rumhounds

I moved again! This time with my German Shepherd, Viking, 1 gallon of trad mead, and three gallons of blackberry wine in a Jeep.

This is the first town I’ve lived in that has over 3,500 people in eight years. There’s a wee bit of culture shock to adjust to, now that traffic is more than three cars at a stop sign. I’m still blown away by the fact that I drive by not one, not two, but THREE markets on my way home from work.

Let’s be fair, compared with the Denver area, the Western Slope is still kinda small. For me, it’s big though. The best part though, is there’s a homebrew club here. I can start getting honest opinions on my mead so I can continue to improve. Local honey is easy to find too.

And hiking? Hiking!

As far as the state of the mead goes: the T’ej I wrote about last year turned out to be fairly drinkable. I need to run another batch with stems, because I don’t think the leaves will do the trick on their own. The blackberry wine from a few years ago has aged into a very pleasant port-style wine. Hopefully the three gallons that bounced around in my Jeep from Washington to Colorado will turn out the same way.

But moving wine in the front seat of a Jeep is not the best way to get good results, so we’ll see.

I have three new batches in secondary. All traditional, with three different honeys and two different yeasts. Once it stops hitting over 100 degrees, I’ll get a five gallon batch started. In bottles, there’s two left of the hibiscus, since most of those batches went to friends. I have one left of my spiced cyser and one left of blackberry wine.

Here’s a shout out to the American Mead Maker’s Association. Join for a year and you get some great monthly deals on honey to feed all your mead making needs.

Stay cool this summer and drink more mead!