Dean Christakos« Richard Stallman on Software Patents | Main | The Summer Spike In Gas Prices »
June 26, 2005
How a wort becomes a beer
As someone who brews his own mead, I found this explanation of the mechanism and evolution of alcohol synthesis to be pretty interesting. My interest in mead-making came from the difficulty in finding anyone that sold mead in my local liquor stores, so I figured that I could have all the mead I wanted if I made my own. The web pages I used as my guide are long since gone (though the guide is available on archive.org). However, this active guide to mead making is also pretty good.
My last batch of mead was a ginger-cinnamon-spiced wine, where, for a 1-gallon batch, I added 6 oz. of ginger and about 10 small cinnamon sticks to the simmering mixture before fermenting it with some white-wine yeast... I kept it fermenting in a carboy underneath my sink for 3 months and bottled it up. I keep the bottles in a cool dark place and taken one out every so often for special occasions. The next project: Ethiopian-style honey wine, which requires that I acquire about 1/3 - 1/2 pound of gesho leaves (Ethiopian hops) for a 5-gallon batch.
Posted by Dean at June 26, 2005 4:02 PM