Imaginable Beers: A Primer for Writers of Speculative Fiction

This entry is part 6 of 6 in the series For Writers

Recently, a writer friend was asking around on Facebook for some information about the history of brewing and distilling. Since I’ve been studying up on these subjects (and blogging on the subject: see here for brewing, and there’s some stuff about distilling mixed into this tag), it was suggested I might be of some help. I started writing a longish response, and then decided that rather than toss all that information down into the Facebook crevasse where it would never be seen again, I would make a blog post about it. Note, this is primarily directed and writers of fantastical or speculative fiction, but …

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Chestnut Honey Mead

I thought, when I made my last few meads, that I was done with meadmaking, but then I happened to accumulate some other honeys — which will be featured in other upcoming projects, including a braggot and some beers. However, I also came across 1.5 kilograms of chestnut honey. By all accounts, this makes a really interesting mead, so I figured I’d just go for it with the chestnut honey on its own; having racked my pomegranate melomel and my minty metheglin to new containers the other day, I have one spare 4-liter jug on hand. The recipe is dead simple: …

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Meadmaking Day: Mittelfrüh Metheglin

This mead is a shot in the dark: I screwed up when measuring the water for my pomegranate mead, and realized too late that I wouldn’t be able to add the pomegranate juice. So I scooped out a liter of the must (as we call the honey water before it is fermented) and froze it, adding more honey to the (now-smaller) must destined for the pomegranate mead. Then I wondered what to do with all that honey-water. Turned out it was about a half-kilo worth of honey, so I figured I could make something with it. 500 grams of honey …

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Birthday Cyser

Well, I am a few weeks late in starting it, but when you’re bulk aging something for a year, a few weeks seems like not so much to worry about. For those who don’t know the term, a “cyser” is simply a mead/cider fusion. That is, it’s an alcoholic beverage in which the alcohol is created by the fermentation of sugars in honey (mead) and apple juice (cider). I went with a five gallon batch, with approximately two gallons of the must being apple juice. The remainder is water in which 5.2 kilograms of acacia honey has been dissolved. The …

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