Brewing and Vinting activities

A couple of weeks ago, we bottled mead, racked wine, and started beer out here at the farm.

The mead is a beautiful thing. It has the color of light honey, the clarity of fine crystal, the scent of a bouquet of clover, and the flavor of No. 2 Diesel. Don't be alarmed; we've encountered this phenomenon before. In fact, it's not unusual for a young, green mead to taste more like a petroleum product than fermented honey. Time is your friend in such cases, so don't throw it away; bottle it up and leave it alone for a few years and it will come around.

The wine is a special project. We love muscadine wines, and we acquired a few dozen pounds of them from the farmer's market for this endeavor. This wine is slightly sweet and profoundly muscadine at the time of racking. Unfortunately it's also as murky as the Mississippi in springtime, but hopefully that will pass with a little more time to settle.

And finally, we started a medium-weight amber ale which will hopefully be fermented, kegged, and carbonated in time for Gulf Wars. We're having the wedding reception we never had there, and what's a party without beer. Well, it's probably a party for winos, but this party will have beer. If you're taking the trouble to read this, you're probably invited.