mead mountain x2

December 25, 2009 By Kate in beasties, brewing, gardens, landscape, running, walking Tags: allotment, allotments, brewing, Christmas, Edinburgh, fell running, hill running, home brewing, mead, running, walshes 28 Comments

A White Christmas! And time, once again, to ascend mead mountain. Does doing this more than once make it a ritual or tradition? Whatever it is, the excitement of uncovering a bottle of home-brewed mead, buried at the top of a mountain, really never goes away. This bottle had a full twelve months to mature in its trusted site . . .

. . . and if possible, it tasted even better than last year’s vintage. Slainte!

To add even more fun to the mix, we had brought our fell shoes along with the idea of having a reviving Christmas run in the snow. So I took off my boots and donned my trusty Walshes (thanks once again for the super socks, Viv!) . . .

I can assure you that mead plus fell shoes is quite a heady combination. The feet securely grip the ice; the body glows with the power of delicious home-brewed fuel; one generally feels quite invincible. It was an exhilarating descent.

Phew! After a crazy snowy hurtle, we made our way homeward, stopping off at the allotment to collect the finishing touches for dinner.

It was very satisfying indeed to pull something we’d grown out of the cold ground. And one of my favourite gardening buddies stopped by to say Merry Christmas.

The allotments looked beautiful in the snow.

We are having a lovely holiday, and I hope you are too, however you like to spend it. Thanks so much for being with me throughout December, and particularly for all your comments, which I always appreciate and love to read. Seasonal joy to you, till we meet again in 2010!

mead magic

May 25, 2009 By Kate in brewing, Camping, Jura, landscape, memory, Scotland, walking Tags: brewing, drink, food, food and drink, Hebrides, hill walking, home brew, home brewing, Jura, mead, Scotland, walking 20 Comments

Last summer, when we were walking on Jura, we buried some home-brewed mead above the gulf of corryvreckan. Yesterday we retraced our steps, and returned to find it.

I heart Jura.

Seven miles and a very enjoyable walk later, we climbed up a cliffside on the remote and empty north-west of the island and wondered if we would be able to find our bottle. Last August, we had dug a hole near the heather line, covered up the mead, and placed a large stone to mark the spot. Since then, the heather appeared to have receded, and other visitors had added other stones to ours.

The site now resembled a small burial cairn — which I suppose is exactly what it was. Underneath the stones was a bare patch of ground, and what seemed to be solid peat. Tom began to dig. Was the mead still there?

Of course it was!

It is hard to convey just how excited we were to see this bottle again. It had spent three seasons in the ground of Carraig Mhór, above the swirling, whirling, myth-infused waters of Corryvreckan. Our mead had lain there, quietly wintering with with Cailleach Bheur above the whirlpool in which Orwell had almost drowned. As a friend of ours said after a few in the bar of the Jura hotel on Saturday night, “that bottle is bigger than both of you.”

It tasted damn fine, anyway.

I can also confirm that the returning foot miles seemed to pass by rather quickly in a sort of warm, meady fug. Which was good, since we were walking into a headwind. Slainte!

meadwinter

December 25, 2008 By Kate in brewing, landscape, walking Tags: balloon, brewing, Christmas, Edinburgh, lantern, leith, mead, mead mountain, wine 31 Comments

summit
(dawn on mead mountain)

To say this was the most exciting Christmas morning I’ve had since I was around six years old is no exaggeration. We arose at first light and walked all the way across Edinburgh — to ascend Mead Mountain. The streets were quiet, the air was still, and the whole city felt hushed with anticipation. After reaching the summit, we located where we had buried our treat with no problems, and Tom began to dig. There was a brief worried moment when we wondered whether the mead would actually still be there but then, as Tom dug just a little deeper, we uncovered the lovely bottle, still safe in the ground. BINGO!

dirtymead

We cleaned that baby up and then . . .

pouring

. . . it was time to taste it!

wazzmeadw
Slainte!

This picture cannot suggest to you just how bloody good the mead is. This is the first time we’d tasted it, and we were both seriously impressed. This stuff is not sweet or syrupy or any of the things you imagine mead to be. It is dry, fizzy, and fragrant. Containing raspberries, ginger, and lemongrass, it tastes like a sort of light botanical champagne! We really, really enjoyed it.

Now, you’d think things couldn’t get much better than a belly full of home-brewed mead and a heart full of seasonal good cheer — but then they did!

liftoff

The Mule recently bought Tom some floating balloon-lanterns for his birthday. It being an unusually still and mild morning, we decided to fire one up. We lit the wick, the thing expanded rapidly and then it went . . .
UP . . .

Up . . .
up2

. . . and away!

andaway

It was a truly beautiful sight to see our wee balloon floating gracefully high above the city.

andbeyond

For a while, we thought it might make it all the way across to Fife!

fife
(crappy digital zoom)

But then we saw that the flame had gone out, and the balloon started to descend somewhere over Leith. Perhaps it was trying to get home. So we followed it back on foot, to see if we could find it. We didn’t, unfortunately, but as these balloons are flimsy, and biodegradable tissue paper things, I don’t feel too bad about it.
Thanks for the lanterns, Mule!

I’m going to take a break now until after the New Year, and I wanted to thank all of you who have stopped by during 2008. I always enjoy your comments, and have been blown away by the debates, exchanges and, in some instances, friendships, that have arisen from conversations here. I also particularly want to thank those of you who sent us messages of support after Belle’s death and Tom’s accident — it really meant a lot to us. Seasonal joy to you all. And a very happy new year.

drone

August 24, 2008 By Kate in brewing, craft, messy tuesdays Tags: beer, Belgian beer, Belgian tripel, brewing, mead, messy tuesdays 10 Comments

Today, a small batch of strawberry and elderflower mead and a rather larger one of Belgian tripel beer were ready for bottling. Usually, my involvement with the brewing process is marginal, and limited to two activities: 1) sticking caps on bottles and 2) happily imbibing the end result. But as the resident brewmaster general can’t use his hands, I had to do everything today. I was under very strict instructions.

The turban is apparently a necessity. Hair must be covered up. And, it turns out, I am a thoroughly non-sterile sort of person. Lots of me had to be sterilised. Several hours of washing things followed: arms, funnels, tubs, jugs, tubes. And bottles. Lots and lots of bottles. Then there was some boiling, a bit of pouring, some measuring, and lots more pouring. I discovered beer is quite heavy when you have to lug it about in large quantities. And Tom discovered what we both probably knew already: that I could never get a job in his laboratory.

I did aim for precision and accuracy at all stages, but I fear I am too constitutionally messy to ever be a great brewer. While, in the craft activities that I enjoy, mess is very often the raw material of my creativity, in brewing, the only thing that mess is likely to produce is bacteria. And bad beer. And exploding beer bottles.

Still, I had fun (apart from the endless bottle washing. I defy anyone to enjoy that) . And, as you see here, I was very proud of my successfully bottled mead . . .

. . .and the strong Belgian beer in its wee bottles. This is my favourite bottle. Before it was used for our beer it contained Old Tom: Strong Ale.

Cheers!

mead mountain

July 13, 2008 By Kate in brewing, landscape, walking Tags: brewing, Charlie Papazian, mead 9 Comments

A few weeks ago, Mr B made mead. Now, I am suspicious of mead. My only experience of it is a riotous new year some years ago at Belle’s. Having run out of booze in the early hours, we raided the prop supplies of Mr B’s younger brother, who at that time liked to spend his weekends re-enacting medieval battles. We found mead. We drank mead. It was not a pleasant experience. Thus the re-enactors lost their props, and we gained terrible ‘govas.

Anyway, I am assured that *this* mead will taste nothing like the hideous, gloopy concoction we drank that new year. This mead will be light and sparkling and refreshing. It will resemble nothing less than champagne. It will be a beverage revelation. I remain to be convinced. But it does, it has to be said, look rather lovely in the bottles into which we put it yesterday:

It contains elderflowers, lemongrass, and raspberries, hence the pleasing pink colour.

One of the reasons Mr B is so enthusiastic about this mead is because of Charlie Papazian, by whom it was inspired. For those of you who do not know, Papazian is some kind of home-brewing god, and his brewing bible, The Complete Joy of Homebrewing (yes, I know) contains a long, and very animated, section on home-made mead. The mead about which Papazian is most rapturous is made with prickly pears (none of those here, unfortunately), and he has a novel method of bottle-aging. He buries it near the summit of one of his favourite mountains and, at carefully chosen intervals, ascends the mountain to uncover, and sample his creation. I quote:

“In October 1992, two friends and I had the privilege of enjoying a bottle of prickly pear mead that had been aged on a mountaintop. Among the clouds swirling around us, threatening rain and snow, we opened one well-aged bottle, and cautiously sipped. There never has been nectar tasting as close to godliness as that mead. Without any exaggeration, I must confide that we all agreed that this mead, on this day, on Mead Mountain, was unanimously ‘the best drink we ever had.’”
(Complete Joy of Homebrewing, 3rd ed., p.341)

Can you guess what happens next?

Yesterday we went up our own mead mountain, and buried the mead. This was a precise and careful operation. There was much discussion about the most appropriate location. Having settled on this, we ascended mead mountain at dusk with trowel and bottle. A hole was dug close to the summit, and the mead placed ceremoniously inside.

And we made extra sure we would be able to find the mead’s location again, by placing a virtual flag on the spot with Mr B’s GPS device.

The mead will wait for us until Winter on mead mountain.

On Christmas morning, we intend to ascend mead mountain, to sample the mead. I am full of expectation already. Has anyone else done anything similar with their home brew? If so, I’d be really interested to know.

Kate Davies Designs

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