WSSAle v3.1 2008 (III)

Turns out I'm lazier than I thought.

I couldn't get the Hennepin yeast going and I haven't brewed yet.

I did rack my Cabbage Palm/Mangrove Mead. What? You haven't heard about that one yet? ....

Back just after Mead Day, Sue at In The Spirits had a walk-in beekeeper who offered her 5 gallon pails of honey. It was a combination of Cabbage Palm and Mangrove honey and was pretty wet stuff. The price was right, though, so I was one of four H.A.M.S. club members who bought a bucket each. I divided mine into 3 batches. The first one was 5 gallons at 35brix, the second about 5.5 gallons at 30brix, and the third about 5.5 or 6 gallons at 25brix. I started fermenting them right around the Autumn Equinox and racked them all into 5 gallon carboys over this past weekend. What was left of the 2nd two (since they were over 5 gallons) went into the continuous fermenter which is currently a bucket. The 25 tasted pretty close to dry and a little hot, the 30 was definately sweeter and not so hot, and I didn't taste the 35. That honey is certainly different from the Orange Blossom I had earlier in the year! Not really floral, somewhat spicy, and a bit earthy. I suppose it will make for an interesting and rather unique mead.

If I remember, I'll have to tell you about my Guava Mead sometime.

WSSAle v3.1 2008 (I)

v3.0 is the extract version, but I won't get into that right now.

I am going to try my hand at documenting this year's attempt at my Winter Solstice Spiced Ale. v1.0 won me a blue ribbon at the county fair, and in my opinion it's only gotten better. Now that I'm gettting into all-grain, I've decided to add that into the (hopeful) improvements.

Fred (from H.A.M.S.) proposed a club contest for spiced winter beers due for judging in January. As I've been attempting and tweaking one for the last couple years, I thought I'd join in.

3 Nov. 2008:
Buy a 750ml bottle of Hennepin. Put it in the refrigerator.
Into a 1pt. Mason jar: 1/2 cup Munton's amber DME, 1 avg. sized Cascade hop pellet, water to 1 pt. Microwave until good and boiling. Sterilize lid with vodka then seal and leave out to cool.

Yep, that's what I've got done so far.

Mead Day 2008

2 August 2008

H.A.M.S. club held our part of National Mead Day at Rasher Tierney's.

The other mead guys, John and Jim, tend to be more traditional than I: they usually heat or even boil their must. They were heading up our Mead Day, so that's what we did.

I did not intentionally overexpose the photos, but it does kind of give the feeling of HOTNESS. It was a very blistery day. I really like mead, it's my favorite, so I'm going to suggest we do two club Mead Days: one on the standard 1st Saturday of August and another in February. We can do a no-heat mead indoors in August and a heat or boil mead outdoors in February. Florida brewing is necessarily different from most of the rest of the country due to our climate.


John brought this commercial bottle of "Orange Blossom Honey Wine". It was pretty well colorless and tasted like a simple syrup. He and Jim and I all brought some of our own and they were better by far!
The owner of Rasher Tierney's is a really good guy. He accomodates our somewhat rowdy group really well.

Misty and John passed out samples of our meads. They were well recieved and allowed us to evangelize about this, the greatest and most ancient of adult beverages.
Here's a blueberry melomel (melomel means a honey-wine with fruit added) I was working on just before mead day. It was not quite ready for mead day, but I cold-crashed the yeast out of a bottle's worth and then topped up with citrus wine. I'm happy to say that just about everyone liked it:

Roller Derby

We went with Jim and John, a couple of fellow HAMS club members, and met up also with Marck and Heather of Bacon Towne Records, to a recent Bradentucky Bombers roller derby thing (match, game, ???). It was the last of the season, the Bombers split into two teams: the Garter Belt Gangsters (who we rooted for) vs. the Jawbreakers (they wore pink) in the Trailer Trash Rumble. We (the Garter Belt Gangsters) won! It was the first time I'd witnessed a roller derby event and I was really quite impressed at the thing. It was much better than I thought it would be, and really was very athletic and sportslike. You'd have to see it to understand, I think. Perhaps next time, I'll learn to do video and add it to the blog.