Making Mead

I have a good friend that lives in paradise…just up the road from me.  There is a wonderful aquifer on the property that supplies them with great spring water.  From that spring he raises rainbow trout in three man made raceways he built and maintains.  The trout grow rapidly in these conditions.  He also allows me to harvest a few trout every year.  They can weigh 4 pounds or more!

He has operated an apiary for 30 years which yields some truly fantastic honey when all things go right.   I’m lucky enough to help him with the honey extracting chores whenever he needs me.  That is really the easy part.  He works very hard at keeping those bees as it takes WAY more work than you would think.  He is a pic of a few of his hives.  He has hives in three locations.  Two spots on the property and one off the property.

Anyway, recently after a nice bounty of liquid gold, he asked me if  I would make a batch of mead for him.  He brought me a jug’o honey and I said that I would make it after blackberries were picked.  So this will be a blackberry mead or blackberry melomel, which just means mead with fruit.  This is an easy process and shouldn’t take too long to make.

So let’s start with the water.  I am using his spring water.  It is ready to go.  If you use city water, pour into a jug and allow it to sit for 24 hours to allow the chlorine to dissipate.  The amount of water needed depends on your batch size while taking into account the amount of honey you use and the liquid from the berries…minus the lees-or stuff left in the bucket that gets tossed out.  I am doing a 3 gallon batch.

Blackberry Mead (Melomel)

12+ pounds Honey

1 gallon Blackberries

Spring Water

Lalvin EC-1118 Champagne Yeast

First thing I did was put the frozen berries in a stock pot.  Add just a bit of water so the berries won’t burn and heat them so they are not frozen at all.  Then I blenderized them to release all the juices right away.  This slurry was poured into a nylon must bag and squished by hand to strain the juice out.  Tie the bag with the berries in and let the bag float in the must during primary fermentation.

After the berries were dealt with, I put about 1 gallon of water into the pot and started heating it up.  I used raw honey, so I want to pasteurize it to 160F to kill any contaminents.  After the water was heated up a bit I added the honey to dissolve it.  Then it was all taken up to 162F and pulled off the stove.  Cover the pot, put in the sink and use cold water to bring the temp down to 100F.  This will take 15 minutes or so. 

Next in a pyrex measuring cup I boiled ¼ cup of spring water in the microwave.  It was then cooled down to 105F in the freezer.  At that point, I emptied the yeast pack into the 105F water and allowed it to rehydrate for 15 minutes, according to the directions.

The honey water, after cooling down is added to the fermentation bucket with the berry juice in it. 

Now is the time to take your initial hydrometer reading.  This will tell you how much alcohol producing sugars are in there.  Mix up the “must” and put enough liquid into your tube to float the hydrometer.  Take and record the reading on your recipe sheet.  Mine was 1.080.  It’s lower than I thought because I added a little extra water.  This showed the ABV(alcohol by volume) to be 11% if fermented to 1.000.  I can always add more honey if I want to bring it up. 

At this point you are almost finished.  Now you can pitch the yeast.  Pour that measuring cup of alcohol producing goodness into the bucket.  Cover it tightly, attach your airlock and wait for the bubbles to begin.  It should take off within the next few hours.  Mead will bubble like crazy for the next month or so.  Leave it in the primary as long as you get bubbles within a minute apart or so.  It may take a month or more for the fermentation to subside.

After fermentation has slowed you can now rack it to a secondary.  Mine will go into a 3 gallon glass carboy, with any extra going into a 1 gallon jug.  Secondary can be 2-5 months depending on any fermentation that might happen.  This is also the time for the mead to clear.  Any particulate matter should settle out of suspension in secondary.

6 months is a good time, IMHO, to bottle it up.  Give it a taste.  Mine usually goes into gallon jugs or Grolsch type bottles for easy bottling. 

Patience is needed with mead.  The longer it sits the better it gets!

My Favorite Pickles

Last night I got to deal with a bucket full of pickles.  Don't ya just hate when that happens?  These were given to me by a co-worker.  Can't thank him enough for growing too many.   These are so easy to make and don't require canning.  You process them, throw them in an old ice cream bucket and keep them in the refrigerator.  Recipe can be tweaked to your liking.  I like mine with a little heat to them.

Refrigerator Pickles

7-12            Pickles/Cucumbers Sliced.(depends on size)

2 TBSP       Salt

1-2             Onions Sliced- Thin Rings

1-2             Green Pepper Sliced- Thin Rings

                  Jalepeno's(optional)*

                  Chili Peppers(optional)*

2 cups        Sugar

1 cup         Apple Cider Vinegar

1/4 tsp       Celery Salt

1/4 tsp       Celery Seed

1/2 tsp       Cayenne(optional)*

Cut the pickles/cucs into slices. Place one layer at a time in a large bowl.  Shake salt over the entire layer.  Not too much.  Repeat until the bowl is full.  Let sit in the refrigerator for 2 hours.

Cut the onion and green pepper into thin rings.  Stab the jalepeno and chili's to get more flavor, but leave them whole.  Gather the dry ingredients together too.

Mix up the sugar and apple cider vinegar in a medium bowl.  Add the celery seed and celery salt to the mix.  Stir well.  Add the cayenne if you like.  Set the bowl aside until the pickle slices are ready.

After the 2 hours is up take the pickle slices out of the fridge and drain off any water in the bowl.

Now it's all ready to put together. 

I put a layer of pickles in, then a layer of onions and peppers.  If you use any chili's or jalepenos, put them in the bottom to get the most flavor.

Alternate the layers until the tub is full.  I use a 1 gallon ice cream bucket because they fit well in the fridge and makes a great batch size.

Pour the apple cider/sugar mix over the pickles and mash them down a little.  You'll notice there isn't hardly enough juice in the tub, but there will be more the next day.

Mix them up every now and then. 

Wait for 24 hours to eat them.

There you have it!  A good recipe for a summer staple.  Hope you give them a try.

Life Happens...Usually At The Wrong Time

Two days after my last post, construction started on the new $3.5M sewer plant.  That has kept me totally busy with work related stuff.  I have never watched a large concrete job take off before.  Everything is new to me and I'm learning a lot about the process as it unfolds. 

At the start of the project one of the guys showed me a couple arrowheads he found on site.  The next day as we were talking he picked up two pieces of arrowheads right in front of me.  Dang I was so jealous.  Well it didn't take long for me to find my first one.  It was just the tip of one but...I was hooked.  My plan is to display the artifacts at the new plant.  This area holds many arrowheads as it lies just above the Green River.  I found a nice piece this morning but it does not compare to the dovetail in the picture below.

In mid May I broke out something I had planned to do for a while.  Making home made micarta gives me great satisfaction.  It is a handle material this is impervious to the natural elements.  I had purchased some regular burlap from Hobby Lobby when it was on sale and wanted to make some up.  The material that was ready to put to use was the burlap, some duffel bag canvas and bright t-shirt strips.  I made a twisted block of the t-shirt material and flat slabs of the others.  Can't wait to try it out on a new knife.

Our blackberries started ripening in late June with most of them being picked the last two weeks.  Leslie has picked over 25 gallons of them this year.  She told me this morning they are just about done.  The birds and Japanese beetles will get the stragglers.  I unfortunately do not pick them anymore because I actually get more chiggers than berries.

Here is another project I worked on with my buddy Phil.  We framed this sign with cedar limbs and built the metal hanger that supports the sign.  It is hung out on Main Street South and looks very rustic.  There was a lot of work involved but it came out looking great.  Phil actually put it up on the pole.

That kinda gets me caught up on what has been going on.  I have been enjoying the homebrew that I made recently.  Not much has been happening in the workshop as it is so hot out there.  It's hard to work steel in that heat.  Hope to get grinding real soon.

Should be a couple more postings soon.