NEW POST!!

My last post was on April 16th that was a long time ago. If you know me you know that the lack of updates can be accounted for by the following factors; factor 1) I had a baby on April 27th (not me personally, technically it was my wife that had the baby) and factor 2) I am working on a PhD and have had to step it up in the lab to try and get done before my kids hit kindergarten. Therefore this has left me with little time to write silly nonsense about beer I’ve been drinking, it has, however not stopped the drinking of said beers. In fact I would argue that it has increased the motivation for me to consume as much as possible, and consume I have! I’ve had some really good beer from Rogue and Sierra Nevada as well as some more obscure microbreweries thanks to my beer of the month club. I will get to those eventually but today I wanted to talk about 2 beverages that are fresh in my mind that aren’t beer. I would like to discuss B. Nektar’s wildflower mead and my own homebrewed apple wine.

I’ve wanted to try mead for quite some time. I’m not a Viking but I love honey and I’m fascinated by bees so mead seems like a great idea to me. I remember that when I worked at the liquor store we had one customer that made us order it for him and it was not something people knew about. Looking at the meaderies on the web it seems like the production of mead has increased in the past 10 years and there are a number of artisanal meaderies operating and selling their craft locally and to liquor stores across the country. B. Nektar is located in Michagain and I happened upon their products when I went to the beer store to try and find some Sierra Nevada 30th anniversary barleywine but came out empty on that front. I had read about B. Nektar on the web so I was excited to try out their wildflower mead. I chilled it overnight and poured myself a glass the next day. It smelled like wine and I took a sip……. and decided mead sucks. Mead, like wine, is influenced by the area it’s made in. For wine it’s the soil the grapes grow in, for mead it’s the flowers the bees collect honey from. If that’s the case, this mead tastes like Detroit. It’s just nasty. Too sweet with an odd middle and aftertaste to it I can’t describe. I drank the whole glass by taking tiny little sips but ended up throwing the rest of the bottle away because I knew there was no way I could finish it. I’d be willing to try mead again but not from this place. Total disappointment.

On to the apple wine! So the apple wine is made of 5 gallons of Acme brand apple juice, a packet of Montrachet wine yeast and a bunch of sugar I dumped it cause I couldn’t measure out 2 pounds from the 5 pound bag. At this point, the intelligent reader will be asking “Jason, that sounds awful! It’s going to make sour juice. Are you making wine in a trash bag in prison?” and my answer to that is no. I am actually following the instructions on one of the most popular recipes on the homebrew talk website. Everyone seems to love this stuff and since it cost me all of 20 bucks to make I figured I’d give it a shot. I’ve been fermenting this for 4 months and I finally bottled it last night. It needs time to carbonate and mature but what it tastes like is a very dry champagne. It’s not what I expected at all. And at about 9-10% alcohol I can see why everyone warns to be careful with this one. I should have sweetened it a little with a non-fermentable sugar but I have a feeling this is going to be really good.

So that’s that. In a few months I’ll have a ton of apple wine to give away and hopefully by then I’ll have the barleywine I want to brew in primary. I’ll update more about the delicious beer I’ve had when I can.