I'm also hard at work on a large, built-in wine rack for the kitchen. I sanded it down this evening and put another coat of stain/sealant on it. One more coat, and a final sanding should do it. Installation should be complete by this weekend, at which point I'll have a place to store my bottles of Bee Rider. I'll post some pictures if I remember to take some.
Now Playing: Wyndnwyre Under One Sky
Actually, brewing mead is a lot easier than homebrewing beer or wine. The ingredients are a lot simpler: water, honey and yeast. And mead is infinitely flexible--spiced mead is called metheglin, fruit mead is called melomel, apple cider mead is called cyser, grape wine mead is called pyment, barley/ale mead is called braggott...
ReplyDeleteThe drawback on mead is that honey is a somewhat costly ingredient, especially if you're brewing a large batch. Say the average cost is $4 a pound for decent quality honey, and I used about four pounds for my little gallon and a half batch. And it's my understanding that mead needs a long aging process--6 months to a year, minimum--before all the flavors meld and balance out. It'll be a while before I move beyond those small batches to big 5 gallon batches.
And mead is commercially brewed and sold. But as honey is a costly ingredient, mead isn't cheap, and has to fight lots of competition. I've seen mead carried at HEB Central Market in San Antonio, in the same specialty section with eis wein from Germany and sake and plum wine from Japan. But there's not a lot of it on the shelves. If you're interested, Got Mead is a good place to start, and Honeywine.com has a lot of info, too. I believe both of those sites link to commercial meaderies.
I also recommend The Compleat Meadmaker by Ken Schramm. Lots of extensive background info and brewing advice from a guy who loves his mead--and also is experience with brewing beer and wine as well.