'Wild' Strawberries Schnapps in the Making

We have a lot of 'wild' strawberries in the garden, using them as ground cover in some of the perennial beds, and the main rose bed, and the small sweet berries are ready NOW - so I wanted to repeat the success with my first strawberry schnapps form 2014/2015.

I started picking berries yesterday, but I was interrupted by rain (a very rare occurrence this summer), so I picked a bit more today.

The vodka has already taken a lot of colour from the berries, and I expect the sweetness to bleed out into the liquor, too!

Visit the Dungeon

I still have no gaming-related stuff to show, as I currently work a lot trying to earn an extra month's worth of wages before Christmas, have little to no time for gaming, and thus not much motivation for getting stuck in with the minis.

I managed to get another batch of mead bottled, though, and the wine racks in the basement are all but full, now!

I expect my current stash to last well into 2018, but if it should drain away too quickly, I have another two demi-johns almost ready for bottling (and the recently started brew is blobbing away in the kitchen).

Labels

With the labels printed and applied, this batch is finally completely done. The text centering is off, I know, it looked right on the screen; I suspect my printer is shite...

Full Throttle!

I poured 1st half of the brew into the fermenting container with the yeast-starter this morning, and after just a few hours, things seem to speed up already. (I should have somehow turned the video 90 degrees, I know, but I have no idea how it is done, if possible at all)

The Show Must Go On...

And, hence I am preparing the yeast-starter for my next batch of mead. It now has to cool to below 35 Centigrades before I add the yeast. This evening I shall prepare the first half of the honey/water mix so that it can cool over night, and I can pour it into a plastic fermenting container with the yeast-starter. If everything goes to plan, the fermenting process should be complete around Christmas, and I can then siphon the mead onto a glass demi-john for settling.

Another 34 Bottles of Mead.

My hard toil cleaning the bottles finally paid off, and Friday I could finish off my ninth batch of mead by corking 34 bottles for the cellar.

All that remains for me to do is cleaning up the bottles, and printing and applying some labels.

Very soon, I am going to start up another brew (#13), and then slowly begin to prepare another batch of bottles (I still have three more demi-johns/carboys containing about 25 liters each sitting in the basement, awaiting getting bottled).

Time-consuming as it is, brewing mead still feels so rewarding when another brew has been completed and is ready for enjoying!

Cleaning Bottles...

Well, I realized that the batches of mead in the basement have been ready for bottling for a while, so I set about getting ready for the first one.

I already cleaned these bottles, but they had been sitting on the bottle-tree for a long time, and when it comes to sanitary precautions, 'better safe than sorry' seems to be the prudent course of action.

Of cause I carried the mead up from the basement well in advance to make sure that any stirred up sediments have time to settle before I bottle the brew.

I expect to have all the bottles needed for this batch ready tomorrow (cleaning them with the bottlebrush does not take a lot of time, but rinsing them does), and if I am done cleaning before noon, I may well get the brew siphoned onto the bottles, too.

Lemon-Elderflower Aquavit

I seem to have completely forgotten that I had put the excess lemon slices from the elderflower juice mash in jars with vodka.

I sort of expected the stuff to turn rather bitter/sour, and to have to sweeten it, but it has turned out to be one of the best schnappses I have made, yet.

It is not going to be the last time I use this 'recipe', that's for sure!

Got Myself a Nice Sideboard

Today, we went to the permanent flea market in Kirkeby, and I found this sideboard, perfect for the purpose I needed it for.

For a long time, I have been wanting a place in the basement to put my schnapps away, and as it should be kept in the dark both while extracting and maturing, it needed to be something with doors.

I got the thing for DKK 250,- (about £30), and I am very happy with it!

As seen below, I only use two of the three sections - the last one is now used for storing homemade marmelades/jams and pickles like pickled beets, cornichons, and pickled gherkins-

This has freed up a lot of shelf space in the bar cabinet, the kitchen, and the basement, and I think my wife is rather chuffed by the arrangement, too!

Add to that, that I now have a much better overview over my WIP schnapps, as well as the bottles with the finished product, and this is an all over win-win!

The Brew That Did Go On And On...

...has finally been bottled. I probably could have done so a month or more ago, but the lawn cobblestone edge project took too much of my time back then.

31 bottles of Huscarl Mead just need labels, and then they can go into the basement for storage.

Of course, I also have to let the corks settle in, before I put the bottles in a wine rack down there.

In addidition to the 31 bottles, I have half a bottle left over which I have just closed with an old cork and am going to leave in the kitchen. And then there is the leftovers from the demi-john, which are being filtered as I write this.

The Brew that Just Went On and On...

Fifteen months ago, I put this batch of mead aside in the basement for long-time settling. About a moth ago, I carried it up into the kitchen, getting ready for bottling it - and then the fermentation process started up again!

Somehow, the yeast I thought long dead seems to have survived (at least some of it), and during the past month, the airlock has been blobbing away.

Now, the process has finally almost ceased. and I figured it wise to separate the mead from the sediments, siphoning it into a cleanr demi-john.

As you can see in the picture, I did so this afternoon - and the process left some residues that I filtered to get somewhere near half a bottle of mead, of which I am enjoying a glass as I write.

My de-carbonizer 'whip' needed a go in the dishwasher, so I am not going to get the last bubbles out of the brew until tomorrow - and then the batch is going into the basement for another month of settling, before I tap it into bottles.

The Mead Saga Continues...

...and this time I used port yeast, which gives a rich flavour, but also a slightly more dry mead, if my tongue does not deceive me.

The first picture is of the siphoning process, where I move the brew from the fermenting tank to the glass demijohn for a year of clearing (and aging), before it is poured into bottles.

The four filled bottles to the left are just my 'spill insurance', as I want to make sure that none of the brew spills over, if the demijohn should not be able to contain all of the mead, so I siphon some of the brew into bottles before leaving the process to itself.

As it turned out, all but half a liter fitted in the demijohn, so after 'decarbonising', I could set the brew aside, and go about tasting the stuff.

As always, I also filtered the dregs through coffee filters, as it contains a lot of nice taste when filtered properly.

I really should get another batch started up, but I have to bottle a batch that has been aging since April 1st, last year, so I think I'd rather get that done, first.

Not that I could not just let it rest a while longer, aging only improves the result, and I have plenty of bottled mead stored in the racks, but, well, it will be nice to get that task out of the way.

This is all from my personal brewery, for now.

Cheers!

Yo-ho-hoh!

Been busy bottling another batch of mead today.

The samples promised a rich savoury brew, and I am going to let this batch mature until Christmas, before opening the first bottle.

To the right I am filtering the residue from siphoning the brew onto bottles, and the resulting, not quite clear brew, tastes really good, with hints of beer/yeast because of the sediment.

Couple of days off, now, hopefully time to do some updates 'round here, too...

Busy Kitchen!

After a lot of gardening this weekend, on a rainy Pentecost Monday, attention must be turned to indoor activities.

I am boiling honey and water for mead, while my wife and Lea are making chocolate chip banana icecream.

Yesterday, they made strawberry icecream from frozen strawberries we have had in our freezer since last summer, so they have to be used, before the strawberry bed is again yielding kilo upon kilo of that red delicacy!

More Mead, Coming Up!

About 1½ week ago, I was cleaning a glass wine fermentation container (I simply cannot find a proper English translation for it), while at the same time cleaning some bottles.

BAD idea!

I tipped over a bottle with my elbow, and in fell directly on top of the container, resulting in much misery.

It was not a complete disaster, as I had two unused containers in store, but, never the less, I decided to have a look at the interweb to see if I could find some cheap second hand ones.

And just a couple of days later, I found an offer of
seven containdrs at DKK 75 each (many wanted up to DKK 200 for used ones, which is more than I am willing to pay).

I immediately responded to the ad, and was lucky to be the first person intersted.

As it turned out, the guy selling them has a wife who is a beekeeper, and I was able to negociate a sweet deal regarding honey (effective from the first batch this spring).

I stored the seven new containers in the attic, and went about my business, readyieng another container for tha next batch of mead to be stored a full year before being bottled.

Below is a pic of the siphoning ikn process.

The first time I did this, some of the mead overflowed (the class container cannot hols quite as much as afull plastic container, it seems), so this time, before filling the glass container, I siphoned some mead into bottles to prevent spillage.

When the plastic container was empty, I poured the content of most of the bottles into the galss container as well, bus as it turned out, I had a full bottle's worth of mead in excess, which I shall have to consume (oh, the sacrifices one must make!).

I have had a batch fermenting for 3 weeks now, and I set about starting another batch yesterday, making the yeast-starter.

This morning, I started boiling hte first half of the brew, and I have just now removed the pots from the stove.

As you can see below, no mead-brewing without enjoying a glass of the liquid gold!

The mead I am consuming today is the excess from siphoning as described above, and although is hasn't had time to mature, it tastes very fine, indeed.

I am going to designate the mead I mature for a year as 'Huskarle-mead', as it will be the best mead I can make with common baking yeast.


When I have the first 4 or 5 batches of Huskarle-mead maturing in glass containers, I shall start experimenting with other types of yeast; I have found a vendor of brewing gear that sells various types of yeast that should give a higher alcohol-percentage, and I am curious as to how that influences taste.

That is all from Argonor's Mead Brewery for now!

I hope I have not bored the hell out of all my readers with this, but as the motto of Attic Attack is 'Mead and Dice!', I think my endeavours in bringing this sacred beverage to the gaming tables are well worth recording!

Strawberry Liqueur

The title says it all.

I had a jar with strawberries in vodka sitting in the cabinet since late summer, and I deemed it ripe for filtering and sweetening today.

It is good, though not exquisite - I think that if the berries had been sweeter, the overall result would have been better.

I shall put the bottle in the cabinet for a while to let the liqueur mature a bit.

Back in the Saddle!

So, after a VERY tough last week, and a VERY busy weekend, the clouds have lifted, and the future looks a bit brighter on the hobby front.

I got the job I applied for, and I can look forward to a more stable schedule, working night shift 5 days and 2 days every other week (which leaves a LOT of time for practical tasks, AND getting some hobby stuff done!).

Yesterday, my youngest daughter Lea and I worked in and around the shed; she piled up the firewood I have been cutting up, while I emtied the trailer of the wood we brought home from Sønderjylland (Southern Jutland) two weeks ago after cutting up one of the trees that fell into my in-laws' lawn during the storm thrre weeks ago, and placed it in the back of the shed to dry a bit before further processing.

Both Anna and my wife had to go to (separate) birthday parties late afternoon/evening, so Lea and I had the premises to ourselves - so when walking the dog, we visited the local 7-11-ish store and brought home a BIG bag of mix-yourself sweets/candy. The evening was spent on the couch, watching Scooby Doo and the Monster of Mexico which I recorded some days ago.

This morning, I've mainly been washing and decontaminating wine bottles so I could, with help from the kids, get the latest batch of mead bottled just after lunch.

After that, I transformed into a chainsaw-wielding loonie for about 1½ hour, cutting up some pine branches I cut from the two big trees in the front garden. When the gas tank was empty, I decided it was time to do a little work-out, and take a good fast 5 km walk.

When I returned to the mansion, it was time to give supper/dinner some attention; luckily we had some pork loin 'chops' already fried, so all I had to do was boil some rice and cook up a mushroom/onion cream sauce while heating the loin chops, and dinner was served!

What has this to do with wargames, you may ask.

Nothing, really, apart from describing how my weekend (after a week with hardly no sleep due to varying work hours) was all filled up by over-due tasks that I couldn't get around to doing until now.

Now, while enjoying a couple of glasses of filtered mead dregs (no reason why it should be wasted), I promise both myself and you that I'll start making progress on my hobby projects tomorrow, and that it will again be duly documented on a regular basis.

That's all for now!

Cheers!

Toiling Along...

I have not been updating a lot lately, mainly because I'm working night shift and have not had much energy for doing stuff late in the evening before going to work.

I have been preparing a lot of second-hand wine bottles for a batch of mead that is ready for bottling.

Each and every one had the labels and collar removed before being washed in very hot water an dish-washing liquid, and the rinsed thoroughly with clean water.

A lot of work, but as new bottles are a bit more than £1 a piece, I save quite a few quid by collecting and cleaning used bottles.

I have a couple of days off, so expect an update on gaming stuff soonish!

Odin Would be Pleased...

For the first time, I am putting a batch of mead on a glass container for storing it to settle for a year before bottling.

Until now, I have only let the brew settle for 1-2 months in a plastic container, because I have been told that oxygene can shift through the plastic, ruining the taste of the mead.

I should get rubber caps for the glass containers one of the next days, and in the meantime I have covered the mouth of the container with plastic secured with a rubber band.

I am also filtering the sediment from the bottom of the fermentation container - the filtered mead is very rich in flavour, and deserves to be enjoyed instead of discarded, and is the brewmaster's prerogative ;o).

It is a slow process, though, as the dead yeast is clogging up the coffee flter I am using - but I guess I shall be able to enjoy a glass of the golden liquid around noon today.

Storing mead for a year sets a new milestone for me as a home-brewer, and I really hope that it is worth the wait - word has that the flavour should become much richer, and that storing the mead for another year on botlles even more so.

I shall need a few more glass containers (I have four at the moment) if I am to have a steady production of stored mead, though, I guess six to eight may suffice, as I am still going to bottle every other brew after a short settling period, to have something for consumption and gifts.

That is all from Argonor's Brewery for this time.

Cheers!

Mead - The Next Level!

I have been acquiring a few glass fermentation containers over the summer, and now the time has come for using the first of them.

Ideally, mead should be stored for at least a year before bottling, to let the brew settle, and the taste get richer.

Up until now I haven't done this, as I didn't have the proper means of storage - plastic containers let the brew 'breathe', which can ruin the result, and thus I needed to get some good old-fashioned glass containers.

Note the stainless chain in there; a good method for cleaning the inside of a glass container is to slide a chain around the inside; it rubs off most dirt that may stick to the surface.

The next brew that finishes fermenting (can happen any day soon) is going in this container, which will be sealed with some plastic for starters (allowing carbondioxide to escape, should the fermenting process have not stopped completely), later with a rubber cap of some sorts.

From now on, I shall store every second brew this way (until all four containers I've got are in use), hopefully giving me some nice results.