Thursday, September 04, 2008

Something Sweet Is Brewing...

On an antique oak buffet in a sunny corner of our kitchen, there sits a jar.

The jar is maybe ten inches high, made of and plastic, fitted with a tight lid and a tubular widget that allows for the escape of the occasional CO2 bubble. The fluid inside is a murky amber yellow, and there’s a stratum of caramel-colored sediment beginning to coalesce on the bottom. It looks like the world’s largest and nastiest urine sample.

metheglin

What happened was this: D boiled a couple of pounds of locally-grown, artisanal basswood honey, filling the kitchen with an improbable rank smell; to this must was added brewer’s yeast, vanilla bean, rinds and spice, and the whole thing was steeped in a vat for some weeks before being racked and transferred over to the jar, where the yeast will continue its work and the flavors will continue to ripen.

There is metheglin brewing in my house, friends.
And not just in the kitchen.

the toolset

New chapters of The Honeythief begin on Friday 12 September.

2 comments:

Julian Hsu said...

Can't say the fermenting honey juice sounds all that appetizing, but you can bet I'll be back on the 12th for the other brew! :-)

Woohoo!

Anonymous said...

Me too! Woo hoo!