What got me started......Hmmm. OK, not so much how but why. My parents are both European mum's a Scot and Dad's as German as they get. Pride in your heritage wasn't only encouraged it was expected. Any way I always loved any thing outdoors. Camping, hunting, fishing. Any thing to do with the land. I love rough housing too. So when I met up with a few people from the SCA at an Orphans Christmas the spark was struck for all things Mead-eval. I first tried mead then and it was good. I never liked comercial "as in swill" beer just stouts and porters and bourbon. so I was hooked and now I do it my self. Now I just need to learn to make elk and moose sausages, my own cheese and build my own cabin in the woods. Ah valhalla.
What got you started?
- Thread starter Derf
- Start date
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Two years ago I discovered that I like my father could not eat of anything that came from grains containing gluten. For thole that dont know, gluten is a protein found in wheat, rye, oats and barley. This was a hard blow to a guy whod only enjoyed being 21 for six months or so, obviously all beer and whiskey was out.
So I decided "Screw this! I'll learn how to make beer myself! Without the damn wheat!" and began looking into it. It quicky became apparent that this was actually a bit of a complex task.
So I searched up wine! But was eventually frightened off after trying to understand pectins, acids and the lot, plus processing the several bags of chardonay grapes from my friends vines...
And than I came across mead, I had of course had mead at the Ren Faire, and somehow through this it had never occoured to me!
When I learned the process it was like "thats it?!" I felt so deceived!
Two birds with one stone! One: a simple fermentable drink that I can make myself and Two: Mead Wenches.
Ofcourse over time I have learned that it's not allways so simple. But it's easy to start and hard to put down.
Today I am giving away the last bottle of my first batch (at a year and a half old--they grow up so fast dont they? :'( ) for a friend that is getting married
So I decided "Screw this! I'll learn how to make beer myself! Without the damn wheat!" and began looking into it. It quicky became apparent that this was actually a bit of a complex task.
So I searched up wine! But was eventually frightened off after trying to understand pectins, acids and the lot, plus processing the several bags of chardonay grapes from my friends vines...
And than I came across mead, I had of course had mead at the Ren Faire, and somehow through this it had never occoured to me!
When I learned the process it was like "thats it?!" I felt so deceived!
Two birds with one stone! One: a simple fermentable drink that I can make myself and Two: Mead Wenches.Ofcourse over time I have learned that it's not allways so simple. But it's easy to start and hard to put down.
Today I am giving away the last bottle of my first batch (at a year and a half old--they grow up so fast dont they? :'( ) for a friend that is getting married
I've brewed a few dozen batches of beer, but never even tasted mead before. I'd been wanting to make a semi-sweet dessert sweet-cherry white-peach wine, and decided to make it as a melomel. It's about to get bottled later this month.
I bottled three Grolsch bottles from the last racking (which I then topped off with more honey and peaches). It tasted wicked strong, and kinda harsh, but in a month's time it has mellowed quite a bit. I can hardly wait to see how it will taste after I bottle the rest and let it age till my birthday in late January. It's a beautiful color, too.
I'm thinking about making vinegar from the earlier, now-"dry" bottles. Sweet-cherry white-peach vinagrette salad dressing sounds tasty I also plan to make a marinade for grilling pork and chicken.
I bottled three Grolsch bottles from the last racking (which I then topped off with more honey and peaches). It tasted wicked strong, and kinda harsh, but in a month's time it has mellowed quite a bit. I can hardly wait to see how it will taste after I bottle the rest and let it age till my birthday in late January. It's a beautiful color, too.
I'm thinking about making vinegar from the earlier, now-"dry" bottles. Sweet-cherry white-peach vinagrette salad dressing sounds tasty
I also plan to make a marinade for grilling pork and chicken.I'm a danish dane from, born, bred and living in Denmark, with a great-grandfather from Iceland, so I am pretty much obliged by heritage to drink mead.
Normally, I'm not that much of a DIY kind of guy; if others can do it better than me, I'll gladly pay them to do it - but when it comes to mead, I haven't been able to find any comercially available around here that I liked enough to keep drinking it. Also, almost any commercial mead I've found has been fortified, and I wanted to try some stuff closer to what they drank back in the very olden days, before the - otherwise noble - art of distillation was invented. So, only reasonable thing to do was to go and try for myself, which I started to do a couple of months ago.
A report of my first steps has been posted in the newbee section. It was quite succesful; this stuff has potential, and I like it better than any of the commercial brands I've tasted. So, bottoms up.
Normally, I'm not that much of a DIY kind of guy; if others can do it better than me, I'll gladly pay them to do it - but when it comes to mead, I haven't been able to find any comercially available around here that I liked enough to keep drinking it. Also, almost any commercial mead I've found has been fortified, and I wanted to try some stuff closer to what they drank back in the very olden days, before the - otherwise noble - art of distillation was invented. So, only reasonable thing to do was to go and try for myself, which I started to do a couple of months ago.
A report of my first steps has been posted in the newbee section. It was quite succesful; this stuff has potential, and I like it better than any of the commercial brands I've tasted. So, bottoms up.
