Onion Metheglin

Just an idea, wondering if anyone has ever done this before.

Growing up, our cough syrup/cold remedy was to boil an onion, strain out the onion, and add lemon juice and honey to the onion juice. It's an acquired taste- and with enough honey, mighty fine. In college, I started adding whiskey as well. Hmm... alcoholic honey drink.... sounds like mead... but with onion?

I'm thinking of maybe doing a 1 gallon batch so I have some to use as "medicine" this winter, and am wondering if people have suggestions, mostly with the onion.

I'm thinking I'll add onion juice in secondary. I'm wondering what fermented onion juice would taste like, and wonder if campden tablets might be a good idea. Any onion fermenters out there?

dude. puke.

PintOfBitter said:

dude. puke.

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If I had to choose between this and cherry cough syrup, it's this all the time.

As you said, It's an acquired taste.
I have never done anything even close to that, but maybe someone has.

it sounds awful! I would try it....... but wouldnt make it.

Onion and Leek flavored metheglins were actually common in the middle ages, purportedly capable of curing a variety of ills. Of course since none have survived to the current era, I wonder how effective they really were....

One of my business professors in college had a marketing class and he talked often about trying to market onion/watermelon drink. I'm sure it was a joke.

But onions have been used as food and cure for millenia. I'd have to try it to see if it was really not as bad as I envision, but I don't mind cough syrup either. (Except Buckley's. That sht is NASTY!! Each time I try it I forget how sick I was, just from trying not to puke)

This article, or rather, abstract, talks about fermenting onion juice with Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain IR-2. They were making vinegar, so no word on taste. 67.3 g of sugar in the juice, converted to 30.6 g of ethanol.

Kirkwood Winery in West Virginia makes a ramp wine, which is similar to, but more pungent than, onions or leeks. I've got a bottle that I've been waiting to crack open. I was thinking about using it in French onion soup, but if it tastes good it might not make it into the pot.

EDIT: for some reason the URL tag isn't working, so here's the link I tried to post:
http://www.kirkwood-wine.com/

eulipion2 said:

Kirkwood Winery in West Virginia makes a ramp wine, which is similar to, but more pungent than, onions or leeks. I've got a bottle that I've been waiting to crack open. I was thinking about using it in French onion soup, but if it tastes good it might not make it into the pot.

EDIT: for some reason the URL tag isn't working, so here's the link I tried to post:
http://www.kirkwood-wine.com/

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Thanks! I'm going to shoot them an email, see if they're willing to share any tips...

I have no idea if this would taste good or not, but what if you carmelized the onions? I would think that might bring out some natural sugars that could be fermented. I'm thinking when your starting point is an onion wine, you may as well try anything; it could only get so much worse, and it might make it better.

Actually the sugars are already in a fermentable form. Carmelization would just make complex and oxidized sugars out of the simpler sugars already in the onions. The reason that carmelization makes pungent onions taste more sweet, is in part because the heat used to carmelize also drives off the volatile oils that cause them to have a sharp taste when fresh - so instead, they make you cry while they're cooking!

So carmelizing the onions would make simple sugars into complex, so they would possibly ferment more slowly or less completely than otherwise, am I correct? It sounds like the end result would be what I was thinking of, richer and perhaps slightly sweeter than with raw onions. I was just backwards on my thinking about what would happen to the sugars. I don't mean to hijack this, but I'm getting curious about the possibility of a French Onion recipe, with carmelized onion and honey. Maybe some maple syrup for a French Onion metheglin/acerglyn? Or maybe I'm just hungry and anything sounds good right now... OK, sorry for the hijack; I'll stop now and go dream about onions...

jcobbs said:

So carmelizing the onions would make simple sugars into complex, so they would possibly ferment more slowly or less completely than otherwise, am I correct? It sounds like the end result would be what I was thinking of, richer and perhaps slightly sweeter than with raw onions. I was just backwards on my thinking about what would happen to the sugars. I don't mean to hijack this, but I'm getting curious about the possibility of a French Onion recipe, with carmelized onion and honey. Maybe some maple syrup for a French Onion metheglin/acerglyn? Or maybe I'm just hungry and anything sounds good right now... OK, sorry for the hijack; I'll stop now and go dream about onions...

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Hmm carmelization does sound like a good possibility. I've never done it before, but it seems easy enough. So maybe add carmelized onions in secondary?

How about adding both raw and caramelized onions? Onions have a lot of sulfur compounds that could end up in the finished product, so try to find Vidalia or some other sweet onion to keep the pungency down. I'd bet that the sweetness of the honey and the effects of fermentation would keep a lot of it in check. Caramelized onions in secondary would probably add a nice sweet caramel note.

Caramelized onions are easy; just slice them up about 1/4" thick, separate into rings, and saute over medium heat with a couple of tablespoons of brown sugar. Ordinarily you'd add some butter, but you don't want that here. So I'd get a really good new or almost-new non-stick pan and cook them without any oils. Start the onions first and add the sugar after they start sweating, so the sugar doesn't burn. You'll know when they're done--when you're ready to forget the mead and just get a fork. eulpion2 is right about the variety--try to get Vidalia or at least a sweet yellow Spanish.

jcobbs said:

Caramelized onions are easy; just slice them up about 1/4" thick, separate into rings, and saute over medium heat with a couple of tablespoons of brown sugar. Ordinarily you'd add some butter, but you don't want that here. So I'd get a really good new or almost-new non-stick pan and cook them without any oils. Start the onions first and add the sugar after they start sweating, so the sugar doesn't burn. You'll know when they're done--when you're ready to forget the mead and just get a fork. eulpion2 is right about the variety--try to get Vidalia or at least a sweet yellow Spanish.

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Good call on the oil. I would not have thought about that. Definitely sweet vidalia would be better.

We have a set of cookware from Pampered Chef that's about two years old. I've never seen anything like it for non-stick. We have a 12-inch skillet that I swear you can't make food stick to. I believe you could pan fry a marshmallow with no oil and still peel it right out. If you can get something like that to do your onions then you won't have any excess oils in your mead, except the tiny bit of volatiles in the onions themselves.