Brewing

Mead
Currently Brewing
Started end December 2007, hope to bottle some in June 2008 for Adamastor Cowshed A&S competition
Based loosely on a simple Digby mead recipe.

Made with:
- 1.5kg Honey
- 5l Demijohn
- Brewer's Yeast (started with sugar and warm water a couple of hours before)
- Topped up with water

Metheglyn
Currently Brewing
Started end December 2007, hope to bottle some in June 2008 for Adamastor Cowshed A&S competition
Based loosely on Digby metheglyn recipe containing ginger and rosemary.

Made with:
- 5cm by 1.5cm root ginger cut in 4 (to fit in demijohn)
- 2 stems rosemary
- 5l Demijohn
- Brewer's Yeast (started with sugar and warm water a couple of hours before)
- Topped up with water

Cherries
Some brewing experiments with cherries from the 2006 Adamastor Cherry Picking expedition. vaguely modeled on what Digby has to say about cherry wine and mead.

Cherry Mead
Bottled - Good!
Started December 2006, bottled in September 2007 and started drinking in October
So far the yeast got very excited over Christmas and popped the airlock and foamed everywhere. That is why there is the smaller wine bottle with some run off in it. I doubt it will be good, but experiments are experiments. Unforunately I didn't take pictures of the exploding airlock.

Made with:
- 1kg Cherries
- 1kg Honey
- 5l Demijohn
- Brewer's Yeast (started with sugar and warm water the night before)
- Topped up with water

Cherry Wine
Bottled - like dry wine, not too exciting
Started December 2006, bottled in September 2007 and started drinking in October
So far the yeast got very excited over Christmas and popped the airlock and foamed everywhere as with the Cherry mead.

Made with:
- 2kg Cherries
- 5l Demijohn
- Brewer's Yeast (started with sugar and warm water the night before)
- Topped up with water

Plain Mead
Started February 2006, Bottled September 2006, drunk October/December 2006
This was nice, but slightly tart. Guntram made the same thing with 1.5kg of Honey and it was definitely sweeter. Both were nice though.

Made with:
- 1.2Kg Honey
- 5l Demijohn
- Brewer's yeast (started with sugar and warm water the night before)
- Topped up with water

The process is simple, clean/disinfect the demijohn, add honey (boil up if you like to remove impurities, but let it cool before starting the process if you do), add yeast started the night before, top up with water, put on airlock, wait...