Last night, I went to the Mak­ing Mead work­shop by Robert MacKim­mie of City­Bees and Urban Kitchen SF. It was fun! And so sim­ple! I really feel like I can get into brewing.

First, a bit of a his­tory les­son, and we sam­pled dif­fer­ent types of mead. We tried the three bot­tles above — a rhodomel with rose petals, a stan­dard mead, and a melomel with cher­ries. Robert had only started these for the Slow Food Labor Day event, so they weren’t quite ready, but they gave us an idea of the dif­fer­ent direc­tions we could take, flavor-​wise. We also tried a “wild” mead recipe that didn’t turn out quite right, and then an awe­some mead that Robert named the “Al Gore Split Deci­sion” because that’s what was on TV as he was mak­ing it.

Then we went over the equip­ment and sup­plies and dived right in. The class pro­vided a one gal­lon glass jug, and we filled with honey and water, then shook it until it dis­solved. We added yeast nutri­ent and acid mix and shook it up some more. Finally, we added the yeast and swirled that around, too. (Yes, there was a lot of shak­ing.) We were sup­posed to top off with water, but we ran out of warm water, so I had to do that when I got home.

Besides the fun of learn­ing to make alco­hol, the other folks there were pretty cool. There was a big range of brew­ing expe­ri­ence, so we had a lot of Q & A going on about mead and also com­par­ing to other forms of brew­ing. My favorite quote of the night was this:

“After a cer­tain point, alco­hol takes care of a lot problems.”

- Robert.

To be fair, he was talk­ing about how ster­il­iz­ing is not as impor­tant as we check on the mead through fer­men­ta­tion, since the honey we started with is some­what anti-​bacterial, and the alco­hol that is form­ing should take care of any­thing that comes along. Any­way, I’m think­ing of doing the Beer Brew­ing work­shop on Novem­ber 16. Any­one want to join me?