This once a month blogging is getting on my nerves!  I need to get into a more regular schedule.  If for no other reason than to clear my brain.  This actually does not take much effort as there is not a great amount of activity upstairs, but it does help keep things tidy in the grey matter.

It is mid September and we are winding down the year.  Oddly enough, the wine making appears to be kicking up in small batches.  I believe it was inspired by uncorking a split of the currant wine.  Robin and I pulled one out late in August.  It was a sparkling beauty that had a perfect blend of sweetness and stars in the glass.  It took us some effort not to knock down the remaining eleven splits immediately.  We brought out one of our precious reserves to the folks house at a gathering and the family there got a sip or two of this and I may need to lock our doors to protect us from "visits" to check on our welfare (wine)...  These bottles will definitely go out in Christmas gift baskets for family and friends.

On a side note, Robin and I have been talking seriously about our bees.  We expect to extract somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 pounds of honey this year as our bees have been prolific.  Last year and the year before, I did it the very basic way of uncapping the frames and pressing out the gold with the back of a spoon.  This was labor intensive and made the foundation un-useable for the following season.  Each foundation runs about a dollar a sheet and with a ten frame box and extracting about four boxes lies the math lesson that indicates an actual extractor saves money over time.  Robin took the hit on this one and purchased us a two frame extractor for our little, but spendy hobby.  We love the bees and are eager to see what they will share this year.  October 1st is our planned extraction date and we will post some pictures of the process.

Back to the actual work.  I bottled five gallons of the oldest metheglin last week and moved around my last five gallons of metheglin and the five gallons of blueberry wine that's been a perkin'.  I usually pull off a bit to taste where things are looking at each transfer.  The mead is doing well as expected.  The blueberry is quite interesting.  It has a dry finish and there are tannins in there along with a nice blueberry tang going on.  I am not sure how the wine is supposed to taste or how it will mellow, but I find it a nice dry red-type wine at the moment. 

Our pear trees yielded quite a batch of pears this year.  We were wondering what to do with them when Robin piped up that we have available carboys.   I thought to try a one gallon batch and it is looking very nice after a couple days of perking.  It is next to the raspberry-grape batch.  Yes, a raspberry-grape blend!  We had a bunch of himrod grapes this year and I decided to crush the lot for some wine.  Robin and I also pulled off a cup or so of raspberries.  Not enough for a batch alone, so we added them to the grapes.  It is very pretty, but not the bright mix of the currant wine.  We shall see on the flavor soon enough.

A stop by at Johnson's Orchard brought home about 20 pounds of peaches.  You can see where this is going.  Today, I will try a hand at a peach-raisin wine.  I understand that peaches alone don't give enough body to a wine, so it should be fortified a bit.  The same was the case for the pear wine.  I got a couple boxes of golden raisins and only used one on the pears, so I am going to use the other box with the peaches.  I will share what this produces.

Oh, I guess I should give a bottle yield so far.  It seems we are currently holding about eighty bottles of mostly 750 ml of metheglin wine and ten splits of the currant wine.  That is mostly why I am slowing down a bit on production.  What to do with that amount.  I did get carried away with wanting to do 50 gallons this year and met about half that goal along with the fruit wines that are cropping up.  We are having fun playing around though and plan to do more of this next year.

Wine making is a pretty easy process outright and often produces some very good product if you are patient.  Once you get going, the biggest expense seems to be the bottles if you buy new as I have tended to do so far.  I did build a wine case for the rack that Robin bought me and it will hold about 60 bottles.  Robin also purchased a small wine refrigerator to hold our currant wine.

I am now off to prepare some peaches and cut up some raisins.  I will try to get some pics on the next posting.

Outside is the calling of a large flock of birds.  The music would be more enticing if they were not starlings.  Sigh.  Yet it is a beautiful day and I have been going on regular bicycle rides that so far are on the four mile treks and I am looking forward to today's journey.  What will be my path today?  How about you?

It's been a month since my last update and time to give the old loins some girding.  It is big switcheroo day as I am on the process of moving batches of metheglin and blueberry wine from carboy to carboy.  This is always a special day for me as I get to sample the batches as they are transferred.  I got to lay up 24 bottles of one of my best batches of metheglin to date.  This batch has a subtle spice blend and a fair bit of heat in the ol' tum tum at the end.  I will look forward to the aging process of this run!

The second carboy transfer went without a hitch and had a half gallon in the tail end for reserve and um...testing.  This is going to be one of those days.  All for science and glory.  Such is commitment to one's craft.  I believe that is a tear of joy in my eye.  Batch two has a bit of vitner's sweetener added to the tail end.  I think I mentioned that the second and third batch had this done to test out the possibilities.  Oh, such a difference that made!  This batch has a bit more deeper color to it as I steeped a few more tea bags to this batch.   It has something of a darker amber shade to it and the spices came out very nicely.  Along with the sweetener, this is a batch to be reckoned with.  No secrets will die with me.  Perhaps a time-tested liver, but no secrets, my friends!  I got about an 8 ounce bottle of sweetener and added half to this batch and half to batch number three.  This batch has just a hint more sweet than I would want, but the blend is so nice, that I feel more forgiving with each sip.  It brings back the sweetness of the honey that I am inclined to look for in future batches.  This will be a desert metheglin for sure and one with a driver's warning on it.  You will float like a bee after a glass or two of this run!

Batch three was even darker than batch two.  I went back to Twining's Earl Grey and am very glad I did.  I've been timing my steep times and using a bit longer steep for the teas.  About five minutes steep.  This has produce a few shades darker metheglin than batch two.  But the flavor is pretty consistent with batch two as it is sweetened with a pronounced spice end that I have decided is a good thing.  Both batches will be great Christmas gifts and ready to drink at the time of corking.  They are ready now in my estimation.  Somehow, the lawn looks less appealing at the moment...

Now for the update of the day.  The blueberry fortified!  Oh my, oh my!  I popped the top of the plastic carboy and stuck my nose in this (I am very scent oriented and should have been a cat.  My wife says I am a dog and I am still working that one out...)  This one grabbed my nasal passages and held them for ransom for a moment.  I was ecstatic about our currant wine, but I think this blueberry run will give the currant a run for it's money.  Such a dark color of purple and the waft of blueberries!  A test is in order I am sure.  It is in the transfusion process as I type and I have to take breaks by the moment to run over and gander upon it. 

I slaked off a dram of the blueberry and it packs a heat.  Not the sweet metheglin, dearie.  This one is quite a bit drier than the honey wines.  I must contemplate whether to sweeten this batch or leave it as is.  I am inclined to leave as is at the moment as it has a very blueberry nose to it with tannins on the buds and a slightly bitter finish.  This one is exotic and I believe I like it.

Here is a line up of batches two, three, and the blueberry:

This day could only be better if my sweet wife was here at the moment.  She is currently doing that bit of drudgery that we quaintly call in this household, a job.  I shall do my part by holding down the fort and ensuring that there is a bit of a taste left for her when she comes home.  There will be a physics lesson for me today as I must calculate the exact amount of that taste, but I shall persevere.

Hey,  the grass in the picture does not look that long.  Hmmm...

Take care folks.  Get out and see the world, take the bee by the stinger or at least reach for the berry!

It's now July.  July the 18th to be precise.  I thought for a bit I had the metheglin version of writer's block.  I did not start a new batch of metheglin at the start of the month as was my plan and I am now having thoughts of whether 50 gallons is realistic.  It is not difficult to produce compared to other wines I can attest...

About two weeks ago, my sister gave Robin a jingle.  Part of their conversation steered to their gardens.  Sharon (my sister) and her husband Steve have a really cool garden in their backyard.  Raspberries, strawberries, grapes, and red currants to name a few of the items they grow.  It was the currants that perked Robin's interest.  She told me that we were heading down to pick currants.

Now, we have a few very young currant bushes that did produce a small amount of berries this year so I wasn't too sure that the trip was going to be one of those "wow" trips.  Seeing my sister is a delight anyway, so I wasn't going to be too put out if we got a cup of berries for the run down the valley.

We stopped along the way at Snipes Brewery in Sunnyside, Washington.  This is a microbrewery with a restaurant.  The chef (yep, chef!) made up some great food and we picked up a growler of Dos Barrachos for Sharon and Steve.  Dos Barrachos is a specialty beer there and Barracho is Spanish for drunk, I hear.  Very tasty stuff and I can imagine that a growler could get a couple folks pretty tipsy.

When we got to my sister's homestead, she showed us her little currant bush.  It has been there for thirty years, so you may be able to imagine that it offered up a bit more than a cup or so of berries.  Eight pounds of extremely beautiful red currants!  I'll scare up a picture of the berries and insert one here as Robin took a few photos of them. (Update 07/21/2012:  Here is a lovely pictures of some gorgeous currants tucked in a mesh bag just prior to the crush:)

Robin told me when we got home that I was going to do up a recipe that took three pounds of currants and we whipped up a batch.  (One more update 07/21/2012-Robin snapped a picture of the press that we got from my folks.  It was in the yard and rusting out.  We cleaned it up and restored it)

Here is a picture of it starting about two weeks ago and one from today:

It looks very pretty on the right, don't you think?  I almost wish we had had enough to do five gallons, but that is for another day and leads me into our next project...

Last Friday, we got an e-mail from the folks at Blueberry Hill.  This is a berry patch over in Moxee, Washington and we visited these folks last year and got on their mailing list.  Robin, Conor, and I decided to pick a few berries there.  I grabbed thirty dollars and was pretty sure that would cover the tab.  They give out some buckets with a line on them.  I guess I did not remember how much that line meant.  Robin kept asking if we had enough before we hit the line, but we were only there for about 45 minutes.  There were some very large berries and the picking was easy as there were loads of them on the bushes.  U-pick blueberries run $1.90 a pound.  We got thirty and a half pounds at the weigh in... Fortunately, Robin keeps an emergency stash that she pulls out in these types of situations and $60 later, we headed home with an incredible amount of berries and a bit of confusion on what to do with them all. 

Sharon loaned us a juicer that we used to extract a pound or so of the remaining currants into juice.  It is a heavy duty model that could probably pull water out of rocks.  I did want to try our grape press on the blueberries first.  That was not a very bright idea.  Blueberries have a thick juice compared to the lovely currant.  It was almost slimy coming out of the mesh bag and was not coming out too fast.  We decided to run it through the juicer.  This was a much better option.  The down side of this method was cleaning the screen every cup as the skins on the blueberries can clog up the screen pretty quick.  We ran about 25 pounds through the extractor.  15 of it was to go into five gallons of blueberry wine!  Whoo hoo!.  The remainder went into jam and the last of the berries went on ice cream and blueberry pies.  We pigged on berries for next day or so.

I found a great recipe for a fortified blueberry wine that suggests using the skins and leaving of the blueberries in a mesh bag along with about a pound of raisins for the tannins.  I left the bag in the bucket for a couple days and pulled it out this morning.  Here is the bucket:

You can't see the beautiful blue color, but I will update a picture when I rack it off into a carboy.

Soon I will get back to the metheglin.  But...the apricots are beginning to drop.  Hmmm....What do you think?

It's been a hair over two weeks since I paid any attention to the metheglin.  That is, beyond looking at it every time we cross paths or when I give it the occasional stir.  Today, I added another teaspoon each of Fermaid-K and nutrient along with another 2 1/2 pounds of honey.  This was given a good stirring of about 3 or 4 minutes and back on went the lid and air trap.

A couple hours later and a bit of perk has commenced as expected.  I do hold my breath until this happens and I know that outside of any calamity there should be a perk, but it is the waiting that harries me.

When I bottled my first 24 bottles, I decided to try the shrink wrap ends on the bottles.  These come in packages of 25 and look pretty nice.  There are no directions, but I heard you just run a hairdryer over them to get the shrinkage going.  This is similar to the heat shrink rolls I used on radio controlled gliders in the past and was pretty confident in what to do.

That is...until I looked it over.  I heated the crap out of that plastic and it still looks gawdawful!  I can't even think of a good Charlie Sheen-ism to describe this hot mess.  Grrr....  Well, when it rains, grab an umbrella.  Which, by the way, we have been blessed with an abundance these days.  I decided to go back to the wax ends.  They look very nice but unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, do not prevent a perky metheglin from blowing its cork.  This batch should be a still metheglin and I am crossing my fingers for now.  I do very much love a little sparkle in my metheglin but I did end what I think was the fermentation run and put a squirt of inert gas in each bottle to clear out any bit of O2 that may have been left.

In order to put the wax on the tips, Robin and I went shopping.  We stopped at the local URM store which specializes in bulk type restaurant food and supplies ans I picked up an aluminum measuring container.  It is tall and not too round so it should hold the water and wax at a good level to use on the bottles.  Here is a pic of it on the stove:

The wax comes in beads so they melt easier.  I got the wax from a local ACE Hardware store that I frequent to gawk at the brewing supplies.  It took about 10 minutes on medium heat to melt the wax and then I took it off the burner.  You don't want it to boil as it will get a lot of air bubbles in the wax and that doesn't work too well on your bottles.  There are a couple web videos you can look up to see how the technique is done.  Basically, you want to dip the tip straight down in the melted wax to the level you want and slowly turn it as you draw it out.  Re-dip if you want a bit thicker wax.  Keep turning the bottle as the wax dries to reduce the drip lines in the wax.  If you did a good job, set it aside.  Keep working through your bottles and then you can address any bad ones by peeling off the wax on those ones, re-melting it, and doing the process over.

A tip in nice tips: use a knife (I use a tongue depressor or popsicle stick that I got from a hobby store) and get a bit of wax from the pot.  Us this wax to cover the cork and make the tip level with the lip of the bottle.  This will give you a nice end at the top of the wax:

Much snappier than the shrink wrap fiasco.  You can polish the wax later on with a soft cloth.  I do that and it gets out the slight runs and brings out a bit of a shine to it.  Back in the box went the two dozen bottles.  Not to get thos labels printed...  I'm thinking of getting these done at the local bindery.  I talked to a guy there a while back.  I didn't get a price on the labels, but (famous last words) they shouldn't be too expensive.

Outside of this, the bees have not been overly active outside due to the weather.  I have gone out a few times to re-fill the sugar water to keep up their comb drawing efforts.  They go through a fair amount of sugar these days as the weather has kept them indoors quite a bit.  The colony is growing and I added a shallow box a week or so back.  When I add the next box, I am putting in a queen excluder .  It looks kind of like a fine cooking rack.  The wires are spaced just enough to allow the workers through, but the queen can't get her abdomen through.  The next boxes are for the family, not the hive.  We hope to get at least three boxes full this year.   Based on the hive activity, I think this should be very attainable for our girls.

I do believe a short nap is in order.  This is my last weekend on graveyards for a bit and I become a day walker for a month or so.  Take care, folks.  The couch is calling!

There are always adjustments and plain fiddling about.  I've hit the twenty five gallon mark today with the next installment of metheglin and I am in a happy spot.  Half way to my goal and prior to June.  Whoo Hoo!

I've posted the process I currently use for a non heat method of metheglin production.  I do want to share what I did differently on this particular batch.

Robin, my wife and general empress of our domicile, apparently heard me mention a desire to get a mortar and pestle for grinding stuff. I am glad she pays attention to my ramblings as I apparently do not.  It did sound familiar, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember what I was talking about until today!  I used the mortar and pestle to coarse grind the cinnamon, allspice, and coriander.  I now remember thinking about doing this in order to free up some fresh flavor out of the spices.  It was a real treat to get that intense smell of the spice as I happily broke down the ingredients.  It was like walking into a spice shop and the smell is still in the air an hour later.  It almost has a winter holiday atmosphere around the house.

I also held off on adding the malo dextrose until after the boil of both the spices and the tea bags.  I am not sure of my reasoning, but I did take notes for future puzzlement.  Again, I filled the carboy to a about 5 3/4 gallon and added 12 1/2 pounds of honey.  After a healthy stirring, I actually did a front end reading and got a little over 11% which tickled me to no end as I will be adding another 2 1/2 pounds of honey as usual in about 2 weeks.  I then pitched the yeast, popped on the lid, and added the newborn batch to my lovely corner of metheglin.  Happy day and a delightful 40 minutes to complete.  The new wait begins.

Time to take Robin to work.  I intend to look after the bees on my return.  It is a bit cooler out (around 65 degrees) so I don't expect a great amount of hive activity, but the girls always surprise me.  I have been getting more daring and re-filled the feeders yesterday without gloves or veil.  I think I heard a few bees snickering at my nervousness.  They were good though and didn't even bother with a few fly-bys around my head.

Until next post,  enjoy your day as life is out there!

I suspect that I am a creature bound to impatience.  I couldn't wait until the end of the month to bottle.  Sigh.  Once headed into this direction, I was, of course, bound to rotate my stock.  On the good note, I was able to bottle a total of twenty-four 750 ml bottles out of the 5 gallon carboy I use at the tail end.  I was very happy about this.  I used the PrivatE PreservE gas blanket on each  of the bottles as I corked them up.  I spritzed 2 or 3 short bursts of the canister in the neck of the bottle just before I inserted the cork.

Here is the second round of bottling:

Just to the right of the bottles is the canister of PrivatE PreservE.  I put the cork in the corker, placed it over the top of the bottle and set it back just a hair so that I could put the tube of the PrivatE PreservE into the neck of the bottle and shoot in a bit of gas.  Then I quickly inserted the cork.  In the background to the right, you can see the pretty much emptied carboy.

I took one of the bottles outside and put it on a fence post:

I thought it looked pretty good and am happy with the flavor at the moment.  It has a noticeable spice to it.  It will take a few more months for the flavor to peak and I hope I can wait on this...

On to the round robin of moving fluid around.  I transferred contents around until I had my plastic carboy emptied.  Here is a shot of the carboys being racked off and a shot of the remaining three carboys with the empty plastic one in the front.  Time to get more honey...

   

Again, not very clear.  I think I am going to have to use Robin's camera rather than my phone.  Ah well...it looks much better in real life.  Perhaps it it simply my eyes.  I don't use my glasses often enough and maybe the pictures are really clear?  I know better though.

I did add more syrup to the bees today.  They are getting a bit more brazen about letting me know that while they like the delivery, they could do without the man about.  I may need to start smoking them just a bit in the near future.  

It is beautiful outside right now but it is evening and I need to get ready for my weekend of night shift.  Take care, enjoy the weekend and life that is out there.

Well, it's been about 10 days since I perked up a new batch of metheglin and I decided to add another 2 1/2 pounds of honey and another tablespoon each of Fermaid K and yeast energizer.  Not anything really interesting to look at as far as taking a picture as it looks the same as the carboy a week and a half ago other than the level is up a bit more.  It is now at about 6 3/4 gallon which is about perfect for my purposes.  This has produced a bit more bubbles in the air trap so I am happy.  Ah, okay, here's a gratuitous shot:

 

Hmmm....a little fuzzy.  There is a nice bit of foam off the top as I stirred up the batch really well after adding the honey and the other two items.  I did put in just a bit of hot water in the honey jug on the right to get the last of the honey out.  If you do that and you swish it around, be careful: it will expand quickly and pop the top.  I kept the lid partially closed while I shook it and the air pushed out all right.

After I added the ingredients, I replaced the lid and the air trap and back to its corner it went.

It was a really pretty day out so I decided to go out and pester the bees.  The day prior, I had peeked in the top and noticed that the sugar water was empty.  It was kind of cold out so I thought to wait a day and I'm glad I did.  The sun is out as well as the girls.  At least a lot of them are out making their rounds.  There should only be a few thousand of them in the boxes!  I mixed up a gallon of sugar water, grabbed my gear and went out to the bee dormitory.

I pulled the pint jar feeders and washed them out as they appeared a bit gummy inside.  Here are the jars.  I show them off as they are antiques and quite a pretty blue.  The bees don't concern themselves too much with the flair, but I hope it is the vibe of coolness that is imparted on them:

I wish I had saved the pic of the hive opened.  Changes are almost a daily thing inside a hive.  It is amazing to see how much of the comb has been developed in the upper tier.  There are a lot more larva baking in the cells inside.  I've noticed quite a fair of orientation flights of new bees outside the hive in the afternoon.  I did not see the queen today, but she is very busy inside.

Speaking of queens, Robin laid down the law today.  She dragged over a bunch of corkscrew willow branches from the neighbor lady across the street a couple weeks back.  I swear that lady was snickering when she saw my face.  Here I am trying to get rid of branches and my lovely bride is bring over the neighbor's!  Well, I started grousing about those branches being in the way of the lawnmower today and Robin caught me off guard by asking me what I wanted to do with them...  I will say in my defense that I am working nights and was not at my full mental capacity and my spidey sense did not trigger.  I think I mentioned burning them or something and quickly realized this was not the correct response when I saw HER face.

We got into a zesty conversation about projects and the next thing I know is that we are attaching these branches to the front fence line so that her Malabar spinach and other climbing plants will have a place to go.  It may sound a bit awful in theory and I grumbled through the whole process, but it does look quite pretty.  Tomorrow, I'll see if I can get a decent shot of it and add it to this post. (Added-here is a pic of the fence line:)

After all was said and done, we went on a bike ride with my son Conor this evening.  There are a few nesting Killdeer around here that I was anxious to check on.  They are beautiful birds that have cute pilot helmets on and I just love to see them darting about.  Just up the street we saw that two nests had hatched and tiny Killdeer were speeding about the neighbor's lawns.  What a nice end to a pretty great day.

That's  it for this evening.  I hope your day ends on a high note as well.

It's almost a week since I started my newest batch.  I keep an occasional eye on the batch as well as my other containers.  To bide my time, I break out my resource books now and then and take a peek online for items I can find on mead and production.  I ran into a little meadery back east.  It is called The Saphouse Meadery and is a little production shop that is well worth looking at.  Here is the blog link which will get you to their other sections: http://saphousemeadery.com/Blogs.php The big downside to this wonderful mead making joint is that it does not appear that they ship to Washington State at this time!  I am going to shoot them a quick note to advise them that there are a few people holed up on the west coast that might want to sample their wares.

A really nice part of the blog is that these folks recently started their shop and have included some of their notes on how they went about doing it as well as providing some cool shots of their outfit.  They used a lot of reclaimed items and the business is a tidy little affair that has panache.  A place worth envy and I am a bit green over what they have accomplished.  I'll be keeping an eye on this site.

I've been doing some reading up on the aging process of my mead and it must have tickled one of my grey cells as to why I have gone over to the non-heating method of brewing.  From what I have read, the non-heat method becomes more drinkable in less time than the heated counterpart.  In around 6 months, you should be able to get some of the tasty goodness out of your brew and most efforts really come out within a year.

It is not my aim to put out something really fast, rather it is my personal goal to find a recipe that treats the honey as delicately as I am able and to keep it from bringing out any harsh resiny tastes that I feel boiling would cause.

Another item I noticed was mention of Ph balance.  I am not sure at the moment if I even want to mess with this at this time, but for later consistency I may start keeping notes.  The Ph balance can help with the brewing process from what I see and it seems to be dependent on the type of honey being used.  I am currently sticking with clover honey but up here, there is an abundance of blackberry honey that is actually a bit less expensive (today) than clover.

Okay, the root cellar: Robin and I have talked this over several times.  The thought of moving a mass of dirt around is not my idea of the most fun I can have over a couple weeks, but I am beginning to be resigned to the fact that if I want an inexpensive temperature controlled area, I am going to have to break out my shovel and pick.  My plan is to start moving stuff out of the area we have chosen and then I will start with my dirt mining operation.

The floor may be dirt for the time being, but I am pretty sure the walls will be cinder block with either a stair at one end or a ladder if we use a floor above.  The spot is in a section of our RV barn so I think a floor for a roof is the way to go.  If all goes to plan, the operation should start in a week or so and I will post some pics of the dig.

Just as an FYI, our bees are moving upstairs in their hive.  The combs are being drawn out and there is honey being stored there as well.  This is an excellent sign and there is a lot more larva in the hive.  With Robin planting stuff all over, we should have a lot of food for the bees to snack on as well.


And finally, yesterday, after a brief downpour, we got a beautiful rainbow:

Yes, there is a hint of a double-rainbow.  What can it mean???  You can't see it from the picture, but this one had some of the most brilliant green that I have seen on a rainbow to date.  Even a rainy day have something of interest.

It's Thursday morning around 11 am in this neck of the woods.  I finally got around to doing up another batch of Metheglin bringing me up to my 20 gallon mark.  I took a bunch of pictures of me muddling around and took my usual notes (3 x 5 card--more than that and my brain gets too busy).  I've written about what I do and here it is in the actual process.  It took me less than 30 to 40 minutes or so to do this.

I started off by gathering my spices, honey, and equipment.  A quick cleaning of my plastic carboy and other utensils. I then measured out my spices:

The upper left bowl has 2 teaspoons of coriander seeds.  Proceeding clockwise, there is 4 teaspoons of cloves, 2 teaspoons of allspice, 1/2 nutmeg (shaved--the rasp is to the right), 4 cinnamon sticks, and 4 teabags of Earl Grey and 4 teabags of black tea.  I put the first five ingredients in a mesh bag:

 Then put it to a boil for 5 minutes.  The pot is about 3/4 filled and holds about a half gallon of water when filled.  After 5 minutes on the boil, I added the teabags which were knotted together and added 8 tablespoons of malodextrin to the mix and continued the boil for 5 more minutes:

 

 While the mix was boiling, I took the time to fill the plastic carboy with 5 gallons of lukewarm water and also started hydrating my yeast:

The yeast is the Lalvin EC-1118 that I am currently using on all my Metheglin.  This, again, is a personal preference and I am not sure at this time on the specifics on the tail end beyond what is written in the sources I use.  The Metheglin tastes pretty good when I drink it and that may be the final say so for me.

After 10 minutes on the boil, I pulled out the mesh bag and the tea bags.  I filled up the pot to the top and set it aside:

Er...those are brownies to the right.  My superior, Robin, maintains her peak 'tude with occasional intake of chocolatey goodness in various forms.  It makes life very good indeed and she allows me an eighth or so of the brownie pie now and then.  Time to add 12 or so pounds of honey to the water.  You may notice that honey does not want to leave completely out of the containers.  I add the above spice mix to each container and swish it around.  The hot spice mix will dilute and heat up the remaining honey and pour pretty well:

 

I only used half of the third container as each container was 5 pounds of honey.  I'll add the remaining 2 1/2 pounds to the mix in a week or so when the perk goes down a bit. Total amount in the carboy now is a little over 6 gallons. This will work out on the tail end when I transfer it to a glass carboy and rack off the lees to ensure it is filled to the top of the glass one.

 

Once the honey and spices were added to the carboy, I stirred up the contents for several minutes to get a good blending.  The yeast had about 12 to 15 minutes to re-hydrate in the meantime and it was time to pitch this into the carboy:

Once pitched in, I stirred the mix for about 3 minutes and then some to get the yeast well stirred in.  I put the lid on and added an air trap:

And added it to my growing collection. I'll wait a couple hours to see if the mix starts perking.  Once it does, I will add Fermaid-K and yeast nutrient that has been hydrated to the batch to get things going better.  This seems to help the honey ferment more gustily and I will repeat this in a few weeks when I add more honey to the carboy.  In the background are my other batches.  The left is still fining.  The middle is the second oldest and looks like my oldest batch done up in January on the right.  I'm having thoughts on whether to use the Sparkaloid on my batches now as the older one has almost no lees and has been clear for almost a month.  I may just bottle the contents when I get ready to transfer junior in the front to a glass carboy in a month or so.

I have heard that some folks like their carboys wrapped in a dark cloth to keep light off of the works.  This corner you see stays darkened and I don't wrap mine at this point, but it would probably be a good idea to do that if it weren't in the location I use.

Oh!  A quick blurb on PrivatE PreservE:  Yep, that is how it is spelled on the label.  This is an inert gas aerosol that helps preserve wine and is the same gasses used to keep air off of wine at wineries.  I picked up a can on a wine tour last weekend.  I got the can for $5.00 but the price at other wineries went up as high as $14.00.  There is a web-site on the can: www.wineenthusiast.com that you should be able to go to to get yourself some if you want to try it out.  I am going to give it a whirl on my carboys if the level lowers during racking and also use it in my bottling.  I'll let you know the results when I can.

On a side note, Yesterday we had the dump of dumps of rain!  Yakima does not get a great bounty of rain like the cities on the Washington coast, but we got a months worth of rain in a day according to our local news.  That dump was over and done in about 20 minutes or so and it was impressive!  The rest of the day was mild.  I will need to check on our bees to see how they weathered the storm, but will wait a day or so for them to sort it out on their end.  I don't want to open up their home while they are hunkered down inside.

Robin wants to go and play outside for a bit as she has hit the perfect brownie moment.  Duty calls as does nature.  See you soon folks!