Loki

Copied from my other blog.

---

My husband and our old roommates used to make mead, and I loved it, but we only messed with making it once while I lived there, so when we moved into our own home I really wanted to make my own, but we didn't have any of the supplies. One day we were helping a friend move and she had a flask filled with Loki, it tasted so good I Googled it and found the recipe on my favorite mixed drink site Webtender.com. It is not a mead, but made with Everclear, sugar, vanilla extract, almond extract, and water. We made our first batch November 2011 by cutting the recipe in half to make one gallon.

1/2 Gallon Water

2 pounds Sugar

1/2 Cup Pure Vanilla Extract

1/2 Cup Pure Almond Extract

750 ml bottle of Everclear (also known as a fifth)

We opted for better ingredients, using raw cane sugar, and pure extracts instead of imitation, and filtered water for the best tasting end product.

You will not need the apple juice for this recipe, just the clean empty bottle, or you could possibly use a plastic container since there is enough alcohol in here to kill a man, but I chose to just use the glass jug and be on the safe side.

1. First mix your water and sugar together in a large pot over medium heat until all the sugar melts. The water will be a clear brown when you're done (EDIT: I used Sugar In the Raw brand this time and it's so dark can barely see the bottom of the pot. It was on the burner about 7 minutes before I gave up and pulled it off, the water was steaming and I didn't want to lose too much liquid.) If you used white sugar it will just be clear.

2. Let the sugar water cool completely.

3. Add vanilla & almond extracts and Everclear.

4. Bottle and store for at least 1-3 months.

We bottled ours November 2011, tasted it at the beginning of January and it was still like rocket fuel, tasty rocket fuel, but not really drinkable. I put it back and tried it again in late March 2012, it was much smoother but still needed to be served over ice. Later in May 2012 it was perfect, we pulled it out for a get together and all agreed it was awesome. Luckily our guest lived on our street so they could stumble home. Its been hit pretty hard lately and has been requested at future gatherings so we are making another batch this weekend. We bought two gallons of apple juice, and I am almost done with one for more Loki, and the second bottle is for next weekend when I finally get to make my first batch of mead! I'll post about that after it happens.

JAO - First Mead!

We started our first mead today, my husband Brian has already done this in the past, but this is my first time.

We used this recipe for Joe's Ancient Orange, found at gotmead.com. Here is the recipe in case the link disappears later.


Ingredients

3 1/2 lbs Clover or your choice honey or blend (will finish sweet) 
1 Large orange (later cut in eights or smaller rind and all) 
1 small handful of raisins (25 if you count but more or less ok) 
1 stick of cinnamon 
1 whole clove (or 2 if you like - these are potent critters) 
optional (a pinch of nutmeg and allspice)(very small) 
1 teaspoon of Fleismanns bread yeast (now don't get holy on me--- after all this
is an ancient mead and that's all we had back then)
Balance water to one gallon


Directions

Use a clean 1 gallon carboy (We used an empty one gallon glass apple juice jug)

Dissolve honey in some warm water and add to jug (I warmed about 2 quarts of water for this.)

Wash orange well to remove any pesticides and slice in small pieces,then add to jug, rinds included

Put in raisins, clove, cinnamon stick, nutmeg, and allspice, then fill to 3 inches from the top with cold water (need room for some foam -- you can top off with more water after the yeast activity dies down.)

Shake the heck out of the jug with top on, of course. This is your sophisticated aeration process.

When at room temperature in your kitchen. Put in 1 teaspoon of bread yeast. You can give it a gentle swirl if you like.

Install water airlock. Put in dark place. It will start working immediately or in an hour. After major foaming stops in a few days add some water and then keep your hands off of it. 

After 2 months it will slow down to a stop and clear all by itself. Then you can rack it. It does better in a kitchen in the dark. (like in a cabinet) likes a little heat (70-80).

---

What we did:

We used an empty one gallon glass apple juice jug as our carboy. We sanitized all our equipment, bubblers, hydrometer, bottle, anything that was going to touch the ingredients.

Heated 1.5 quarts of water in the kettle then added about two cups of cool water making it about 150 degrees Fahrenheit, then put the honey and water in a large pot and stirred the honey around till it dissolved, then added it to the jug.

Next, I sliced the orange up into small pieces and put all that into the jug, along with 28 raisins, cinnamon stick, 1 clove, and the spices (we used about 1/16th of a teaspoon of each spice.)

Then we added water up to the one gallon line, shook it like crazy, added more water to 3 inches below the top and shook it up again.

After calibrating our hydrometer with reverse osmossis water to 1.000 our original gravity was 1.129.

Then it sat in the kitchen to cool to room temperature.

I planned to add my yeast around midnight at the latest, but my neighbor talked till nearly 4 AM, so I'm a little late. But the yeast is in! I filled the bubbler.

Now the waiting. See ya in a couple months.

---

Notes: Next time we should use the scale to weigh the spices. Edit 09/15/12: We tried to weigh them this time around but my scale wouldn't register the weight, so I guess we need to get a scale from High Times. (;