Home Brewing and other things I want to do.
OK, so 
arcadiane says I should be posting a bit more often on LJ. So why the fuck not!
So, lately I've started looking into something which looks really cool and pretty low-maintenance: home brewing. I'm a big fan of mead and cider, as I discovered when I moved to the UK (LINDISFARNE MEAD IS THE BEST), and the idea of making it myself is really appealing.
It also looks like it's fairly simple, as long as you're not too obsessed with checking gravity and hydrometry and all those complicated things. But then again as Patrick Rothfuss puts it in his recipe for mind-bending metheglin that I reall want to try: "Vikings made this, and I guarantee that they did not own a hydrometer. They just thumped it together in a barrel and then drank it and pillaged some shit." And that is a modus operandi I can definitely get behind.
The only problem I have with that is having to wait. I mean, I like my booze. Quite a bit. I don't drink in high quantities, but I do enjoy alcohol (a lot more than I used to, now that I've figured out what I like) and I am not a very patient person by nature.
And now that I think about it I could make a list of alcoholic stuff I want to make/replicate:
- Patrick Rothfuss's metheglin. That shit sounds delicious. (Should I use some lapis, I wonder...)
- Mead with some of my cousin's honey. (Preferably chestnut honey, which has a really strong flavour and would be amazing in mead I'm sure)
- Cider. I'm not exactly sure what exactly, but I would ideally like to make the apple juice myself (because home-made apple juice is SO different from the store-bought stuff, even the cloudy one.)
- Ginger beer. A vague acquaintance of mine does home brewing, and he makes ginger beer with chilli in it, which sounds like the BEST thing.
- Chilli gin - does not require brewing or anything like that. Just sticking coriander and chillies in a bottle of gin. A friend of ours did that and it was the most AWESOME thing in a
So there, as you see I'm somewhat ambitious. But the idea is that, if I ever have to move away from Edinburgh (and seriously if Cameron and the conservatives don't get severely kicked out during the 2015 General Election it's very likely to happen) I can take a repertoire of wondrous drinks with me and I won't have to miss British cider (too much).
PS: This morning we "mysteriously" received a copy of The Ethical Slut in the mail. I've wanted to read this for the longest time and I was realy happy and excited to get it. Jay claims that he doesn't know anything about it and it "just appeared". With that smug smile of his. I claim that it's the most romantic gift he's ever got me. (This month, anyway.)
<3
This entry was originally posted at http://rapunzelita.dreamwidth.org/5725.html. Please comment there if you can!
arcadiane says I should be posting a bit more often on LJ. So why the fuck not!
So, lately I've started looking into something which looks really cool and pretty low-maintenance: home brewing. I'm a big fan of mead and cider, as I discovered when I moved to the UK (LINDISFARNE MEAD IS THE BEST), and the idea of making it myself is really appealing.
It also looks like it's fairly simple, as long as you're not too obsessed with checking gravity and hydrometry and all those complicated things. But then again as Patrick Rothfuss puts it in his recipe for mind-bending metheglin that I reall want to try: "Vikings made this, and I guarantee that they did not own a hydrometer. They just thumped it together in a barrel and then drank it and pillaged some shit." And that is a modus operandi I can definitely get behind.
The only problem I have with that is having to wait. I mean, I like my booze. Quite a bit. I don't drink in high quantities, but I do enjoy alcohol (a lot more than I used to, now that I've figured out what I like) and I am not a very patient person by nature.
And now that I think about it I could make a list of alcoholic stuff I want to make/replicate:
- Patrick Rothfuss's metheglin. That shit sounds delicious. (Should I use some lapis, I wonder...)
- Mead with some of my cousin's honey. (Preferably chestnut honey, which has a really strong flavour and would be amazing in mead I'm sure)
- Cider. I'm not exactly sure what exactly, but I would ideally like to make the apple juice myself (because home-made apple juice is SO different from the store-bought stuff, even the cloudy one.)
- Ginger beer. A vague acquaintance of mine does home brewing, and he makes ginger beer with chilli in it, which sounds like the BEST thing.
- Chilli gin - does not require brewing or anything like that. Just sticking coriander and chillies in a bottle of gin. A friend of ours did that and it was the most AWESOME thing in a
So there, as you see I'm somewhat ambitious. But the idea is that, if I ever have to move away from Edinburgh (and seriously if Cameron and the conservatives don't get severely kicked out during the 2015 General Election it's very likely to happen) I can take a repertoire of wondrous drinks with me and I won't have to miss British cider (too much).
PS: This morning we "mysteriously" received a copy of The Ethical Slut in the mail. I've wanted to read this for the longest time and I was realy happy and excited to get it. Jay claims that he doesn't know anything about it and it "just appeared". With that smug smile of his. I claim that it's the most romantic gift he's ever got me. (This month, anyway.)
<3
This entry was originally posted at http://rapunzelita.dreamwidth.org/5725.html. Please comment there if you can!