forgotten stories in fermented beverages
Just a quick post to document a small bottling session I did the other night:
This is just the Blackberry Cyser Mead…. the Perry Cyser is still in jugs clearing, and of course all 4 batches in the Mad Trad Trial will be ready for racking soon. This mead is delightfully clear, nice and tart, with a bit of berry sweetness underlying it. I’m sure we’ll enjoy it at today’s potluck and into the future!
As meadmakers, we obviously use a lot of honey and the health of our bees is of immediate importance, beyond the impact that bees have on the entire ecosystem. As such, I am regularly asked about the crisis involving bees that has been getting some well-deserved publicity as of late. I saw this article in the Associated Press today, and wanted to reproduce it here for posterity:
Latest buzz on bee decline: Maybe it’s pesticides
By SETH BORENSTEIN
AP Science WriterWASHINGTON (AP) — A common class of pesticide is causing problems for honeybees and bumblebees, important species already in trouble, two studies suggest.
But the findings don’t explain all the reasons behind a long-running bee decline, and other experts found one of the studies less than convincing.
The new research suggests the chemicals used in the pesticide – designed to attack the central nervous system of insects – reduces the weight and number of queens in bumblebee hives. These pesticides also cause honeybees to become disoriented and fail to return to their hives, the researchers concluded.
The two studies were published online Thursday in the journal Science.
Just last week activists filed a petition with more than a million signatures asking the government to ban the class of pesticides called neonicotinoids. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it is re-evaluating the chemicals and is seeking scientific help.
For more than a decade, pollinators of all types have been in decline, mostly because of habitat loss and perhaps some pesticide use. In the past five years, a new mysterious honeybee problem, colony collapse disorder, has further attacked hives. But over the last couple of years, that problem has been observed a bit less, said Jeff Pettis, lead bee researcher at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s lab in Beltsville, Md.
Other studies have also found problems with the pesticide class singled out in the new research. These “strengthen the case for more thorough re-assessing,” said University of Illinois entomology professor May Berenbaum, who wasn’t involved in the new studies. “But this is not a slam-dunk indictment that could compel a ban. It’s complicated.”
In the honeybee study, French scientists glued tiny radio transmitters to the bees managed for orchard pollination. The bees were tracked when they came and left the hive. Those that were dosed with neonicotinoids were two to three times more likely not to return.
“Where’d they go? We have no clue about that actually,” said study author Mickael Henry, a bee ecologist for the French national agriculture institute. His study said the pesticide likely contributes to colony collapse.
In the bumblebee study, British researchers dosed bees with the pesticide and moved their hives out into the field. After six weeks, they found the pesticide-treated hives were 10 percent lighter than those that weren’t treated. And more important, the hives that had pesticides lost about 85 percent of their queens.
“Queen production is in some sense the be all and end all,” study author David Goulson of the University of Stirling in Scotland said.
Bayer Crop Sciences, which is the leading producer of neonicotinoids, says it is used on 90 percent of the corn grown in the U.S. and is safe. Bayer eco-toxicologist David Fischer said the honeybee study used unrealistically high doses of the chemicals, amounts that would not be used on crops bees normally pollinate.
Berenbaum, Pettis and a third outside scientist said the bumblebee study was more convincing than the honeybee research because it used lower doses and didn’t make as many assumptions.
Bayer’s Fischer said perhaps bumblebees are more sensitive to the pesticide and that issue is worthy of more study. But he said his company is one of the biggest canola growers in Canada and it uses the pesticide. The honeybees that pollinate Bayer’s fields are “some of the healthiest bees in Canada,” he said.
But environmental activists and some beekeepers are convinced the pesticide is a problem.
“The simple fact is, we know enough to take decisive action on this class of pesticides which covers well over 143 million acres of U.S. countryside,” said Heather Pilatic, co-director of the Pesticide Action Network North America.
The EPA, in a prepared statement said the decline in bee health, is due to “complex interactions” that involve inadequate food sources, diseases caused by parasites and viruses, habitat loss and bee management practices, as well as pesticides.
Bees are needed to pollinate fruit, vegetables and nuts. Without them experts say our diets would be very bland. Honeybees, which aren’t native to America, are managed by professional beekeepers, carted from farm to orchard and raised to produce honey. Bumblebees, native to this country, are wild pollinators.
Without bees, Berenbaum said, “we’d be a scurvy-ridden society.”
This article is copyright 2012 by Associated Press. It is cross-posted here for informational purposes only under the spirit of Fair Use.
We’re excited to bring you this FREE recording, Talking With The Plants with Sean Donahue. This mp3 recording provides a groundwork for Sean’s approach to herbalism in general, focusing on building one’s relationship with the plants. Sean teaches that “what is this plant good for?” is the wrong question; rather, Sean invites us to rethink what it means to work with plants, to approach them on their own terms as living, breathing beings with their own intelligences. We have to learn to let go of our mechanistic approach to seeking out certain plants based upon what symptoms they will soothe, and instead realize that it’s really about being in relationship with the plants. The deeper our relationship with the plants on their own terms becomes, the greater the potential for transformation.
You can listen to this free recording directly from your browser:
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Or if you prefer, you can download it directly and save it to your computer, iPod, or other audio device.
Enjoy this free offering from Sean Donahue and Bardic Brews! If you’d like to support us directly, you can either look at our product offerings here on BardicBrews.net, you can register for some of Sean’s classes, or you can donate directly to us at BardicBrews.net:
Some of you who are themselves or have loved ones who are healing breathing difficulties might also be interested in our Herbal Strategies for Asthma program. Look for more collaborations soon between Sean and Bardic Brews.
Sean Donahue is not a medical doctor, and none of the information contained in this recording is intended for use in the diagnosis, treatment, or cure of any medical condition. Listeners are advised to consult a health professional before beginning to use any herb.
I recently realized that I have yet to do a plain Traditional Mead. And, as fate would have it, I also realized I have 4 clear carboys at the same time (usually I do a better job of cycling the brews). So I decided as both a learning experience to fine-tune my basic meadmaking recipe, I thought I’d do two experiments at once.
As you know, I regularly make mead with chaga tea as a base. But I’ve never done a side-by-side comparison of the same recipe, one done with spring water and the other done with chaga tea. This will therefore be variable 1 in the experiment.
I was taught to use Oranges and Black Tea to change the pH of the must, but later started to use Staghorn Sumac as a substitute, for a similar flavor profile. But again, I had never compared 2 identical recipes, one done with oranges/black tea and one done with Sumac.
So with this variable matrix, I will do 4 unique batches:
This one has spring water with oranges and black tea. It is the basic mead recipe I was taught from Harper Meader’s “Measure with your fist, Stir with your arm” method. 3 cups of black tea with the juice of 6 oranges to alter the pH of the must. Start at the beginning. If this group has a control, Mad Trad A is it.
Since I first began experimenting with chaga, the first deviation will be that. Mad Trad B also has oranges and black tea as above, but is made with a chaga decoction base rather than plain spring water.
Next is the sumac experiment. Mad Trad C is Spring Water with Sumac Tea to alter the pH.
Last but not least, Mad Trad D is made with both Chaga Tea and Sumac Tea.
I made all the batches consecutively, so the variables are minimized (temperatures, yeast rehydration and pitch time, etc. are all similar). They were all brought up to an 18% initial alcohol potential reading.
Let the games begin!
So far it seems the tea/orange combo are quicker to ferment. Batch A has the most foam at the top, but Batch B has more bubbles in the airlock. Still early, fermentation hasn’t really started yet for any of them. The next 12 hours will be fun.
All the batches are bubbling now. A and B are almost full-on. C and D are slower but have started. This is evidence that pH levels with oranges and tea are more favorable than with sumac. In both pairs, the chaga bubbled a bit earlier which also seems to support that chaga is good for the yeast.
Everything is now bubbling away as one would expect…. and the carboys are all in the cabinet, out of the light. Will check on them regularly, and am definitely looking forward to a mad trad mead shootout later this summer….
All 4 batches were racked tonight. There is a separate entry detailing the results of it. Mad Trad A has 6% remaining alcohol potential, the other 3 batches have 4% remaining alcohol potential.
Actually this one is about halfway between Imbolc and Ostara. Oh well.
Both of these two are really good meads, for different reasons. The Chaga Pyment is simply delicious already, and I expect it to get better. The Elder Mead is one of the most complex meads I’ve done yet; each of its main ingredients (reishi, elderberry, rose hip) are easily discernible in the flavor spectrum. Medicinally it also might be the most powerful one I’ve yet done (excepting possibly the Elecampane Mead).
All in all, a lovely harvest! Next up will be this year’s cysers, but not for a few months most likely.
A facebook post generated enough interest in the chaga double extraction I did recently that I decided to post about Double (or Dual) Extraction. This is a technique in working with herbs that I’ve picked up from a few herbalist friends.
When we extract herbal essences from herbs, sometimes making teas works better (if the compounds we want are water soluble), other times making tinctures is better (if the compounds we want are alcohol soluble).
But what if we want different compounds from a substance, some of which are water soluble and some of which are alcohol soluble? This is where dual extraction can be of value, since we use both water and alcohol. I have mostly used this technique with medicinal mushrooms, such as reishi and chaga.
Sorry for the lack of pictures; perhaps the next time I do this I’ll take pictures of the process to document it more fully. This technique takes some time, several weeks for the tincturing process and several days for the decocting process, but it’s not much work, it mostly involves letting the herbs sit in whichever medium they are being extracted in.
To reiterate, I’ve had the most luck doing this with medicinal mushrooms, namely reishi and chaga. Have fun making your own medicines!
Quite a harvest after the bottling session today:
Bottled three batches today: Spruce Tip Mead, Raspberry Damiana Mead, and Cherry/Red Ginseng Mead. If I may say so, all three batches are excellent in their own right, and for very different reasons.
For the Spruce Tip Mead, this is not the first time I’ve made an evergreen brew. They do hold a special place in my heart; last year’s spruce mead was surprisingly one of the best ones I did all year. This years is no different, though the flavor is different from last years. It’s still very sweet, but it still tastes like Yule.
When talking about the Raspberry Damiana the first thing I should mention is its incredibly vibrant color. Deep red, one of the most gorgeous batches since the Wild Black Cherry and the Prickly Pear. To be honest, at first I was a bit disappointed with the flavor when I racked it; it had a bit of a “cough syrup” vibe to it with the herbal damiana and the sweet-fruity flavor mixed together. I’m happy to say that the cough-syrupiness has faded significantly since then, and it is delicious! Will be a favorite I think.
Finally, the Cherry Red Ginseng is surprising precisely for its lack of color. I did use fewer cherries than last year, and the cherries I did use were not as ripe — bright red rather than deep black. However the mead turned out… yellow. Go figure. That said, it is beautifully clear and might be the most delicious of these three batches.
I’m definitely grateful for a bountiful Yule harvest! Happiness is…. a full mead cabinet.
We are very happy to bring you a brand new product: Herbal Asthma Strategies with Sean Donahue. After the success of the Lore And Craft of Mead book, we wanted to broaden our product range. While herbalism is one of the foundations of our meadmaking method, this new product is a foray into herbalism rather than fermentation.
Herbal Asthma Strategies with Sean Donahue consists of 7 audio lecture recordings in mp3 format (over 100 minutes of audio total), as well as a concise booklet that outline Sean’s approach to dealing with asthma. He developed these strategies with his own life experience. They were effective enough to have a profound effect on Sean’s life, leading him down the path of becoming an herbalist. He no longer considers asthma to be a part of how he defines himself, and has helped many other people with their asthma.
The program begins with teachings about what asthma is, in terms of why the body responds to certain stimuli with the tightness, wheezing, and difficulty breathing associated with asthma. So the first step is to learn which triggers to avoid, in order to prevent the body from responding with breathing trouble. One very important trigger point is diet, which is discussed in detail to help you determine which dietary choices will improve your quality of breath.
In addition, Sean discusses the critical — and often overlooked — emotional component of healing associated with those who no longer have asthma, which may explain why some people “grow out of” asthma and others do not.
Lastly, Sean gives a breakdown of 13 Herbs for Asthma, discussing the virtues of each plant along with where and when it is appropriate to employ each one as part of your asthma strategy.
We’ve made available a short interview with Sean where we discuss this program and his history with asthma, which you can listen to here:
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As you can hear, Sean’s teaching style is quite gentle, heart-based, and thorough.
Lastly, we believe healthcare of all kinds are a fundamental right for everyone, so as of Imbolc, 2012 we are reducing the cost on this program to just $13.99!
Add it to your cart: [wp_eStore:product_id:5:end][wp_eStore_cart_when_not_empty]
Sean Donahue is not a medical doctor, and none of the information contained in this booklet or the accompanying recordings is intended for use in the diagnosis, treatment, or cure of any medical condition. The term asthma is used here in a general, colloquial sense, not as a term for a medical condition. Readers and listeners are advised to consult a health professional before beginning to use any herb.
I’m very excited for an upcoming product announcement that will be a departure for Bardic Brews. In the past, all of our work has been about fermentation in general, and mead in particular. However, despite my love of mead and fermentation, it was never my intention to keep the focus of this website so narrow.
Herbalism is a big part of my meadmaking strategy; I have incorporated herbs into my concoctions from the very beginning. And indeed, herbalism has been an increasing part of my life since this website began.
This new publication, which will be released in the coming days, is also near and dear to me personally. I’ve had asthma since I was a small child, and have struggled throughout my life to keep it under control so that I can live the life I wish to live with minimal impact from the asthma.
For this new, upcoming product, I am teaming up with Sean Donahue, to bring you a packet of information called Herbal Asthma Strategies. Sean, who deals with asthma himself, has used these strategies to improve his own health, and to help many other people — including me.
I can’t tell you how excited we are to bring this information out to the public. For people like myself who have struggled with asthma their entire lives, being reliant upon the steroid-based products of the pharmaceutical industry, this information is a life-changer, empowering us to increase our health naturally, affordably, and sustainably.
This publication will consist of several high-quality audio recordings (in mp3 format so you can put them on your portable player), where Sean discusses the nuances of his strategies in detail, as well as a more concise booklet summarizing the information in the recordings.
Best of all, this information will be extremely affordable. It will cost less than most other asthma remedies commonly in use, and the information contained within will never run out, it can be used for the rest of your life. And, because we want to make this important information available to everyone, we will be offering it on a sliding scale.
Watch this space for the official announcement and launch coming later this week!
For much of 2011, I’ve been experimenting greatly with herbal meads. Some of them have been fantastic, others powerful brews yet perhaps not the best tasting. There have been quite a few complex brews this year as I experiment and hone my meadmaking craft with the herbal skills I am also gaining.
I wanted to make a simpler mead that celebrated the local season. In Maine during autumn, this means cyser. We also had some blackberries floating around from earlier in the year (love our new freezer), so I thawed a quart of those to put into the batch. Simple: blackberry cyser. Just the ticket.
I started with 3 gallons of fresh, nonpasteurized, non-UV treated cider from the orchard around the corner:
I added 2 cups of organic black tea:
And I whizzed up a quart of thawed blackberries in the blender:
Mixed it with enough honey (about 3/4 gallon) to get to 18% alcohol potential:
And the result is a cloudy but beautifully-colored must:
Definitely a seasonal brew. Can’t wait to try this one in a few months!
Just racked this brew. Wow, delicious! Needs to age a bit but it’s very well-balanced, semisweet at 3% remaining alcohol potential, 15% alcohol, and a lovely tartness from the apples balanced with a nice blackberry layer of flavor.
It’s still cloudy, though clearer than the Perry Cyser. Not much blackberry coloration, it looks pretty much like a plain cyser:
Already tastes very good, should get even better given a few more months….