OK, here is my rough draft, enjoy!
Chris Shaw
Food Essay
02/02/08
Jason Wilson
Honors 202-501
NEED A GOOD TITLE
Pennsylvania liquor law states:
(a) Beer.--For purposes of this chapter (except when used with reference to distilling or distilling material) the term "beer" means beer, ale, porter, stout, and other similar fermented beverages (including sake or similar products) of any name or description containing one-half of 1 percent or more of alcohol by volume, brewed or produced from malt, wholly or in part, or from any substitute therefore. (e) Beer for personal or family use.--Subject to regulation prescribed by the Secretary, any adult may, without payment of tax, produce beer for personal or family use and not for sale. The aggregate amount of beer exempt from tax under this subsection with respect to any household shall not exceed: (1) 200 gallons per calendar year if there are 2 or more adults in such household, or (2) 100 gallons per calendar year if there is only 1 adult in such household. For purposes of this subsection, the term "adult" means an individual who has attained 18 years of age, or the minimum age (if any) established by law applicable in the locality in which the household is situated at which beer may be sold to individuals, whichever is greater. (Beertown)
This basically means that anyone over 18 years of age can legally homebrew in Pennsylvania. They can not, however, legally drink the product that they create. If this person is living alone they can brew up to 100 gallons per year, any more than that and it becomes illegal. If, however, this person lives with at least one more adult, then they can brew up to 200 gallons per year, any more than that and it becomes illegal. If this person lives with 2 other adults, they can not brew 300 gallons. The amount that a household can legally brew is capped at 200 gallons as long as it is not a business. Furthermore, any alcoholic beverage brewed at home can only be used for personal consumption, gift-giving, and competition. It may not be sold without a liquor license. A beverage is labeled as alcoholic as long as it is 0.5% ABV, no matter what it is called or made from. As an interesting side note, distilling is illegal without a license no matter what your age or situation. The reason behind this is that poorly made distilled beverages harbor serious health risks (blindness) and can cause extensive property damage (explosives distillers).
I didn’t know any of this when I first started homebrewing. I just read a description of mead in a fantasy novel and though, wow, this sounds amazing! I also needed to get a gift for my brother’s and sister’s respective weddings, so it was a twofer. I had tried beer years ago and wasn’t a fan. I assumed I would grow to appreciate the taste, especially because I was in college now. I was wrong, beer tasted horrible before and it still tastes horrible now, for the most part. Then there was wine. I come from a family that, for the most part, thinks wine is the best alcoholic beverage there is. A small portion the family is loyal to a few select beers, Stella Artois comes to mind, but for the most part my family is a wine family. So naturally I have tried wine as well. I am not much of a fan of wine either, particularly red wines. And I dislike wines for the very reason that other people like them so much, their acids. Supposedly wines match very well with certain meals, and their acids contribute a lot to this, but to me it is just an extra burn which I find unnecessary. So finally there was only this mystical beverage left, mead.
I was on co-op at the time that I reached this conclusion and had a lot of time to kill, so I did a lot of internet searches and came across a website, which is essentially a mead Bible to many homebrewers across the country. It goes by the name of GotMead.com. I learned a lot about mead. The first and mode important thing I learned was that it was made predominantly from honey. Just like beers and wines, it went by many different names, depending on how it was made. A melomel is mead made with fruit, a metheglin is mead made with spices like cloves and cinnamon, a cyser is a cider whose fermentable sugars are at least 50% honey, a pyment is a wine whose fermentable sugars are at least 50% honey, hippocras is actually a spiced pyment, and a braggot is a beer whose fermentable sugars are 50% honey.
I read and planned for roughly 3 months before I finally went to my local homebrew store, Home Sweet Homebrew, and bought the necessary equipment and ingredients. My first mead was going to be a blueberry mead, primarily because my local homebrew store only had blueberry and clove honey, and blueberry sounded much more appealing. Also, we had about 2 lbs of blueberries at home in the fridge so I thought that sounded like a good idea. The ingredients for my first batch of mead looked like this.
Ingredients
10 lbs (1 gallon) blueberry honey
2 lbs blueberries
4 gallons of water
1.5 tsp Irish Moss
2 tsp yeast nutrient
10 g D-47 yeast
My process was pretty simple now that I look back on it, but at the time it seemed incredibly intimidating. First I boiled 4 gallons of water, while slowly adding in the honey. The smell that emanated from this was heavenly, and I thought if the final product is anything like this then I have made the right choice in creating a blueberry mead as my first project. After I threw all 5 gallons of this mixture into my primary fermenter, which was a big white food-grade bucket with a spout on the bottom, I added my yeast nutrient, blueberries, and Irish Moss which I had boiled for 15 minutes. Then I threw the yeast on top of this and mixed like my life depended on it. Then I closed up the fermenter and waited until I started to see bubbles. Over the next week I opened up the fermenter and mixed everything around a lot, this is called aeration and is used to get oxygen into the must to help the yeast to ferment. The must is what you call the original mixture of honey and water. I let this go for about three weeks and then I racked it into a glass carboy. To rack means to transfer from one container to another, you do it to help clear the final product. A carboy is a glass or plastic container for fermenting drinks. It looks like the thing on top of a water cooler. Over the course of the next 3 months I racked it one or two more times and then bottled it. It shouldn’t have been bottled yet, truth be told, but I wanted to have it ready for my sister’s wedding as my brother’s had already passed, and I would have to mail him his bottles and accompanying crystal goblets. On the same day I was bottling my mead, my mom was having a small family dinner with some relatives, I thought it would be a good idea to bring a sample bottle of my golden creation and see what everyone thought. I thought it tasted pretty good, a bit like alcoholic honey water. But my family thought differently, the consensus was…tastes a bit like beer, I think I’ll stick to my red wine. I thought maybe this just isn’t the right demographic, so a week later I brought a bottle to a party at my friend’s house. Here the reaction was much different. They ranged from, “This is good,” to “Wow this is really good, you made this? No way, you didn’t make this. Where did you make this?” I also noticed that although it tastes pretty good when you are sober, it tastes much better when you are drunk. Sober, it tastes like alcoholic honey water, but has no burn only a slight warming sensation, drunk it tasted like liquid blueberry candy.
I have learned a lot since that first batch, which I have dubbed wedding mead (12% ABV). I plan on making a new revised batch, called anniversary mead. It will essentially be the first one, but remade with all of the knowledge I have obtained since then.
I learned after I had made this that the Irish Moss was an unnecessary addition to my mead. It is actually a clearing agent used in beers, but mead does not mask the flavor well enough. This may have been the reason why my relatives thought it tasted a bit like beer. I would also not boil the honey. I learned later that boiling the honey essentially burns away a lot of the honey flavor and aroma from the final product; that is why it smelled so good as I boiled the initial must. I would also crush the blueberries as opposed to just throwing them in to the must. This would help to give the mead a more blueberry color, as well as a more pronounced blueberry flavor and also to give some nutrients to the yeast. Due to all of this knowledge, my anniversary mead would probably end up looking like this.
Ingredients
10 lbs blueberries in primary
-blueberry juice to fill up secondary
16 lbs blueberry honey in primary (not boiled)
3 vanilla beans in primary
-2 vanilla beans in secondary
10g 71B yeast
4 gals tap water boiled for primary
2 tsp yeast nutrient
2.5 tsp yeast energizer
