Today's word is "melomel"

A couple more than ago, my girlfriend and I were looking for something fun to do. And she stumbled across a local distillery that offered tours. We all signed ourselves up, and went for our first ever distillery tour. 

And I loved it. 

I've always had a bit of an interest in brewing and distilling, but that really kick started it. So I made the decision to start this as a new hobby. 

Unfortunately, distilling is illegal in the US, because of "the children" (taxes). However, home wine making and brewing does not create an alcoholic concentration high enough to have any ill effects on near by children. 

I digress. When I first started researching  the hobby, fruit wines became more and more appealing. Particularly blueberry wine. I was on a real blueberry kick at the time, and I figured a wine made from such a fruit would be delicious. I wasn't far off. 

A little tip: if you ever start this hobby for yourself. Buy the correct equipment. It's not very expensive, and it makes the process way easier. Every step has a small tool, or some chemical that is made for it. You'll save yourself lots of time, make smaller messes, lose fewer batches. Cutting corners is just going to cause wasted effort.

The concept is simple: Pick a fruit. Sanitize. Mash the fruit and add water to the desired consistency. Sanitize. Add extra sugar till your hydrometer measures the desired expected alcohol volume. Sanitize. Adjust the acids to prevent botulism, help aging and flavor. Sanitize.  Pitch the yeast, and wait! And wait and wait and wait and sanitize. You'll wonder if you'll ever actually get to try it. Don't worry! Just be patient! My batch of blueberry wine took nearly two months. 

 

Once it's done, the fun part is bottling. Which is when the wine actually becomes something consumable. It becomes real. And real is delicious. The wine turned out wonderful. It wasn't nearly as harsh as some other wines I have tried in the past. I'm very happy with the final product. 

I currently have a batch of hard apple cider. And pretty soon I am going to start a proper Mead. I'm so excited.

Shortly after the wine was bottled, we had an uncorking party. This was the only picture we managed to take....