The Experiment Begins; We're Making Mead!

The first batch of mead
is called "Joe's Ancient
Orange and Spice Mead." It'll
take months to ferment.

Blame Tom McNutt. Yes, that Tom McNutt. The garden guy. The one on television. This is all his fault.

One Saturday in June, Tom was doing a live broadcast from the North Market’s Farmer Market. There were all the usual vegetable vendors, the locally-harvested honey, the flowers, the amazing berries… and the guys from the city’s newest meadery.

“The what?”

Meadery. A place that makes mead. Essentially, it’s wine made from honey⁠.

In the mid-1990s, Woody Drake was making movies in the Carolinas and making homebrew as a hobby. That came to a screeching halt when he accidentally discovered mead, the legendary nectar of the gods. By the late-90s, he was tired of his career and tired of the South. So he moved home to Ohio. Along the way, he recruited his brother, Eric, into the mead-making hobby. After winning a few awards, including a very good showing at a national level, the decanting duo decided to make a go of it professionally. They found a few superb recipes, pitched some yeast, waited for some fermenting magic and, eventually, opened their casks to the public in 2008.

The Brothers Drake were selling bottles at the farmers market and Tom McNutt was tasting… and interviewing. Live.

This is the stuff of inspiration.

This mead has fruit in
it, so it's classified as a
melomel.

A few years ago, I was able to harvest enough grapes from the vines overtaking the backyard pergola to fill a couple of five-gallon buckets. I was determined to make my own wine. Never mind that they’re concords. They’re still grapes. They’ll ferment.

I bought all the stuff. The fermentation buckets. The racking tubes. The carboys. The special yeast. The little bubbly thingies.

The grapes were washed, crashed, fermented, racked, racked again, settled and slightly aged. One carboy was full of a beautiful, deep-red liquid. The other was lighter, slightly-pinkish-yellowish. It had been waiting for months and months, begging to be tasted.

The moment arrived. It was time.

The pour. The sniff. The taste.

Jet-A.

This stuff could put the petrol companies out of business. A flask of this stuff was strong enough to keep a jumbo jet in the air for a transatlantic journey.

All ten gallons went right down the drain. The buckets and carboys sat empty and unused for nearly three years. The grapes weren’t all that good for wine and the birds were getting them before we were anyway.

Then there was Tom McNutt’s live shot. Mead. Honey wine. Eureka!

We don’t have to fight the birds for the fruit. We don’t have to find an organic solution to grape vine grey rot. We don’t even have to strip the grapes off the stems. Honey! We can buy honey! All year! Any time! This is The Solution!

So, we’ve decided to give it a go ourselves. And today was the day.

Two batches are in the one-gallon carboys, ready to ferment themselves into deliciousness.

Mead is made with copious
amounts of raw honey. We're
trying to use locally-produced
honey whenever possible.

The first batch is a recipe from gotmead.com and called "Joe's Ancient Orange and Spice Mead." They claim it's super-simple to make. Almost foolproof. Watch me screw it up.

Since it includes fruit (oranges and raisins), it's classified as a melomel mead.

The second batch is from the Joy of Mead website and is called Vanilla Metheglyn. A metheglyn (or metheglin) mead is made of just honey and spices. The recipe suggested two ways of dealing with the vanilla beans; I went with option #2: grinding them in the food processor⁠ then steeping them in the water that gets poured directly into the carboy. 

Within minutes of being in the carboys, the batches began to very slowly bubble. That's a good sign.

Now, we wait. This'll take months. It's all about patience. Stay tuned.

Kiwi Born at the Columbus Zoo!

The Columbus Zoo has another adorable animal to add to its living collection. A kiwi was hatched today. They're relatively rare in their native New Zealand... and even more difficult to breed outside the country. But Columbus did it!

Here's a link to the adorable video...

http://www.youtube.com/user/Columbuszoomedia?blend=2&ob=1#p/u/0/1oPbNcUyHtA

The text of the Zoo's news release and more photos after the jump...

Kiwi born at the Columbus Zoo on March 23, 2011.
Photo by G. Jones at the Zoo.

More info and photos after the jump...

The Glover Disaster

Actor Danny Glover on the
Weekend Mornings
set with Marshall and Mindy.

Oh, the messages are rolling in.

But I promise you're not nearly as angry as we are.

Here's what the release said:

"Actor Danny Glover and Rochelle Saulsberry have launched the Movement of the Masses, a global grassroots initiative designed to help people of all races overcome economic challenges and develop the capacity to accumulate and sustain wealth."

Whatever. We hadn't really planned to spend much time talking about any of that anyway. There's so much more to discuss!

As his IMDb bio indicates, Glover is a UNICEF Ambassador and an internationally-recognized philanthropist. He does real work to help the world's children and the poor. His ideals for the film industry are lofty enough that he started his own production company to produce films with "artistic integrity and social importance."

I had hoped to talk about his work with children and high-end film.

But we never had a chance to get a word in edgewise. He instantly launched into his "multi-level marketing" pitch (which many people might interpret as: scam). We didn't know how to get out of it without being rude and abruptly cutting him off. It was just horrible. It will go down as one of the worst non-interviews ever.

Off camera, before the broadcast, he talked about his wife being in Brazil to play in a tennis tournament, how he enjoys cooking for his step sons and lots about NCAA March Madness. He's a huge sports fan, as it turns out. Never made it on the air.

So, instead of a great interview with a Hollywood legend who happened to be in Columbus and willing to get up early on a weekend morning, we ended up with a soft-spoken pitchman for a what sounds a lot like a ponzi scheme.

We were sold a bill of goods.
As the boss said, "We were had."

I'll never watch a Glover movie the same way again. It's ultra disappointing.

Sago Palms Deadly to Pets; Sold at Many Stores

Sago Palm image: Wikipedia

(Central Ohio)  Francine is a happy, playful Golden Retriever living with a loving family here in Central Ohio. And she's living on borrowed time. She is destined for liver failure. It could happen any time. Her family is devastated... and angry.

Veterinarians believe Francine's illness was caused by a plant. She ate part of a Sago Palm bought in the garden center of a local home improvement store. Her owners say the plants carry no warning labels.

The Sago Palm or King Sago Palm (Cycas revoluta) is native to Japan but also reportedly can be found growing naturally in the United States from Florida and the Gulf Coast north to Tennessee and Virginia.

The plant is toxic to both pets and humans. According to the ASPCA's website, "all parts of the plant are toxic, not just the seeds or nuts, and common signs of ingestion include vomiting, diarrhea, weakness, depression, seizures and liver failure." Symptoms can appear in less than 12 hours.

Animals, apparently, find the plant very tasty. Curiosity can lead children to eat parts of the plant as well.

"Since 2003," says the website, "the ASPCA has seen an increase by more than 200 percent of sago palm and cycad poisonings, and 50 to 75 percent of those ingestions resulted in fatalities."

Francine's family wants everyone to know the dangers of these plants and to protect their pets and children from them.

The plants may be for sale at local garden centers. Buyer beware!

Here's a little more from the ASPCA's Poison Control Center:
http://www.aspca.org/Pet-care/poison-control/Plants/sago-palm.aspx

The Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything

42.

It is the Ultimate Answer.

So sayeth Deep Thought, the massive computer created by a race of pan-dimensional beings intent on finding the solution to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything.

These are the teachings of the glorious Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy... and the theme for the remainder of the year.

For 2011, we shall not be bothered by the trails and tribulations of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal nor shall we be subjected to readings of the Vogons' mind-bogglingly atrocious poetry. We shall, however, always remember where our towels are.

It's going to be a good year.

Happy birthday to me. :)