I don't know that I'm a mead maker. I do manage to take honey, water and yeast, and occasionally turn them into something tasty and always alcoholic! Today, I got around to a blueberry mead recipe I found online. DW likes blueberry anything and I promised her a year ago I'd make this mead for her. Only when a 2.5 gallon plastic jug of spring water sprang a leak in the kitchen did I finally get started on this mead.
The recipe called for 5 pounds of frozen blueberries. Urr... the plastic bags of berries had been shuffled about the freezers for at least a year and somehow got holes poked in them. I figure the dogs will enjoy them and modified the recipe so it now requires 3 quarts of blueberry juice. $21 worth! I don't know what we paid for the berries. I hope the dogs like them.
The gallon of clover honey I'm using cost about $40. Add another $3 for two packets of wine yeast and a few teaspoons of yeast energizer and nutrients, and pectic enzyme and I've got about $65 (if I count the part of a jug of spring water) tied up in this 5 gallon experiment.
As DW tends to like a sweet wine and I, a semi-sweet mead, I'll have to add at least another 4 pounds of honey to the ferment over the next 4.5 months. That's what, another $12? So I'll have $77 invested before I bottle this one!
If I manage to actually bottle 5 gallons of this mead I'll have 25 fifths of it at a cost of about $3.o8 a bottle. I recycle the bottles and have corks from a previous experiment that went horribly wrong.
Blueberry juice with a packet of yeast and the other dry ingredients getting air whipped into it. I
whipped the honey/water and spring water the same way. One of my mead books ("The Compleat Meadmaker" by Ken Schramm) recommends getting as much O2 into a must as possible before adding the yeast and sealing the fermentation bucket against the world.
DW said it smells heavenly. Blueberry people!
Filled to slightly above the 5-gallon mark, covered and air-locked for the next 14 days, maybe. I seldom manage to resist the urge to see all the yeastie bubbles popping on the surface and filling my head with the must's intoxicating fragrances. Just a hint of what the fermentation will do to my head about a year from now! Though the recipe recommends I wait two years before popping a cork. Riiiiight.
DW says she might, might wait until it's 6 months old!
She also says we need to plant an acre of blueberries!
12/5/11 Update. The yeast started working faster than I've ever seen it do before. Within two days it's bubbling the airlock at full throttle!
An international meal my mother would never have been able to prepare when I was a kid. The swai is from India, the paprika from Hungary, the sea salt from France, the sunflower oil the Ukraine, and the pepper corns from Southeast Asia? The canola/olive oil was bottled in Baltimore near as I can tell. Though I've not heard of olive trees growing there. Everything else looks to be a product of the USA.
Seasoned and floured. Waiting for the fry pot to finish a batch of french fries.
Ha! I forgot to mention the paper lined dish is from Poland!
Okay, I suspect Merlot doesn't go with fish and fries, but the ketchup suits it well enough.
