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Christmas Mead for Wassailing

mead_top
December 18, 2011 By In diy, drink me, from the bar

I’ve worn a paper crown at Medieval Times and been to a Renaissance fair joust or two, but the Maryland Renaissance Festival takes the mutton leg for village size and patron dress-up commitment. A couple of summers ago while browsing the artisan wares, I spied a kit for “short mead” that I couldn’t resist after reading the tag line “if you can boil water, you can make mead in 7-14 days with this kit, two pounds of honey, and a gallon of spring water!” It was food science! It was $9! What was there to lose?

I brewed that batch and was hooked. Unlike the strawberry wine that I had made earlier in the summer, this was relatively little investment for a nice return–an effervescent fermented drink that was light and sweet and endlessly variable, depending on the type of honey and tea you used to spice it up. It wasn’t complex, it wasn’t refined, but it sure was tasty.

I’ve produced a few more versions since that first batch—all interesting, all drinkable–and the mulling spices I currently have on hand in the pantry seemed to demand that a Christmas mead be made. I bottled it on the early side (eight days) so it’s retained its honey sweetness, with distinct cinnamon and orange notes. I think it’s going to make for a lovely glass to raise around the tree next week.

Christmas Mead: process

Christmas Mead
based on the Ambrosia Farm Short Mead Kit

1 gallon spring water
2 lbs. honey
tea to flavor (the combos are endless and should be adapted to your taste, but I cut open 6 mulling spice tea bags for this venture)
5 grams champagne yeast
square of cheese cloth and rubber band to cap

Open the spring water and pour off 4 cups of the contents and discard. Pour out an additional 3 cups and place in a sauce pan. Recap the water jug.

Place the sealed honey jar and gallon jug of water in the sink and fill with hot water to warm the ingredients.

Meanwhile, bring the water in the sauce pan to a boil and simmer the tea for 10 minutes, covered with a lid. Remove pan from heat and allow to cool.

Once water and honey have warmed, remove the containers from their bath and pour the 2 lbs of honey into the gallon jug. Recap, and shake to mix thoroughly. Once tea has cooled slightly, add it (including all the lose tea) to the gallon jug as well.

When the temperature of the jug contents has been reduced to warm bathwater, sprinkle the yeast across the top of the liquid (do not mix) and cover the top of the jug with a square of cheesecloth secured with the rubber band. Do not recap! The brew must be allowed to breath. Place the jug somewhere dark but at least 70 degrees (I have an upstairs closet I like to use for this) and allow it to ferment for one week. At that point, you can begin tasting your brew; sweetness will lessen by the day.

When it has achieved the desired balance, bottle (pour off the liquid and leave the sediment behind in the jug) and store. This mead requires refrigeration, as the yeast remains active. If left capped under pressure in the refrigerator, it will pick up a pleasant carbonation. Uncap the mead if it must be left out at room temperature for any reason.

The Violet Hour

cocktail_top2
November 3, 2011 By In drink me, from the bar

There’s a light coat of dust that tends to adhere to the rarely used liqueur bottles that hide for long stretches at the back of our bar. Whenever I happen to get around to giving these sticky drinks a bit of a dusting, however, I remember one of my favorites in the classic cocktail canon: The Aviation.

Though there are versions of the drink that simply omit the Crème de Violette due to how difficult it used to be to find, it’s now quite procurable and this drink absent that deep purple tint just doesn’t seem right. We have a few cocktail recipe books around the house, but I also like to do a little hunting online and at my local restaurants for fresh versions and then tweak to my liking. I have yet to meet a cocktail recipe that benefits from being followed to the letter.

The Aviation

2 ounces gin
1/2 ounce lemon juice, freshly squeezed
1/4 ounce Luxardo maraschino liqueur
1/4 ounce Crème de Violette

Chill your glassware by filling with ice and water, then discard.

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice and measure in all the liquid ingredients. Shake until well chilled and strain into the glass. Garnish with a twist of lemon. Cheers!

Rooted (Summer Cocktail Edition)

makings_row
June 27, 2011 By In drink me, from the bar, three points kitchen

Over lunch a few days ago, a friend suggested I take a stab at making ginger beer. Not quite a Three Cubed project, perhaps, but not something I’d ever even thought about making in my home kitchen before. She sent me a recipe, and I filed it away for future crafting.

As these things tend to unfold, a few nights later I was at my favorite dining establishment and the summer cocktail list included a tempting item called a Root Cup. This drink involved said gingery beverage plus lemon, cucumber, and (bonus points) a new-to-me liquor called Root, produced by our friends to the north, Art in the Age. The friendly Woodberry Kitchen bartender showed me the lovely watercolor reproductions of herbs on the bottle and explained the contents, but the producer has actually made a short movie about it (it’s that kind of operation) which you can watch for a much more illuminating explanation than I could type here.

Based on my internet research, I wasn’t sure Root could be sourced locally for common purchase, but of course it was available at the Wine Source. In fact, a few people before me had clearly also been bitten by the bug and there was only a single bottle left on the shelf.

If you can juice (thank you, $5 yard sale juicer) and measure, you can make ginger beer. The ingredients in the recipe I followed are lemon juice, ginger juice, and simple syrup, plus water and a pinch (and I do mean a pinch–more on that below) of champagne yeast. Pour it into flip-top bottles, shake well, and leave it to brew in a dark, warm place for 48 hours. Then refrigerate and get ready to get your cocktail on.

By 6 p.m. this evening, we were ready to experiment. Drink production started explosively enough, since I apparently had not taken the “25 grains of yeast” proviso literally enough. Fair warning all: This recipe tastes great but the dude is serious about the teeny tiny itsy bitsy amount of yeast needed to make the bubbles. I lost a good portion of the brew when I popped the swingtop and the carbonated beverage spewed forth, over the top of the bottle and across the counter with frightening speed (not pictured due to frantic mopping). If you want to work this into a volcano demonstration for your kids, by all means. Otherwise, be stingy with the yeast, keep cameras and pets clear, and maybe open the bottle over the sink just to be safe.

Once that little bit of drama was cleaned up, the drink itself was a welcome reward. To my taste, it’s a perfect match to a setting sun and a summer swing. A little sweet, a little bubbly, the alcohol not offering too harsh a bite. This is going to become a habit, I can tell already.

Post Prohibition

ghost_ingre2
April 15, 2011 By In drink me, from the bar, three points kitchen

The Baltimore kitchen is excited about mixology once again (not that it takes a great deal of cheerleading, mind you), and the internet has been kicking up all kinds of delicious sounding cocktails worth a try. (Check out Post Prohibition for more.) Plus, now that the temperature has risen to a degree suitable for evening porch-sitting, it seems like an especially good time to shelve my neat bourbon habit and break out the shakers.

The Franklin Mortgage and Investment Co. in Philly is a lovely establishment in which to enjoy a drink, and this post outlining the basics for their Ghost Hardware caught my eye in particular. Extra credit: it contained Aperol, a liqueur I had been reading about but had yet to sample, alongside one of my favorite gins.

In addition to the above, plus cucumber slices, lemon juice, salt, and bitters, the recipe calls for a 1/2 oz of demerara syrup (2:1 simple syrup made using demerara sugar). For me, this pushed things a bit too far into the sweet and syrupy; dialing that back a bit would result in a drink more to my taste, I suspect. However, though I am no fan of bitter Campari, I’ve discovered that the orange-y tang of Aperol and I get along just fine.

Feast O’ Yeast

beertotal21
March 22, 2011 By In diy, drink me, from the bar, three points kitchen

In addition to the bread making and the butter churning, this year I have also begun running kitchen experiments in alcohol production. My first batch of strawberry wine was a disappointment–fully attributable to user error, I’m sure–but my subsequent stabs at short mead were much more encouraging. I stumbled on little kits from Ambrosia Farm that included a tea flavoring and a bit of yeast at last year’s Renaissance Fair–just add water and honey! Though I wasn’t expecting much from them other than entertainment, they were actually very tasty. Now I am hooked.

Due to interest (mine) and wrist injury (my friend Scott’s), I had the chance to serve as an apprentice homebrewer last weekend on a 5 gallon batch of beer. We followed the grand cru recipe from “The New Complete Joy of Homebrewing” by Charlie Papazian. Luckily for me, Scott knew exactly what he was doing, as I had not a clue. I am slightly worried to report that I now find this process immensely interesting as well. What can I say: I love food science.

Next up: Kitchen Sake!!

Meet Mr. Fizzy..err, Mr. Bubbles?

bubbles1
August 14, 2010 By In diy, drink me, non-alcoholic, three points kitchen

I’m not sure what to name my new contraption yet, but I love it! After these many months of high-volume household seltzer consumption (and the related carting home and recycling of the many plastic bottles), I have managed to assemble a somewhat mad scientist contraption that will carbonate drinks with a switch and a shake. I read all about it on the internet, of course. Our yellow bin is manageable once again.