Hi everyone,
I’ve always been a crafter.
Throughout my 20’s and into my 30’s I was an avid homebrewer; all lagers and ales. Charlie Papazian was my Pied Piper. I always loved everything about the process, including enjoying and sharing the fruits of the labor. One attempt at making wine from backyard Concord grapes at that time yielded results that were so terribly foxy I dumped the batch and thought, “winemaking must not be my gig” (pardon the pun) so it was back to just beer.
Life progressed and, with a young family, I didn’t have time for brewing (let alone imbibing), relegating my equipment to storage for decades. Never having discarded it, even through several moves, I knew I wanted to come back to it some day.
Living on a hobby farm for the last 15 years, and as an empty-nester now, my interest has been rekindled, but with a twist. I‘ve been a beekeeper for close to 20 years, and with the kids out on their own now, honey surplus is building up.
Enter the concept of mead. The liquid of legends, nectar of the gods. Trouble was that the few meads I’d tasted were nothing I ever wanted to drink again. The still ones were cloyingly sweet. The drier sparkling ones seemed as boring as cheap seltzer. But a friend who was a county extension agent and fellow beekeeper suggested that didn’t need to be the case, especially if I crafted my own. Besides, I’m Polish, so mead is part of my heritage to be honored, eh?
Dreams of my own braggots and metheglyns began to swirl in my head. And, heck, I needed to do something with all this honey and selling it is a real PITA.
I recently took the plunge. Over the Independence Day weekend I drove 45 minutes to the Home Brew Ohio outlet. I was like a kid in a candy store. I supplemented my decrepit existing equipment with a new kit and supplies.
My vision is to create fermented beverages using homegrown ingredients as much as possible. The honey, obviously, but also the herbs and berries that grow wild on the homestead, the produce from my garden (currently fending off the urge to grow my own grain.). I’m very interested in primitive and minimalist processes, as well as crafting with the aid of modern science and honed technique. I have lots more reading to do. We’ll see where the journey takes me.
Needless to say, I’m gung ho now.
As I was starting my first mead, I broke the hydrometer taking it out of the packaging. (I’ve owned a refractometer, for years but haven’t ever taken it out of the box. Wonder if I even need a hydrometer.) “Guess we’re going on primitive intuition from the get go” I figured. Beyond a straight mead using 71b that I’ll flavor in the secondaries, I started a triple-based braggot using extract and WLP500.
Already, I’ve found a lot of guidance through the HBT community. I figured I should join.
I think this new project venture is going to be a fun rabbit hole down which I am falling.
Na Zdrowie!
I’ve always been a crafter.
Throughout my 20’s and into my 30’s I was an avid homebrewer; all lagers and ales. Charlie Papazian was my Pied Piper. I always loved everything about the process, including enjoying and sharing the fruits of the labor. One attempt at making wine from backyard Concord grapes at that time yielded results that were so terribly foxy I dumped the batch and thought, “winemaking must not be my gig” (pardon the pun) so it was back to just beer.
Life progressed and, with a young family, I didn’t have time for brewing (let alone imbibing), relegating my equipment to storage for decades. Never having discarded it, even through several moves, I knew I wanted to come back to it some day.
Living on a hobby farm for the last 15 years, and as an empty-nester now, my interest has been rekindled, but with a twist. I‘ve been a beekeeper for close to 20 years, and with the kids out on their own now, honey surplus is building up.
Enter the concept of mead. The liquid of legends, nectar of the gods. Trouble was that the few meads I’d tasted were nothing I ever wanted to drink again. The still ones were cloyingly sweet. The drier sparkling ones seemed as boring as cheap seltzer. But a friend who was a county extension agent and fellow beekeeper suggested that didn’t need to be the case, especially if I crafted my own. Besides, I’m Polish, so mead is part of my heritage to be honored, eh?
Dreams of my own braggots and metheglyns began to swirl in my head. And, heck, I needed to do something with all this honey and selling it is a real PITA.
I recently took the plunge. Over the Independence Day weekend I drove 45 minutes to the Home Brew Ohio outlet. I was like a kid in a candy store. I supplemented my decrepit existing equipment with a new kit and supplies.
My vision is to create fermented beverages using homegrown ingredients as much as possible. The honey, obviously, but also the herbs and berries that grow wild on the homestead, the produce from my garden (currently fending off the urge to grow my own grain.). I’m very interested in primitive and minimalist processes, as well as crafting with the aid of modern science and honed technique. I have lots more reading to do. We’ll see where the journey takes me.
Needless to say, I’m gung ho now.
As I was starting my first mead, I broke the hydrometer taking it out of the packaging. (I’ve owned a refractometer, for years but haven’t ever taken it out of the box. Wonder if I even need a hydrometer.) “Guess we’re going on primitive intuition from the get go” I figured. Beyond a straight mead using 71b that I’ll flavor in the secondaries, I started a triple-based braggot using extract and WLP500.
Already, I’ve found a lot of guidance through the HBT community. I figured I should join.
I think this new project venture is going to be a fun rabbit hole down which I am falling.
Na Zdrowie!
