[Noisebridge-discuss] making mead (honey wine) - Beekeeper wanted for collaboration...

[David Stainton]

Hello,

My friend Jon Fellman (he's an acupuncturist, herbalist etc)
and I are collaborating to produce various types of medicinal meads,
wines, ales and gruits.
We use European and Chinese herbs in our meads and gruits
to produce the healthiest and highest quality alcoholic beverages.

The book "Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers" has been inspirational for
our endeavors.
Also we've been inspired by this excellent blog about meads:
http://www.bardicbrews.net/

Right now our first mead is finished with the primary fermentation phase.
It's a simple mead containing a Goji berry decoction.
It took 15 pounds of honey to produce this 5 gallons of mead!
Some of the mead will soon be consumed by me and my friends.
The rest will remain in secondary fermentation until it is time to be bottled
and aged for several years.

The gruit which is still in the primary fermentation phase contains
elder berries, rose hips, yarrow,
hyssop, ginger, black tea and mint. The sugar source is barley malt
extract, molasses, brown sugar and white sugar.
This gruit/ale should be psychotropic and good for treating common colds! ;-)

There are so many possibilities for making various types of meads and gruits.
We can make meads and gruits that are psychotropic, highly inebriating,
sexually stimulating, sedating, good for longevity, good for
digestion... whatever we want it to do.

Honey, bee pollen, bee propolis and royal jelly all have various
pharmacologically active components
that have health enhancing properties which we would love for our
meads and gruits to contain.

Cheers,

David