Mead!
After a long, arduous summer of performing Hamlet and Merry Wives of Windsor in repertory and teaching Shakespeare to eleven year olds (truly there is nothing more delightful than staging battle scenes with children), I am stoked to return to the kitchen. May, June and July were marked by 6 hour nights of sleep, lots of coffee and crappy food choices. My guilty pleasure of greasy breakfast sandwiches became a daily occurrence.
But now with a little more time on my hands and the unemployment checks rolling in, I can get back to the fine art of fermentation.
I'm a regular fermenter of kombucha, yogurt, kefir, and sometimes sauerkraut. But with Sandor Katz' newest fermentation bible The Art of Fermentation, I'm branching out.
First on the list: Mead. Drink of the Vikings. Or, the simplest alcohol known to wo/man. All you do is mix honey with water and stir or shake daily until it turns into alcohol.
Well, it can be slightly more complicated than that. Here are some more guidelines:
- If you use pasteurized honey you'll need to add yeast since it won't be naturally occurring in the honey.
- You'll need to use de-chlorinated water so make sure you filter that tap stuff.
- It really does require a twice a day shake up. I only stirred mine once a day and it took a little over two weeks to taste more interesting than honey water. According to Katz, it should take 7-10 days. Which is about the time frame for kombucha.
- The ratio is one part honey: four parts water.
- Taste your mead daily and bottle when it hits your fancy.
- For further aging (a drier finish and higher alcohol content) you'll need a jug and an airlock. I plan to age my next batch - plum mead!
New batch of honey water with cut up plums. After stirring this daily for a couple weeks, I'll transfer it to a gallon jug with an airlock (Katz says balloons work too - you need something that will let air out but not in). By Christmas I should have a nice dry plum mead libation with which to celebrate.
My first bottle of un-aged mead. Chilled, it's a sweet little something perfect for a summer day!
But now with a little more time on my hands and the unemployment checks rolling in, I can get back to the fine art of fermentation.
I'm a regular fermenter of kombucha, yogurt, kefir, and sometimes sauerkraut. But with Sandor Katz' newest fermentation bible The Art of Fermentation, I'm branching out.
First on the list: Mead. Drink of the Vikings. Or, the simplest alcohol known to wo/man. All you do is mix honey with water and stir or shake daily until it turns into alcohol.
Well, it can be slightly more complicated than that. Here are some more guidelines:
- If you use pasteurized honey you'll need to add yeast since it won't be naturally occurring in the honey.
- You'll need to use de-chlorinated water so make sure you filter that tap stuff.
- It really does require a twice a day shake up. I only stirred mine once a day and it took a little over two weeks to taste more interesting than honey water. According to Katz, it should take 7-10 days. Which is about the time frame for kombucha.
- The ratio is one part honey: four parts water.
- Taste your mead daily and bottle when it hits your fancy.
- For further aging (a drier finish and higher alcohol content) you'll need a jug and an airlock. I plan to age my next batch - plum mead!
New batch of honey water with cut up plums. After stirring this daily for a couple weeks, I'll transfer it to a gallon jug with an airlock (Katz says balloons work too - you need something that will let air out but not in). By Christmas I should have a nice dry plum mead libation with which to celebrate.
My first bottle of un-aged mead. Chilled, it's a sweet little something perfect for a summer day!
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