Interview at PoppySwap.com

The good folks at poppyswap.com recently asked for an interview on the intersection between fermentation and herbalism. I was only too happy to oblige. I really enjoyed doing this interview and I think it came out well. Head on over to check it out:

In modern herbalism, making tinctures with, say, 80 proof vodka is common, but we often forget that distilled alcohol has only been widely available for 400 or 500 years. Prior to this, herbalists had to make their own alcohol. Before distillation techniques became widely available, we had a “ceiling” in terms of alcohol content of about 18 to 20%, or about 40 proof. This is the percentage of alcohol we can get before there is too much alcohol present for the yeast to survive, which brings up an interesting point/metaphor — can you think of another organism besides yeast that gradually toxifies its environment with its waste products, until it can no longer survive?

. . .

I view mead as the highest alchemical expression of a given ecosystem. Honey is nearly ubiquitous to the planet, you have to go to the extreme latitudes before you can no longer find honey. I view honey as the lifeblood of an ecosystem, and when we use this precious substance as the sugar for fermentation we are creating beverages on the highest order of what the ecosystem has to offer.

. . .

If you haven’t yet tried mead, I suggest you get some as soon as you can and share it with friends, preferably under the stars and around a fire, with a song or a poem. While there have been some very exciting developments in commercial meaderies over the past decade (meadmaking is undergoing a similar renaissance to what microbrewed beers underwent 2 decades ago), all of the best meads I’ve tried have been homebrewed, either by me or my tribe. Try to find a meadmaker near you, chances are they will be thrilled to share their mead and their enthusiasm with you.

The above are just three excerpts from the interview. I’m so excited to have been introduced to this very cool community of herbalists!

Talking With The Plants

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:

Here is the Music Player. You need to installl flash player to show this cool thing!

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.

Herbal Asthma Strategies with Sean Donahue

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:

Here is the Music Player. You need to installl flash player to show this cool thing!

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.

New Product Announcement… coming soon

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!

Mead Workshop in Auburn, ME

I’m happy to announce that I’ll be offering a Lore And Craft Of Mead Workshop in Auburn, ME on Tuesday, July 26th at 6pm. The workshop will include a small mead tasting of a few brews I’ve done, a talk about the lore and value of mead, and a demonstration of how to make your first batch of mead. Registration for the class is $30, and includes a copy of The Lore And Craft Of Mead eBook.

If there are any questions, or specific requests for what the class should cover, please contact us! I’m very much looking forward to sharing the magic of mead with Lewiston/Auburn people! Space is limited, so register now!

Mead Workshop in Manchester, NH

making mead!

I’m happy to announce that I’ll be offering a Lore And Craft Of Mead Workshop in Manchester, NH on Thursday, June 30th at 7pm. The workshop will include a small mead tasting of a few brews I’ve done, a talk about the lore and value of mead, and a demonstration of how to make your first batch of mead. Registration for the class is $30, and includes a copy of The Lore And Craft Of Mead eBook.

Register for the class here: [wp_eStore:product_id:2:end]

In addition, I will have brewing kits available, that include all the equipment and basic ingredients you will need to produce your first batch of mead, including a 3-gallon glass carboy, rubber stopper, airlock, funnel, siphon hose, and a hydrometer, as well as a gallon of fantastic local (to me in Maine) honey and a packet of yeast.
NOTE: As of June 25 it is too late to get the brewing kits in time for the workshop.
Class registration is still available.

If there are any questions, or specific requests for what the class should cover, please contact us! I’m very much looking forward to sharing the magic of mead with Manchester people! Space is limited, so register now!

Harper Meader Podcast Interview

This week on the Sweet Peas Podcast, we were very happy to interview Harper Meader, who in addition to being a contributor to this site and my meadmaking mentor, is a fabulous storyteller and interviewee.

He was kind enough to bring a 1996 pumpkin mead — fermented inside of a pumpkin — that we shared on the air. If you’ve never had a 15 year old mead, well, words fail.

This is one of my favorite interviews we’ve done for the podcast…. check it out (get the mp3 here, or the rss subscription file here). In this episode, we refer to a posting on this site by Harper, called So You Brewed Some Mead…. You can find it there.

The Lore And Craft Of Mead: eBook Release

UPDATE: As of June 2017, this eBook is no longer available. If you really, really would like a copy, then contact me and we’ll work something out.


We’re excited to announce the release of this ebook as a PDF download!

 

 

This book has been a long time coming. Since I started brewing years ago, I knew that I wanted to help teach people how to make their own fermented beverages. It’s not a terribly difficult process, but I felt the process was more complicated for beginners than it perhaps should be.

Later, when I took Harper Meader‘s “Measure by the handful and stir with your arm” meadmaking class, I knew that I had finally found my fermented beverage of choice. Mead has many things going for it; it’s humanity’s oldest fermented beverage, it’s made from one of the most profound foods known (honey), and it’s really simple and easy to make a delicious batch.

This book builds (or perhaps restores) a bridge between two camps: traditional meadmaking, and traditional herbalism. If we go back far enough there is no difference between the two. So if you are an experienced meadmaker looking to add a dose of herbalism to your brewing, or if you are an herbalist looking to get into meadmaking, this book will speak to you. Of course, it is also ideal for the beginner as it walks you through every step of the way.

There is somewhat of a focus on keeping mead a healthy beverage; I speak of spring water, the best local organic honey you can find, and local or wildharvested ingredients for your mead. Honey and good water are both profound nutrients for the human body; when we combine them with yeast and other ingredients from our ecosystem we can get some of the most powerful beverages available anywhere.

I also worked hard to cut out the fluff, and make the book as concise as possible. Those of you who know me or my default writing style know this is no easy task. ;-)    My aim was to take this meadmaking method, which both is simple for the beginner and very expandable for the intermediate or advanced meadmaker, and keep it to a booklet-length document, cramming as much information as possible into 16 pages. Hopefully I was successful.

So for all of humanity’s meadmakers, past, present, and future, I raise my drinking horn to you!

Coming Soon: Meadmaking Book

Coming very soon, to a browser near you, will be the first publication from BardicBrews.net. It is to be called “The Lore And Craft of Mead,” and will be a detailed introduction to mead, as well as how to make your own mead. It is a more distinct version of some of the content on this site, as well as new information on taking meadmaking next-level.

If you are interested in getting a copy of this book when it’s avaiable, watch this space. I’m presently putting the finishing touches on the book, as well as getting infrastructure (ecommerce/paypal etc) work on this site in place.

The book will sell for less than $20, especially for early adopters. Stay tuned!