes and your hands are brown in the spring and summer, purple in the fall, and frost bitten from pruning in the winter. Equating a mead or wine made with commercial ingredients - and the effort it takes to make it - to one crafted from the ground up is a bit of a slap in their face. Walk a mile in their shoes before you jump to conclusions about who is being insensitive. If perspective is taken into account, and respect is granted on both sides of the table, then both sides can move forward with dignity.

It's like the BLT analogy - the farmer doesn't have license to be rude to you, and you don't have license to call your sandwich "totally homemade." As for me, I may have written a book and may make some decent mead, but I bow down before people like Kirk Jones and Mark Beran who make mead with honey from their own bees. Those guys are bad @$$ed in ways that I simply am not. I'm just another schlep who makes some decent mead with someone else's honey. And likes to write too much.

Ken

Ken,

While I agree with you that nobody has the right to be rude and that people (including you) that are growing even some part of their ingredients are doing something extra awesome, I don't think you have to go as far back as you say to call something home made. If I designed and built a "homemade" air plane, would it be any less impressive to know that I went to a big box store and bought some nuts and bolts off the shelf. Would I really have had to mine my own iron, create my own alloy and cast/machine every part to say I built my own plane? I think the term term homemade has a lot more wiggle room than you are giving it. I have malted my own grains and brewed with them (homegrown hops too). I might agree with you that my homebrew to be more homemade, but I would not tell an extract brewer that his beer isn't homemade. What else would it be? Malt extract isn't beer. He bought it, took it home and made it into beer.


Finally, the OP didn't cheat. What were the rules? Even if both meads were entered into the Mazer cup, there are no rules against using store bought juice.

 

[AToE]

Like with all thing's it a sliding scale, not black and white, I agree. It's not whether or not something is homemade, it's to what degree is it homemade... anything other than fully store bought qualifies as homemade to at least some degree in my opinion.

 

[TheAlchemist]

Yes.
We've entered the grey zone.

<rant on>

If I'm working on a sheep-to-shawl project, do I have to raise the sheep to call it 'home made?" Do I have to raise the grain that fed the sheep? If I dye my wool with kool-aid (not to malign kool-aid...I grew up on the stuff...) do I have to credit the kool-aid manufacturers?

And what about The Great Earth Mother Herself? What about Father Sky? Both have been involved in the making of any fermented beverage. What about Wankan Tanka? What about Creator of All? Not that I'm shy about offering credit, gratitude, you name it, to Creator... but does this mean I don't have a "homemade" mead?

Simon Buxton is the only beekeeper I know of who can let his bees know what the nektar need is when he's making his journeywork metheglyn and get the results that are intended.

<rant off>

 

[ken_schramm]

Ken,

While I agree with you that nobody has the right to be rude and that people (including you) that are growing even some part of their ingredients are doing something extra awesome, I don't think you have to go as far back as you say to call something home made. If I designed and built a "homemade" air plane, would it be any less impressive to know that I went to a big box store and bought some nuts and bolts off the shelf. Would I really have had to mine my own iron, create my own alloy and cast/machine every part to say I built my own plane? I think the term term homemade has a lot more wiggle room than you are giving it. I have malted my own grains and brewed with them (homegrown hops too). I might agree with you that my homebrew to be more homemade, but I would not tell an extract brewer that his beer isn't homemade. What else would it be? Malt extract isn't beer. He bought it, took it home and made it into beer.

Finally, the OP didn't cheat. What were the rules? Even if both meads were entered into the Mazer cup, there are no rules against using store bought juice.

The main point is that those who do he initial crafting deserve the credit for doing so. Pancakes are not "from scratch" if you used Bisquick. A kit car is still a kit car. When you do not engage in the elemental levels of making something, you move from "making" it to "assembling" it. Kit carts can be cool, and they are great reflections on those who put in the time and skill to assemble them. Extract brews can be delicious. Are they "homebrews"? Sure, I guess. Extract beers, though, do not require the skill level of all grain beers. Paraphrasing Alan, it's about degrees, not absolutes.

Planes, though, are not a good comparison here. Home built? Yes. Impressive? Totally. Homemade? I dunno. That's a semantic question. At some point (and I think food, and mead or wine in particular, are good examples), you actually can make something from the ground up. I've got a Gewürtz pyment going from boxed juice right now. I don't think of it the same way I do THoD.

The issue of using commercially pre-blended ingredients has long been a sore spot among competitive brewers. The rules have been left vague in a lot of competitions, the Mazer Cup included, for a long time. Much of that was to be inclusive and not exclusive. Is it cheating? Not unless someone prohibited it in the rules. I'm afraid I have to come down on the side of those who prefer that you blend the flavors yourself, but I don't make the rules anymore.

Many great things are team efforts, and how could there possibly be shame in that? I simply feel I should err on the side of giving everyone who pitched in as much credit and gratitude as they have earned for their contributions.

 

[BBBF]

I still fail to see how a chef in a city, that carefully blends ingredients chosen from any number of stores should have the meal he prepared be considered inferior to a farmer's because he didn't grow them himself. Bisquik is sold as pancake batter. Blueberry cocktail is not sold as a wine kit.

Now if you were trying to say that adding water and yeast to a box kit is more like making a BLT because it only uses 3 or 4 ingredients and had simple. practically foolproof instructions. And making great wine from grapes is a whole other league and takes more winemaking skill, that is understandable.

Making great wine from grapes that you grew yourself just means you have a green thumb in addition to being a good wine maker. The most talented wine maker in the world may never step on a vineyard. There might be a great meadmaker in Wyoming that needs to order orange blossom honey from FLORIDA and vanilla from Madagascar. Maybe he gets better orange flavor from mamalade than orange zest.

Of wine, mead and beer making, wine was the last one I tried. I had little interest in it because the most important part of the process was growing the grapes. However, you could take 5 gallons and I could take 5 gallons and we will still end up with something different. So there is still some skill on the fermenting side and that is what is judged. I can see where someone that is involved in the farming side would like to be in a competition where that is also a factor, but unless otherwise noted the end result is the only part that is evaluated. What you started with maters, but there aren't many restrictions.

 

[AToE]

I don't think there's any dissagreement in concept here, just dissagreements in exact definitions of degrees along the scale.

Oh yes, I recognise when a conversation slides towards semantics! Especially written ones with no tone of voice or body language.

 

[calicojack]

There is a difference between the person that goes down to the local brew shop, picks up a "kit" (extract, wine, or all grain) and "assembles" it and the person that takes the time to figure out what ingredients he wants to use to achieve his/her desired flavor, goes to the store, buys it, assembles it and have it turn out to be something that everyone likes.

It's like saying that a joe blow diyer didn't make his shed because he went to home depot, bought wood, nails, paint and shingles; then he applied well developed construction techniques to assemble it and turn it into a structure.



maybe i'm reading things the wrong way, but some of the posts in this thread made me go and become

 

[AToE]

Nah, like my last post said, we're just debating semantics at this point.

Nobody would say that that person didn't build the shed! BUT who wouldn't be more impressed if someone mined the metal to make the tools, forged them (and the nails), cut the wood themselves... the point is that there are levels of DIY here that should be acknowledged, not that anyone in any of the levels for any craft should be disrespectful to others!

EDIT: I'll bring it full circle back to the original post - a mead made with a pre-made juice (and this isn't a pure juice, it's a pre-blended item) is worlds more advanced than fermenting a wine kit or beer kit with no modifications. But it's less advanced than taking all the pure juices that went into that blend and blending them oneself for the mead, which is less advanced than chosing the fruit and making the juices, which is less advanced than growing the fruit too, which is less advanced than having one's own hive on top of all this...

... which is less advanced than developing technology to speak to the bees and tell them which flowers to visit, and less advanced than spending 60 years breeding your own special kind of flower specifically for it's nectar and telling the bees to visit those! (Had to inject some humour here!)

 

[AToE]

And one last thing that I think helps clarify what Ken was saying and why I agreed with it - it is absolutely out of line for someone to be rude to someone else for using products or techniques in meadmaking that they consider less advanced than their own. But this is a two way street, assuming that there is no rudeness involved, us who haven't advanced meadmaking as much as others should respect the extra time and devotion that has gone into their work.

Alllllllllllllll the rest of those 2 posts and the other posts were just examples to clarify where this thought was coming from, not to be taken as any kind of insult by anyone.

 

[skunkboy]

Wow, bummer...

 

[Medsen Fey]

There is a difference between the person that goes down to the local brew shop, picks up a "kit" (extract, wine, or all grain) and "assembles" it and the person that takes the time to figure out what ingredients he wants to use to achieve his/her desired flavor, goes to the store, buys it, assembles it and have it turn out to be something that everyone likes.

EDIT: I'll bring it full circle back to the original post - a mead made with a pre-made juice (and this isn't a pure juice, it's a pre-blended item) is worlds more advanced than fermenting a wine kit or beer kit with no modifications. But it's less advanced than taking all the pure juices that went into that blend and blending them oneself for the mead, which is less advanced than chosing the fruit and making the juices, which is less advanced than growing the fruit too, which is less advanced than having one's own hive on top of all this...

... which is less advanced than developing technology to speak to the bees and tell them which flowers to visit, and less advanced than spending 60 years breeding your own special kind of flower specifically for it's nectar and telling the bees to visit those! (Had to inject some humour here!)

Guys (and gals), this discussion has gone in an odd direction. Frankly I don't give a tinker's damn how much "effort" went into producing a mead or wine. I care about the taste of the final result. Whether you grabbed a bottle of juice and ferment it or whether you crossed you own grapes and created a whole new variety and grew them into a vineyard to make your wine is irrelevant to me. Being entirely selfish, I only care about how it smells and tastes as I imbibe it.

I have made wine kits, and ended up with a better bottle of wine than some that were estate bottled. I make some meads from fruit that I grow or pick in the wild. I take pride in this. I do not take as much pride in making a wine kit. But regardless of my effort or pride, I try to let my taste buds decide for themselves what is good, better and best. The amount of my effort may have no direct bearing on the quality of the results (though I do believe that better efforts, with better techniques and better ingredients to lead to better product).

Which gets back to what I said about pedigree and not judging a mead based on how much effort the mead crafter put in. A mead made from Kool-Aid may be superior to one made from hand harvested fruit, and even if a great mead is made with humble ingredients, it deserves to be savored on its own merits.

 

[calicojack]

Guys Frankly I don't give a tinker's damn how much "effort" went into producing a mead or wine. I care about the taste of the final result. Whether you grabbed a bottle of juice and ferment it or whether you crossed you own grapes and created a whole new variety and grew them into a vineyard to make your wine is irrelevant to me. Being entirely selfish, I only care about how it smells and tastes as I imbibe it.

this...

 

[TheAlchemist]

What makes good music?
1.) Good Composer writing a Good Composition
2.) Good Musicians playing Good Instruments
3.) Good Conductor

What makes a good wine/mead?
1.) Good Terroir
2.) Good Grape/Honey/Fruit
3.) Good Vintner/Mazer

 

[AngryNord]

Good God, I need to be up in four hours. I hope this makes sense.

All I have to add that may be new is something my favorite writer said once.
"Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by @$$holes"
William Gibson.

I have made a couple dozen batches, I consider myself still learning about everything. I have been told "...Mead isn't wine, it isn't beer, it isn't anything", and still I plug on. I make what I and my friends like, and learn from my mistakes. And in the end what matters most is that you enjoy what you do, as you do it, and the result is shared among friends and enjoyed. And I have some brutally honest friends, I would know if what I made tasted bad, too dry/sweet, or if it made them want more. So far I have been lucky. Do what you like doing, screw the 1 in 20 that don't like it, they don't know what they have in the glass.

 

[AToE]

Definitely. In the end it doesn't matter to me that most people say my meads are too dry - I like what I like and that's what I'll make! Those who make it sweet, well they aren't making it for me. If someone handed me some awesome mead made with Sunny-D I'd head right to the store, buy some Sunny-D and get fermenting!

 

[calicojack]

. If someone handed me some awesome mead made with Sunny-D I'd head right to the store, buy some Sunny-D and get fermenting!

darnit dude.

<---- dashes out to wm....