So, I had that gallon and a half of chambourcin grapes and juice. Not enough for a pyment. I wanted to do a pyment with the blackberry honey I purchased from the Bee Folks while I was at the Maryland Renaissance Festival last weekend, and the chambourcin juice. The bummer thing was that I missed the crush by one lousy day, and had to settle for gleanings. I’ll be more prompt next year.

Anyway, I had to hit American Brewmaster today for a new auto siphon, cause I wore my old one out. I figured I’d look for more grape juice there. Who knows? I might get lucky. Well, no chambourcin, so I called Oskaar (who as you know is a grape fiend and my resident wine expert), and asked him what sort of grapes would complement the chambourcin I had, to make a semi-sweet pyment. He had me read him the list, then decided merlot would be our best bet. I had been leaning that way, but figured I would be smart to seek his expert advice. Grapes aren’t my best subject (though I’m learning).

Got it all home, and mixed it up. See the recipe here. We’ll see what happens……

They don’t always come out the way you want, do they? Funny, it didn’t used to bother me as much…LOL

OK, so I pitched a batch of Oskaars’ Subtle Strawberry Mead back in April, I think it was. All was going swimmingly, until the weather intervened. Here in North Carolina, it isn’t uncommon to have a 40 degree temperature swing from dawn to dusk. Two weeks into what looked to be a promising ferment, we went from 60 degrees to over 100. Wasn’t expecting that. Nor was the house air conditioning system.

Needless to say, the ferment went *nuclear* (say nuculer ::ducking::). The mead that was supposed to finish semi-sweet burned down to dry. Thank goodness I have enough extra strawberries to do another batch (heh. planning!). I let it finish, then added another gallon bag of strawberries, and backsweetened with some honey, it still has some off tastes, and isn’t where I want it.

Fast forward to the middle of August. I pitched a batch of orange blossom traditional to have ready to take to the Maryland Renaissance Festival. Pitched it just over 2 weeks before we were to go, knowing that if all went well, it would be ready to rack before we went, and ok to drink at that point (though young). But it wasn’t to be. Pitched it with 10g D-47, 20 lbs of orange blossom honey and water to 6 gallons. Worked great the last time. This time, it stalled 1/3 of the way through the ferment. Dangit. Pitched more yeast at it, that helped a little, but still too sweet.

But wait!! I have this too-dry strawberry, and this too-sweet orange blossom. My fevered brain put this together, and I mixed them half and half whilst we were up at the Maryland Ren Fest. Et voila!! A decent mead was born! Blending these two picked up the best characteristics of both, covered the dryness of one and the sweetness of the other, and made a strawberry-orange melomel that tastes like a smoothie. People were hunting me down for it all weekend at the faire. I think I’ve hit on something here…..

OK, so I pitched the batch of Dried Cherry Cyser , in which I’ve twisted it up by replacing a gallon of the apple cider with a gallon of tart cherry juice that I picked up at a farmers’ market in northwestern Michigan.

It is fermenting *wildly*, with a couple inches of foam topping both pails (good thing I split the batch!!). When you take the top off it sounds like low grade static is happening in there, it is fermenting so hard…..and stirring twice a day is fun, the foam goes to almost 4 inches!!

It smells *awesome*, and I’ve pulled a little taste. Apples, with an overlay of cherries and just a touch of blueberries, all underlaid by the orange blossom honey I used as my base. This is gonna be a *fantastic* mead!!!

Geez, get your head out of the gutter already!! I’m talking about pitching a Dried Cherry Cyser, one of Oskaars’ fantastic recipes. I’ve added a twist, replacing 1 gallon of apple cider with a gallon of Swansons’ tart cherry juice that I picked up on my way home from visiting my Dad in Michigan this summer.

The recipe says 6 gallons. I say *nay*! I poured my 4 gallons of apple cider (I used a spiced version) into my pail, and added orange blossom honey until the hydrometer read 1.145. A *lot* of honey……then added the smooshed rehydrated cherries. At this point, I needed to add the gallon of cherry juice I was using in place of the gallon of cider, but the durn 8-gal bucket was right to the top. Well, this makes stirring impossible, and also makes for ferments that end up on the floor.

So, I pulled out the taller bucket, and poured the must into that. No dice. Still had a gallon left in the original pail. Finally, I eyeballed ‘half’ of the cherries and blueberries from one pail into the other, then poured in half the must. That worked. Now I’ve got 2 2/3 full pails, and was able to add that last gallon of juice. Its bubbling merrily away, and hit the lag phase in 12 hours.

For the next couple weeks, they both will be getting a heavy stir twice a day, when I get up and when I go to bed. It already smells heavenly, and I can’t wait to start tasting it in a few more days……

Yesterday I went up to the wilds north of Louisburg to a place where a couple guys I met at American Brewmaster have grape vines. Turns out they’ve got chambourcin, concord, merlot and muscadine grapes out there. I spent a couple hours gleaning grapes from the vines, then whiled away a time with Bill, one of the brothers who own the vines, talking about winemaking, sampling their wares, and setting up to take a bottle of the meadowfoam mead up to them later this week, in hopes of sweet talking them out of 4 gallons of chambourcin juice. That should be interesting. I’m tickled to not only found a source for *4* kinds of grapes, but to have made some new brewing friends. Now I have to find a source for figs and a good fig mead recipe for Charles (the other brother).

Here I go, I’ve got meadowfoam honey, orange blossom honey, and blueberry honey, courtesy of my favorite honey supplier, the Bee Folks. (By the way, if you type ‘gotmead’ in the coupon spot when placing an order, you get a 10% discount!). So, I’ve decided that it is time for me to go ‘back to basics’. Oskaar and I speak often of the fact that many people dive right into melomels and metheglins, but never really take the time to fully explore creating traditional meads.

As a big fan of melomels and metheglins myself, I initially bridled when he brought it up. Then, after thinking about it, I realized that he’s right. If you can’t make an excellent traditional mead, then your mels and meths will not be as good as they can be. You can cover a lot of mistakes with fruits and spices, but with just honey, water and yeast, there is No Place to Hide.

Soooo, this kid, who’s been making meads for ::mumble:: years, is going to go back to the drawing board. I’ve always made mead in a ‘fly by night’ sort of way, playing with them and adjusting as I go. But, I can hardly ever reproduce my truly great meads, and that bothers me. I’m taking a page out of my own book, and going to spend this year making traditionals, and exploring the various yeasts available, and seeing what changes temperatures and other variables have on my meads.

It occurred to me as I was pouring water onto honey this morning: we make magic. With a swirl of my lees stirrer, I mixed orange blossom honey, water and yeast, and in a scant few weeks, I’ll have a magic elixir to with which to gift my friends an warm my nights.

So simple, yet so complex, mead is like checkers, easy to learn, a lifetime to master. You never stop learning how to make better mead. I started back in the 90’s making mead ‘by the seat of my pants’. I would mix up my must (after heating the honey), pitch in the dry yeast, give it a good shaking, airlock it and wait. Most times, I got a pretty decent mead. Now and then, I got gack, but mostly it was pretty good.

As time moved on, I used my hydrometer, added some nutrients, and started expanding my knowledge of meadmaking.

Now, I rehydrate my yeasts, cold-mix my musts, and pitch nutrient slurries at the end of the lag phase, and at the 1/3 sugar break. I stir not just at the pitch, but every day until that 1/3 sugar break, and mix after that.

Is this better? No, it is different than my old methods, and it works for me. My meads are better than ever now, and I can repeat my successes, and avoid my mistakes. Some folks prefer the ‘old’ methods, and I say, good on you! Use what works, so long as you make your mead!!

I’m off now to back-sweeten a strawberry mel, and pitch the apple-cherry cyser on my schedule.

Wassail, and go forth and make mead!!

I’m sure that many don’t know that I’m a web designer by trade. That’s how Gotmead got started, as a learning tool for me to teach myself HTML. Along the way, I’ve gotten *very* good at tracking down information using Google.

So, whilst Googling away today, I realized I needed to get on Technorati:
Technorati Profile

I also found a very interesting meadery in Vancouver, called Middle Mountain Mead. Check them out, they’ve got several unusual meads such as a lavender-cranberry, a plum-rhubarb and a green tea mead. If you’re in or near BC, I highly recommend taking a look!

I drag my sorry self out of bed on Saturday morning, already feeling the beginnings of the cold that will strike me down the following week, and the anemia I didn’t know I had (no *wonder* I was getting drunk on a single glass of mead!). I stagger blearily down to the restaurant, repeat my breakfast adventure (Pepsi, bleh), and take care of a couple things until Deborah Lee, the coordinator of the Home Competition, tracks me down and asks me to round up help to do the folding, spindling, mutilating, stuffing and mailing of all the judging sheets and medals for the home competition.

Some folks had taken advantage of the lovely day and zipped out to do some touristing, but I managed to track down the Exlines (derailing *their* tourist plans, sorry guys!), and the three of us settled down to sort, pack and seal up the hundreds of pieces of paperwork for the home competition entries. Whilst sorting, I realized I would miss the IMA industry meeting. About that time, my cell phone rings, and its Julia, telling me to get my butt to the meeting.

So, off I go, apologizing to Glenn and Dani for leaving them with the rest of the paperwork. Being the efficient critters they are, they wave me off, and continue stuffing. I arrive at the meeting, and get grabbed by John Bryons of Munro Meadery in Ontario, Canada. Shortly thereafter, the *other* Canadien, Andre from Intermiel (who makes *dreamy* rose mead), in Quebec, Canada, arrives and sits down on my other side. Just behind us are the folks from Stawski Distributing, the people who bring you Polish and Lithuanian meads (YUM).

There ensues a whispered, but intense, conversation where I once again bug the Canadiens to import their stuff into the States, and they say they haven’t found a distributor. So I promptly turn around, introduce myself to the Stawski people, introduce *them* to the Canadiens, and make them all promise to pursue importing their meads into the U.S. I sit back, satisfied that I have started the ball rolling to bring a couple more meads here (now if I could just get Moniak mead into the US….)

About that time, Julia announces that I’m to give the Research and Web committee reports. I start, realizing I have no notes, and hope I don’t muff it……..

So, I get up there, and give my spiel, telling them how I’m going to revamp the meadfest.com site, work on the mead industry survey with Dan McFeeley, find out where we are with the mead and honey flavor wheels, and work with the BJCP on their new Mead Judging Certification they’re putting together.

Then, we put together the new committees, and off I rush to my next thing, which is seeing if all my stuff is ready at the table. It is, of course, Leonora has seen to it.

A blurry bit of time ensues, then we’re into the tasting

Suddenly, I realize I’ve forgotten to eat (and not realizing I’m anemic), and getting dizzy and light headed. So I snatch a pizza (and a DiSaranno) at the bar, and hustle upstairs (breathing heavily, there’s no *air* up there!) to Tasting Session #2. As usual, Spike and Scott are doing their guard-dog routine, and wave me off. Meanwhile, Kim and Matt and Matt’s friend have been roaming about gathering sound bites on their little tape recorders for the upcoming inagural Gotmead Podcast (really!) and doing a bit of tasting themselves.

Rank hath its privledges, and I take advantage by smiling sweetly at Kelly at Rabbits Foot Meadery and snatching glasses of their utterly wonderful lemon cyser, and also getting a taste (and a bottle) of the new entry, Melia, which takes a medal in the commercial competition.

Meanwhile, I acquire a full set of Munro mead, and 3 bottles of Intermiel. This will be the first of the Canadien meads I’ve had the chance to formally review! Time to get the Tasting Team over for a round!

During all of this, Ken Schramm has been loitering about by his pile of books, which is dwindling quickly. He was offering a $5.00 discount for the book if people signed up for a GM Patron membership, a great deal! Once people realized who he was (I had him announced), he got mobbed by mead-makers, buying his books and engaging him with questions. We ended up selling over $200 worth of books for him, which is great! And, being the wonderful person that he is, Ken signed a final copy, with much flourish and many add-ons of his book and gave it to me telling me to auction it off on Gotmead to raise a few bucks for the site. So watch for your own custom-signed copy of Kens book!

When the tasting session is over, we tear down the table and cart all the stuff (less of it now) upstairs to the room. Of course, we head *right* back down, eat some dinner, and head off to the staff party (workers, meadery owners, judges, etc.), which is littered with all the leftover home competition meads, all the opened commercial meads from the pour, and all the meads everyone brought with them. At this point I discover that the Gotmead Tote Bag holds *11* bottles of mead! Amazing!!! The power of canvas………

Ken Schramm brings out a bottle of his ‘Heart of Darkness v2′, an *unbelievable* melomel that just makes you want to beg for more…..Oskaar has his fantastic meads and wines, and there are literally *hundreds* of bottles of mead, cordial, beer and wine circulating, and at least 150 people drinking them……..

I wander in and out, talking to everyone, my voice going by degrees (I had a cold coming one, remember) and having a wonderful time. I spent some time closeted with Mike Faul, plotting to take over the world……but we do that every Mead Fest. Then I spent a while polishing up my Canadien accent with John Bryans of Munro Meadery and planning to visit him and Chris, his wife at their place when I go home to Michigan in June.

So, I wander back into the party, and they’re doing the *limbo*!!!! What fun! I wasn’t up to limboing, but I had a ball watching the folks who were, and they ranged from pretty sober to 3-sheets out……

So, a couple hours after the party breaks up, I get up and head blearily down to the hotel restaurant to scarf up some breakfast at the nice buffet they have…except I find out, all they have is PEPSI…..no Coke! Well, this Southern Girl is a Coca-Cola woman, thru and thru, and besides, Diet Pepsi is icky. Nevertheless, I choke down a glass, and some tea, because caffiene is needed…..meanwhile resolving to get out and pick up some Diet Dr. Pepper…..

10 AM rolls around, and I find myself in the judging room for the Commercial Competition, opposite the owner of a new Alaska Meadery, and Paul Gatza of the ABA. We judge traditionals, and I, as usual, manage to learn lots of new things about detecting flavors and tastes in meads.

By 11:15, we’ve taken a break. I head outside to decompress a bit, before tackling the next flight, which is for me to be my favorite category, metheglins (which shares a place with my other favorite, melomels). I get to judge with the owner of Adytum Cellars and Pete Devaris, the table expert (and his way cool Riedel Professional tasting glass - I gotta get me one of these).

During my break, Leonora corraled me and informed me that *she* would set up my sponsor table, thank you. Thank the gods for you, Spike, I *never* woulda gotten it done otherwise!

Just as we were finalizing our decisions on the meths before us, someone rushes in and tells me that I’ve gotta run, the website is down!!!! Panicked, I quickly beg leave to Pete, and run up to the *faboo* suite that Julia had obtained up on the club level.

Seems her original room had construction going on next to it, and all was loud and annoying. So, she complained to management, and they moved her up to the suites, since all the regular rooms were taken. I *gotta* remember that tactic next year! She had an *apartment*, with a wet bar, jacuzzi tub, bidet and all the amenities! At any rate, it turns out all I needed to do was turn off the Friday online ticket sales, as it was Friday afternoon.