I have yet to open one of my bottles of mead but it'll be a full month since I started it on Wednesday so I think if I'm over my covid symptoms enough that'll be the night to try one
I thought I was going to make cool drinks with my liqueurs, but so far I've basically just added them to lemonade for my girlfriend. I did make a couple of drinks with them, but except for a couple Floradora's I made all of the raspberry liqueur went into lemonade to make a nice pink lemonade.
I did bottle the coffee liqueur and tomorrow I'm looking at making a white russian with it. My gf also got an infusing bottle so we infused some tequila with strawberry and jalapeno that I'm going to make into a margarita for her so that should be interesting.
Made some mango margaritas today and I love how easy making a fruity margarita is. Freeze chunks of fruit add a cup of tequila and triple sec, some lime juice and ice to get your preferred consistency.
sponoMining for Nose DiamondsBooger CoveRegistered Userregular
edited June 2022
I picked up a bottle of Michter's bourbon on a whim
I don't really have the vocabulary to describe liquor, so I'll try my best. It has a little bit of a burn, but that fades quickly. It tastes good; much better than the cheap stuff, not quite as good in my opinion as Eagle Rare. Overall, I'd buy it again. Good booze.
Alright so I officially have 8 or 9 gallons of base mead that we pulled from our fermentation tank that is all mine to fuckicate with.
Here's what I'm thinking: at first I wanted to do a wheat beer influenced infusion but now I'm thinking maybe I try to make an homage to my favorite Belgian beer, the Tripel Karmaleit.
I need to do some more research but I think I can get hold of Styrian Golding hops maybe which give off some resin and white pepper. That distinct banana taste comes from their home cultured yeast combo'ing with the Steiermark hops which I'm not going to have or will need since the primary fermentation is already done. I don't know if I want to try and replicate banana notes in a mead unless I do like, a one day soak with some ripe nanners. Otherwise I want to maybe run vanilla, and then definitely some orange and lemon for that citrus. The only thing that might be missing here is the wheat malt since that would technically make it a braggot and that is illegal for a winery to make in South Carolina!
Conversely, since mead do be sweet, I could go the dubbel route and lean into brown sugars, fruit and spice. Though, our brown ale inspired mead is... not my favorite.
I may double post this in the beer thread since there's crossover there but anybody with any more brewing experience is welcome to offer ideas.
Having recently been to the Iberian peninsula I have fallen in love with vermouths, does anyone have recommendations for a recipe book specifically for those kinds of lower abv bitter cocktails?
I'm mostly making Aperol Spritz's and Americanos, but I want to figure out some of the weird ones that were over there and just labelled "vermouth"
Mmmm. So our Orange Blossom Traditional mead won a Gold medal at the national Mead Crafters Competition in the varietal category.
The secret is to let it age an entire year or more.
I am sipping on it right now and let me tell you, damn. Dang.
Dope!
I should pop open a bottle of what I brewed to check how it's aging in the bottles, probably not espescially fast considering it's beer bottles but hey.
I am excited. I'll be easing into the actual mead making side of things soon and by the end of the year I will be hopefully making it in like, 300 gallon batches at a time. I'll also get to be a little creative.
Our plan is to actually scale production back and I'm pushing hard to get a minimum 10-12 month aging time in effect so we can RAISE THEM PRICES BAAAABEEEEEE.
And for real, you can pull mead at 5 to 6 months and it's fine but it needs that year at least to really sing. The alcohol and the sweetness mellows way they hell out and the flavors just come right up to the top.
We ship through VinoShipper I think but I can also probably just grab you some bottles and send them to you if you want to just like, venmo or PayPal me.
Having recently been to the Iberian peninsula I have fallen in love with vermouths, does anyone have recommendations for a recipe book specifically for those kinds of lower abv bitter cocktails?
I'm mostly making Aperol Spritz's and Americanos, but I want to figure out some of the weird ones that were over there and just labelled "vermouth"
We ship through VinoShipper I think but I can also probably just grab you some bottles and send them to you if you want to just like, venmo or PayPal me.
I found the SC meaderies on VinoShipper, which one?!?!
Reaper is gonna be... probably not happening anymore. We lost about 300 gallons of base out of a 700 gallon batch a while back and that fucked a lot of our product lines up. We might still have some bottled Peach which is dope because it's well over a year old, but I'm like 99.9% sure we don't have Reaper right now.
I take that back, I just asked and we do plan on doing it but it'll probably be next year.
The problem with peaches is they are only avaliable for a very short period of time every year. So by the time we get it, get it in the mead and let it fruit it's basically fall and not the season for it.
Now that I'm somewhat in charge of this stuff I'm looking at doing a test batch of maybe a fig, apricot vanilla mead. I really want to try figs. We've never used figs before.
I'm not saying that's why it's our number one seller by a stupid margin
But I'm not not saying that.
And yeah our award winning Gold Medal Orange Blossom Traditional is going on sale at our fall solstice event and I believe in limited numbers. If we somehow do not sell out I will see if I can snag a bottle or two.
We will also be doing an extremely limited release of a Tupelo Honey varietal at our 5 year anniversary in November. That one I'm kind of nervous about. It's been aging for like... two years? But it's aging in the kegs and at one point it went kinda weird and they had to refilter it. We really should've gotten it in bottles a while ago because they age MUCH better than in kegs.
Hmmm. It may be offline. I know we were in the process of getting like, a new local web host so they may have killed it today.
Edit: here is the link to vinoshipper page. Looking at it we have a good bit of stuff out of stock that I think we actually do have. I'll have to check on that next time I'm in.
My in laws got me sour peach moonshine for last Christmas because they're good at getting the general interest right but the specifics wrong and after drinking too much of it I'm confident when I say that it isn't good and I don't like it and nobody should drink it.
In the further adventures of "I make questionable liquor decisions" we bought an $8 bottle of Natural Light lemonade flavored vodka at the store today because they were doing a tasting and mixed with Seltzer it's fine.
That being said if I feel terrible tomorrow please nobody say I told you so.
I think Daiquiri's have become my favorite drink. They have the easily modifiable nature of margaritas, but I vastly prefer rum. Plus I can get good white rum for like $15 a bottle with Don Q. Made some strawberry daiquiris after I ordered one at a bar for my gf that was terrible. Whst a difference fresh fruit instead of flavored syrup makes.
I'm gonna finish out with an Old-fashioned using homemade cinnamon simple syrup.
Making syrups at home is something I find very fun/relaxing and also can elevate any homemade cocktail. A 2:1 Honey syrup especially is utterly delicious.
I think Daiquiri's have become my favorite drink. They have the easily modifiable nature of margaritas, but I vastly prefer rum. Plus I can get good white rum for like $15 a bottle with Don Q. Made some strawberry daiquiris after I ordered one at a bar for my gf that was terrible. Whst a difference fresh fruit instead of flavored syrup makes.
An interesting exercise I went through was trying to perfect the margarita, the gimlet, and the daiquiri. Without relying too much on finding the right underlying spirit, focusing mostly on changes to the sweetener and little tricks relating to bar craft.
The gimlet for example, turned out a lot better if I used agave syrup for it, and put half a spent lime (after squeezing it for its juice) right in the shaker tin. The extra oils from the lime rind, happily really played in with gins' botanicals.
I'm gonna finish out with an Old-fashioned using homemade cinnamon simple syrup.
Making syrups at home is something I find very fun/relaxing and also can elevate any homemade cocktail. A 2:1 Honey syrup especially is utterly delicious.
I'm a two ingrediennt mixer. Boozer and one mix, what shall sustain me?
I'm gonna finish out with an Old-fashioned using homemade cinnamon simple syrup.
Making syrups at home is something I find very fun/relaxing and also can elevate any homemade cocktail. A 2:1 Honey syrup especially is utterly delicious.
I'm a two ingrediennt mixer. Boozer and one mix, what shall sustain me?
First improvement would be to measure out a ratio of spirit to mixer, for just those two it's generally 1:2 or 1:3 spirit to mixer. 1:3 is the more modern palate spec because it's sweeter. The next thing to elevate that would be to add a splash of citrus juice; lemon or lime. About a 1/2 an oz to an oz if doing a full 12oz of soda.
After that, the skys the limit, start adding small splashes of whatever other spirits that one may have or can find local that pair well with the mixer of choice and the base spirit (keeping the ratio of spirits to mixer, naturally) I, for one, really like Banane du Brésil from Giffard paired with Whiskey and Coke Zero. I've also had good results with coffee liquor in Coke and base whiskey, It kinda takes the drink in a root beer or Dr Pepper direction.
Really, it's all about thinking of flavor combinations and tasting as you go. And writing down what works and tasted delicious.
I'm gonna finish out with an Old-fashioned using homemade cinnamon simple syrup.
Making syrups at home is something I find very fun/relaxing and also can elevate any homemade cocktail. A 2:1 Honey syrup especially is utterly delicious.
Infusing liquors or making your own liqueurs is also good as you guarantee its made with the fruit you want and not just sweetener and you can balance it to your tastes.
I need to refine my coffee liqueur because it was too sweet last time. I also made it with bacardi and dunkin donuts coffee since I wanted to make sure it worked before getting really nice stuff for it.
We got in 20 or 30 gallons of honeysuckle flower honey that I want to play with real bad.
I want to do a batch as usual with our standard process/yeast etc but I'm also wanting to try and cultivate wild yeast from our backyard. I think I have a handle on how it works but I'm not 100% sure.
Basically I think you just make like, a small 4 or 8 ounce starter must with some GoFerm or some kinda yeast nutrient, cover it with a loose cheesecloth and then set that puppy outside until it starts bubbling. Then basically pitch it in and see what happens. That said the brewery next door is a farmhouse style brewery so I could just buy a bottle or two and yoink the sweet yeasts from the bottom.
It would be cool to have an actual wild mead, especially since I think honeysuckle is gonna be a much more mild flavoured honey than the raspberry or orange blossom mix we use.
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Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I did bottle the coffee liqueur and tomorrow I'm looking at making a white russian with it. My gf also got an infusing bottle so we infused some tequila with strawberry and jalapeno that I'm going to make into a margarita for her so that should be interesting.
{Twitter, Everybody's doing it. }{Writing and Story Blog}
{Twitter, Everybody's doing it. }{Writing and Story Blog}
I don't really have the vocabulary to describe liquor, so I'll try my best. It has a little bit of a burn, but that fades quickly. It tastes good; much better than the cheap stuff, not quite as good in my opinion as Eagle Rare. Overall, I'd buy it again. Good booze.
Here's what I'm thinking: at first I wanted to do a wheat beer influenced infusion but now I'm thinking maybe I try to make an homage to my favorite Belgian beer, the Tripel Karmaleit.
I need to do some more research but I think I can get hold of Styrian Golding hops maybe which give off some resin and white pepper. That distinct banana taste comes from their home cultured yeast combo'ing with the Steiermark hops which I'm not going to have or will need since the primary fermentation is already done. I don't know if I want to try and replicate banana notes in a mead unless I do like, a one day soak with some ripe nanners. Otherwise I want to maybe run vanilla, and then definitely some orange and lemon for that citrus. The only thing that might be missing here is the wheat malt since that would technically make it a braggot and that is illegal for a winery to make in South Carolina!
Conversely, since mead do be sweet, I could go the dubbel route and lean into brown sugars, fruit and spice. Though, our brown ale inspired mead is... not my favorite.
I may double post this in the beer thread since there's crossover there but anybody with any more brewing experience is welcome to offer ideas.
I'm mostly making Aperol Spritz's and Americanos, but I want to figure out some of the weird ones that were over there and just labelled "vermouth"
There are a few books about vermouth that appear to have good reviews online, but I can't personally vouch for any of them.
The secret is to let it age an entire year or more.
I am sipping on it right now and let me tell you, damn. Dang.
Dope!
I should pop open a bottle of what I brewed to check how it's aging in the bottles, probably not espescially fast considering it's beer bottles but hey.
Our plan is to actually scale production back and I'm pushing hard to get a minimum 10-12 month aging time in effect so we can RAISE THEM PRICES BAAAABEEEEEE.
And for real, you can pull mead at 5 to 6 months and it's fine but it needs that year at least to really sing. The alcohol and the sweetness mellows way they hell out and the flavors just come right up to the top.
Much less thin and alcohol flavor and more of the honey is coming through so it's noticeably sweeter but not overwhelmingly so.
I like it!
This is apparently the book our head meadmaker goes off of (this is the meadery's copy I've got my own coming in the mail.)
It's the Compleat Meadmaker by Ken Schramm
No I don't know why they spelled complete like that. Anyway, figured I'd share it
It's full of cool recipes and general techniques and stuff
I also recommend the Reddit for mead. It's where I found all the resources I did when I did that 5 gallon batch years ago.
Also Juggs how can I get this mead.
I've definitely had a few drinks from this book over the years at bars: https://smile.amazon.com/Art-Shim-Low-Alcohol-Cocktails-Level/dp/0983998043
$43 seems a bit steep (I suspect it may no longer be in print), so you may wanna look at getting used or the e-book version.
I found the SC meaderies on VinoShipper, which one?!?!
I must mead
Their mead is good
Try the Carolina reaper and peach one if they got it.
It's not as hot as you'd expect, the sweet peach taste really cuts it
That stuff was good as hell
I still got the elderberry one I haven't tried. Maybe I'll open it tonight.
The problem with peaches is they are only avaliable for a very short period of time every year. So by the time we get it, get it in the mead and let it fruit it's basically fall and not the season for it.
Now that I'm somewhat in charge of this stuff I'm looking at doing a test batch of maybe a fig, apricot vanilla mead. I really want to try figs. We've never used figs before.
Can be.
Can be.
Your magical 2021 is not listed for shipment but I got Black Cherry, Oaked Black Cherry, and Dreki Skald. Am very excited.
I'm not saying that's why it's our number one seller by a stupid margin
But I'm not not saying that.
And yeah our award winning Gold Medal Orange Blossom Traditional is going on sale at our fall solstice event and I believe in limited numbers. If we somehow do not sell out I will see if I can snag a bottle or two.
We will also be doing an extremely limited release of a Tupelo Honey varietal at our 5 year anniversary in November. That one I'm kind of nervous about. It's been aging for like... two years? But it's aging in the kegs and at one point it went kinda weird and they had to refilter it. We really should've gotten it in bottles a while ago because they age MUCH better than in kegs.
ED: Also, VinoShipper's website is inscrutable. I just wanna find a list of places to buy from, but all I can get to is my account!
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Edit: here is the link to vinoshipper page. Looking at it we have a good bit of stuff out of stock that I think we actually do have. I'll have to check on that next time I'm in.
That being said if I feel terrible tomorrow please nobody say I told you so.
{Twitter, Everybody's doing it. }{Writing and Story Blog}
Tonight was working with Manhattans.
I'm gonna finish out with an Old-fashioned using homemade cinnamon simple syrup.
Making syrups at home is something I find very fun/relaxing and also can elevate any homemade cocktail. A 2:1 Honey syrup especially is utterly delicious.
An interesting exercise I went through was trying to perfect the margarita, the gimlet, and the daiquiri. Without relying too much on finding the right underlying spirit, focusing mostly on changes to the sweetener and little tricks relating to bar craft.
The gimlet for example, turned out a lot better if I used agave syrup for it, and put half a spent lime (after squeezing it for its juice) right in the shaker tin. The extra oils from the lime rind, happily really played in with gins' botanicals.
I'm a two ingrediennt mixer. Boozer and one mix, what shall sustain me?
First improvement would be to measure out a ratio of spirit to mixer, for just those two it's generally 1:2 or 1:3 spirit to mixer. 1:3 is the more modern palate spec because it's sweeter. The next thing to elevate that would be to add a splash of citrus juice; lemon or lime. About a 1/2 an oz to an oz if doing a full 12oz of soda.
After that, the skys the limit, start adding small splashes of whatever other spirits that one may have or can find local that pair well with the mixer of choice and the base spirit (keeping the ratio of spirits to mixer, naturally) I, for one, really like Banane du Brésil from Giffard paired with Whiskey and Coke Zero. I've also had good results with coffee liquor in Coke and base whiskey, It kinda takes the drink in a root beer or Dr Pepper direction.
Really, it's all about thinking of flavor combinations and tasting as you go. And writing down what works and tasted delicious.
Infusing liquors or making your own liqueurs is also good as you guarantee its made with the fruit you want and not just sweetener and you can balance it to your tastes.
I need to refine my coffee liqueur because it was too sweet last time. I also made it with bacardi and dunkin donuts coffee since I wanted to make sure it worked before getting really nice stuff for it.
{Twitter, Everybody's doing it. }{Writing and Story Blog}
I want to do a batch as usual with our standard process/yeast etc but I'm also wanting to try and cultivate wild yeast from our backyard. I think I have a handle on how it works but I'm not 100% sure.
Basically I think you just make like, a small 4 or 8 ounce starter must with some GoFerm or some kinda yeast nutrient, cover it with a loose cheesecloth and then set that puppy outside until it starts bubbling. Then basically pitch it in and see what happens. That said the brewery next door is a farmhouse style brewery so I could just buy a bottle or two and yoink the sweet yeasts from the bottom.
It would be cool to have an actual wild mead, especially since I think honeysuckle is gonna be a much more mild flavoured honey than the raspberry or orange blossom mix we use.