Category Archives: Potions

My adventures in mead & wine making

Breakfast Potion

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an almost reddish brown mostly opaque liquid in a short glass jar.
Breakfast potion at first bottling

This was one of my experimental brews so it’s a micro-batch. It will not be repeated, but I may use it as inspiration to make something less complicated. I considered calling this the kitchen sink brew

Full list of ingredients in order of addition:

  • 342g quick oats
  • 7g powdered cinnamon
  • 700ml water
  • 300ml water
  • 100ml maple syrup
  • 75ml barley malt
  • 200ml water
  • 1/2tsp fermaid o
  • 1/2 packet k1-v1116 yeast
  • 125ml water
  • 31g chopped dates
  • 20g honey
  • 1/4cup water
  • 1/4tsp fermaid o
  • 50g honey
  • 100ml warm water
  • 1/4cup maple syrup
  • 1/4tsp vanilla

Yes, I did switch back and forth between metric and imperial, I tend to go with whichever measurement is most exact or easiest to manage at the time.

milky light brown liquid with a line of foam at the top, in a 32oz glass fermenting jar
oat milk mead start
dark golden brown liquid sits atop a dense off-white lees cake in a 32oz glass fermenting jar
oat particles fallen from suspension

2024-04-22
Mix oats, cinnamon & water; soak for 24 hours

2024-04-23
add water, puree, strain until I get tired of messing with it. Mix ‘oat milk’, maple syrup, barley malt, water, yeast and fermaid o together and put under airlock

2024-04-24
added in a little more water & swirlled it

2024-05-02
rough racked must into new fermenter on top of chopped dates, honey and more water, put back under airlock

2024-05-08
took a small sip, definitely alcohol, texture is noticably different than other meads, probably due to the oats, very dry

2024-05-09
added honey & warm water

2024-05-20
airlock pressure still positive, but brew is clearing

2024-05-21
racked to another jar and put in fridge to cold crash

2024-05-24
took it out of fridge, sniffed it, it smells like booze, stuck it in the cabinet to age

2024-06-01
racked, added maple syrup and vanilla, tastes good, put back under airlock

2024-06-04
airlock still showed pressure, but I racked it into a 1 liter bottle

2024-10-01
absolutely delicious

Flower Moon Mead

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I briefly tried to make Moon-specific meads. This was the one for May. My original plan included rose petals, to be added in conditioning to keep the infusion of rose flavor to a minimum. But strong winds stripped all the rose petals from my friend’s rose bushes. heh Maybe next year! However, my pottery instructor had some oregano that had gone to flower and I thought, why not!?

Oregano Flower Tea + Hibiscus Mead

  • 1400ml flower tea (3.5oz oregano flowers & buds)
  • 500ml water
  • 1 lb honey
  • 1/2 packet k1-v1116 yeast
  • 1tsp fermaid o
  • 3tbsp dried hibiscus (conditioning)
  • 4oz honey (conditioning)
  • 4oz honey (amending)
  • 1/8tsp vanilla (amending)
a large bunch of flowering oregano, mostly a light green with small white flowers
Fresh oregano flowers
a large pot filled with water and oregano flowers and buds, a wooden spoon rests in it
making oregano flower tea
3 glass jars full of a pale golden liquid
completed oregano flower tea
half gallon glass jar with a golden brown liquid with a line of foam at the top
flower moon mead fermenting

2024-05-21
prepared oregano flower tea: steeped tea for 20 minutes, strained into 2 quart mason jars, each with 800ml fluid, this will be the liquid base for the mead

2024-05-26
Mixed tea 1400ml, water 500ml, 1lb honey, 1/4tsp fermaid o, & 1/2 packet kv yeast. Put under airlock in half-gallon fermenter

2024-06-05
3tbsp hibiscus flowers

2024-06-12
removed hibiscus

2024-06-17
clearing

2024-06-21
tasted it, added 4 oz of honey, stirred the lees up and honey, put back under airlock

2024-06-28
oops restarted fermentation

2024-07-15
tasted it, needs sweetening

2024-07-28
racked, added 4oz honey & 1/8tsp vanilla, aging

2024-09-01
significantly better, I can taste something other than oregano and alcohol now, set back to aging.

2024-10-01
so very much better, something I actually like the taste of now.

Persephone’s Descent

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Pomegranate Mead

a pyrex measuring pitcher full of juice, a metal bowl with a mesh bag full of white seeds, and a black bowl full of picked apart pomegranate husks

Ingredients
1.5 cups fresh squeezed pomegranate juice
1 liter pomegranate syrup / equivalent 1.74lbs sugar
.2oz fresh rosemary
1lb 10.2oz honey
water to 1 gallon (approx 2qt, 1cup)
1pkg yeast
1.5tsp fermaid o (start, 48, 72)

2024-10-04
So. I will never complain about the price of pomegranate products again. Holy goddess. 5 pomegranates (from a friend’s yard) turned out to be about 1.5 cups of juice. Apparently pomegranates come in white fruit too. Tasted good. Then I added the pomegranate syrup, got it from the International Market the other week. It tastes like jolly ranchers, but I like that so it’s all good. Added in the honey, which was just what I had left over from two 5lbs containers. Let the yeast and the fermaid o start doing their thing in a cup of water while I prepped it all. Shook the heck out of the must to make sure it was aerated enough. Checked the starting gravity: 1.092 spg. Added the little bit of rosemary and put it all under air lock.

Everything was so sticky. But I’m excited to see how it comes out. 😀

opened pomegranate, showing seeds
open pomegranate, focus is on the thin skin that divides the seeds inside, it looks like honeycomb
Zergut Pomegranate Syrup bottle
back of pomegranate syrup bottle showing the ingredients
back of pomegranate syrup bottle showing the nutrition facts and that it is a product of Slovenia
one gallon jug fermenter with air lock on it, full of a dark red liquid with white foam on top

Rosemary Blueberry Mead

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We have a pair of rosemary bushes on one side of our house, and so early in my mead making journey I decided to see what would happen if I fermented on fresh rosemary. To my great delight it turned out to be my most favorite creation.

two one quart mason jars with fermenter lids, inside is a cloudy golden color liquid with visible sprigs of rosemary floating at the top
a half-gallon glass jar with a blue lid, an airlocks is sticking up out of the lid, the liquid inside the jar is a deep red

Because this was just an experiment, I only made half a gallon of it. Much to my later dismay. Here’s the basic timeline and ingredients I used.

2024-03-12
2ish quarts water
24 grams rosemary leaves/flowers
1.5 pounds honey
1 packet k1-v1116 yeast
in two 32oz mason jars

2024-04-20
racked mead off the rosemary, put back in jars and put back under airlock. the smell is not bad, but it’s interesting.

2024-04-21 (afternoon)
poured rosemary into half-gallon pickle jar with blueberries, sugar and water:

Macerated Blueberries 

386g frozen blueberries
128 grams turbanado sugar 
wide mouth 32oz mason jar

2024-04-20 
8pm - mixed it up, popped it in the fridge 

2024-04-21 (early afternoon)
moved to half gallon jar, added 3/4th cup of water to get the sugar and stuff out of the mason jar. covered jar with strainer bag, will let it come up to room temp and then add in rosemary mead.

placed pickle jar with airlock onto fermentation shelf

2024-04-28
racked off blueberries, washed container, put mead back under airlock for aging

deep red liquid in a glass jar being held up to the light

Bottling Day

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several glass bottles, mostly amber colored but a few clear and one cobalt blue, of mead with labels sitting on a light green tray

Spent my day bottling up all of my previously brewed mead. The two big bottles (half gallon) in the back of Strawberry Moon mead are going to a pottery friend, one of the little 8oz Ginger Mead is going to another pottery friend.

Most of the rest of them are going to friends & family, but they’re not all spoken for yet. And the tall (1 liter) clear bottle and shorter cobalt blue bottle are being stored. So I’ve got more oregano flower-hibiscus flower & breakfast potion (oat ‘milk’, cinnamon, maple syrup, barley malt, dates, honey) for laters. 😀