We had been trying to find ways to diversify the farm. If you look at other farms, they don’t have just one thing they do. They have cows for beef but they also make maple syrup and goat cheese, sell hay and the list goes on. We couldn’t just rely on Christmas trees, we needed to diversify and bees were the answer. I could already imagine the steady golden stream of that sticky delicious honey flowing our way.
Immediately mom and I were contemplating what we could do with the abundance of honey that we would soon have in front of us. Being enthralled with Game of Thrones at the time, we realized mead was the answer. I’d never had mead but it is one of the oldest alcoholic drinks there is – a concoction of fermented honey, water and yeast — the drink of Vikings – ARGH!
Our bees were hard at work but it was too soon for us to have honey and we wanted to be ready to handle our sweet crop. I bought about eight pounds of honey from a friend along with brewing supplies, hooked up with my brewing friend, Jim, and we got to work to make our first five-gallon brew of mead. Why start small? This was going to be delicious.
Bill doesn’t drink so this was definitely a project for me and my mom to focus on. We had fun being creative. I flavored part of the five gallon batch with some of our raspberries and we looked for pretty jars and unique jugs to store it in when it was ready. Mom did her research by visiting meaderies in her travels, taste testing, talking with the brew master and tasting some more. As we watched the tiny bubbles burst in fermentation, I would grow eager with anticipation. I’d try some other meads on the market and, you know, I didn’t really like them, but I knew mine would be different. It was going to be so good that we’d open our own meadery right on the property. I was already mentally calculating where to build an outdoor deck for people to hang out on.
When it was time, we used the cool jugs and pretty bottles to package up the fermenting liquid and store it while it finished the fermenting process. Finally, it was time to dive in!
There are specific instructions as to how you should drink my mead, so please pay close attention.
Step 1: Appreciate the pretty color (especially the raspberry infused) but don’t smell it.
Step 2: Take a sip, look at my eager face, smile and say “Hmm, you made this? Neat.”
Step 3: Take another, slightly smaller sip, look at my eager face, smile and say “Not bad…”
Step 4: Set your mead down to go do something.
Step 5: “Forget” where you put your mead.
Step 6: Open a beer.
It took me about a year to get rid of those five gallons of mead on unsuspecting souls. Every now and again, I swear I see a bottle lurking in a cabinet and cringe. Mom and I have come to realize there’s a reason why beer, wine and other spirits have been developed over the years and mead is not main stream. Unfortunately , we’re not going to be the people who bring it back.
Here’s what I’m grateful for in this story:
To my friend Jim for helping to share his brewing secrets and even some of his brewing tools to help us get started. To Bill for lugging around these huge, heavy jugs of fermenting honey and water. To mom for all of her ideas, tasting, supplies and enthusiasm. To learning that if you don’t like something but you think when you make it yourself, it will somehow taste better, even though you’ve never done it before and totally had to learn the process, it’s still not going to be good and that’s ok. And, mostly, I’m thankful to all my friends for following the six step process to drinking it!
