Bell’s Brewery’s widely popular seasonal Oberon will have extra life as the weather cools down. The Michigan based brewery has been barrel-aging the wheat ale to create something much stronger than the summer sipper/ Meet Bell’s Uberon.
The brewery describes Uberon as their “classic wheat ale with a shot of bourbon dropped into it.” Something you can store away for a winter night when you’re missing the warmer days of Oberon and summer.
Bell’s Uberon is a whopping 11.3% alcohol by volume, which is nearly double Oberon’s 5.8% ABV. Shipping in 12-ounce bottles to distributors by the end of August.
Clean your fermenting vessel with a non-soap detergent. Rinse well—any trace residue will end up in your cider!—and air dry. Sanitize your fermentation vessel and 2 foil sheets per sanitizer directions.
Boil 1 pint (473 mL) water and let cool to 105°F (41°C). Mix in a pinch of yeast nutrient and sprinkle the yeast over the water. Cover with sanitized aluminum foil and let sit for 15 minutes.
Warm the apple juice to 60°F (16°C). Add the juice to the fermenter, and mix in the foamy yeast. Cover with more sanitized foil and place somewhere dark and cool, preferably around 60°F (16°C). After 2–4 weeks, the yeast should be done fermenting and will have dropped clear with all the yeast and protein settling at the bottom of the fermenter. Check fermentation periodically.
After primary fermentation, rack to your bottling bucket and add the teas. Mix thoroughly.
It’s been brewing for a while, but at this point, it’s safe to say: We’re in the golden age of beer. And that means … to cult-status IPAs and innovative craft stouts, these are the hits: the …
Mother Earth Timber Giant Pale Aleis making a return to the brewery’s lineup, now that Treefort Music Fest is returning.
This Idaho-exclusive dry hopped Pale Ale pairs perfectly with the Gem State’s largest festival. In 2020, like pretty much everything else, found the Treefort Festival cancelled. Bars and restaurantscanceled their orders too, essentially killing Giant Pale Ale production. The beer would have to wait.
“After last year’s debacle we really didn’t know what the future of Timber Giant was, or the future of Treefort Music Fest for that matter. Navigating through Covid, we looked at this release as a sign of sorts that life would return to normal someday, so it’s really a symbolic release of better days ahead.” – Daniel Love, President – Mother Earth
This is the beer light at the end of a bad tunnel. Mother Earth Timber Giant Pale Ale is back, an easy drinking 5% ABV pale. The focus of this beer is all hops – Nelson, Mosaic, Citra, & Amarillo. Available in 12oz/6 packs starting in late August, followed by draft in September on-premise as well as the Treefort Music Festival.
Style:Pale Ale Hops: Nelson Sauvin, Mosaic, Citra, Amarillo
On our first trip to the Scott’s Addition area of Richmond, Virginia, we found lots of breweries. Our day drinking curveball, and one of the most memorable experiences actually came thanks to Elle & Will Correll, who own Buskey Cider.
Buskey Cider is some of the best cider we’ve had on the east coast. We’ve had a few years of samples to decide that. Each cider is small batch, crisp, and downright inspired. During the pandemic, Will gave up his salary to cover his employees as the Covid-19 pandemic shutdown bars and breweries. It’s not directly to the rest of this story, but it’s worth saying.
As 2020 rolled around we lost touch with Buskey. Hell pretty much everyone. Then as the the temperatures threatened 100 degrees, Will reached out again with new Buskey Cider news. This time is wasn’t a traditional release, but something a little different – boozy soft serve.
Now, in 2021 our alcoholic attention span of a chipmunk. Hard seltzers, RTD cocktails, freeze pops, and more. It’s not that we DON’T want to drink. We just want to find new ways to GET drunk. (Or safely imbibe for the lawyers out there.)
Will tells me that week by week, folks are coming back into the Buskey taproom, feeling free to do things they used to do, like it’s 2019 all over again. “I wanted something new, to engage people in a new way,” Will says. “I wanted to give folks some kind of reward. It’s been a tough year.” That’s where the Buskey Soft Serve was born.
Co-owners and husband and wife team Will and Elle invested in a Below Zero soft serve machine. The idea was making a “cider sorbet” of sorts, incorporating a few seasonal ciders in order to beat the heat. Basically, buy it and figure it out.
After the first weekend, you can safely say they figured it out. Buskey chose their seasonal Watermelon Basil for the inaugural cone. The first weekend, they sold them as fast the Below Zero machine would churn them out. Nearly 500 cones in all.
“We wanted to amplify the idea that this was ours,” Will says. “That’s why we chose the Watermelon Basil,” he adds. “It turned out better than expect, downright refreshing.”
The only downside is that the machine requires a good bit of cleaning and maintenance, plus staff training. It goes beyond cleaning glassware and faucets. Apparently there was a full-on training video to go along with the new equipment.
Each cone is about 5% alcohol by volume and non-dairy. After Watermelon Basil came Tart Cherry, and now bright pink Dragonfruit Açai. The working theory is to release new cider soft serve flavors opposite of the bi-weekly cider releases.
Will’s desire to energize people wanting to explore again is working. Buskey Cider has always been a fun break from the Scott’s Addition Beer Trail, and if the Correll’s have anything to do with it, it’s going to be one the most interesting stops along the way.
Southern Tier Distilling, the spirits arm of Southern Tier Brewing, has launched three new RTD (ready to drink) cocktails ahead of fall 2021. One of them includes a new spin on one of their most famous beers, Pumking – in the form of King & Cola.
Easily one of the most famous pumpkin beers in the U.S. – Pumking is truly a stand out. Last fall, the distillery released Pumking Whiskey, a flavored whiskey based on the seasonal release. As RTD popularity rises, and as natural progression of their successful pumpkin favored beverage line, King & Cola has arrived.
The distillery calls this cocktail “crushable,” with a balance of pumpkin pie spices, and peppery cola (while the term “coke” has become colloquial, it’s trademarked by the big red Atlanta-based sugar giant.) We tried Pumking Whiskey last year, and was beyond surprised at the result. The whiskey really is fall in a shot glass. It’s dangerously easy to drink, and one you don’t want to over do.
Arriving alongside King & Cola is Vodka Pink Lemonade, and Lime Agave Margarita.
Lime Margarita uses lime juice, orange flavors and Blanco Agave Spirts, which doesn’t appear on their distillery website. Pink Lemonade is your basic vodka and soda, with a touch of lemon thyme flavor.
Each of the new Southern Tier cocktails are 8% alcohol by volume, available in 12-ounce can/4-packs in the greater New York Area.
My fascination with honey fermentation, as well as my frugal inclinations, led me down some unexpected paths: learning to keep bees for easy access to raw honey seems pretty straightforward, but that quickly devolved into boiling-wax-comb experiments, dead bees and all, to make plausible medieval must, and culminated in winning a bronze medal in the National Homebrew Competition. Who would have expected that! And why did I go down this rabbit hole? The combination of my avid interest in medieval brewing techniques with keeping the occasional hive and growing many types of fermentable fruit on our small homestead culminated in my rediscovering traditional brewing techniques not part of our modern brewing tool kit. Sure, boiling dead bees sounds like an excellent reason not to emulate the past, but careful examination of medieval and renaissance texts suggested that was not what they were doing, actually, contrary to popular fiction!
What they did do is not only interesting from a historical point of view, it also tickles my frugal fancy. In our modern times, honey frames can be easily emptied using specialized equipment, which uses centrifugal force and results in very pure honey. In addition, the contemporary extractor is extra helpful by only uncapping the comb cells. The empty comb frame can then be given back to the bees to refill. Bees need to use precious resources to make wax – bees consume up to eight pounds of honey to make one pound of wax – and giving back empty comb wax helps them make even more honey for us to ferment!
But what if something unforeseen happens, and the modern method of extraction cannot be easily used? Many beekeepers write off partially spoilt or crystallized frames and give them back to the bees to rob out and recycle. Even if a beekeeper has no spoilage or crystallization, the process of extraction generates leftovers. To get the honey out of the comb, the outer edge of the frame is carefully cut off to open all the storage cells. These lids, called cappings, are dripping with honey but generally only used for their superior wax. But what if this honey could be still be used?
It seems obvious now, but it had never occurred to me to wash the comb with warm water to dilute the sugary goodness of leftover honey. And that is precisely what medieval beekeeping manuals teach. Back then, bees were kept in hives without an internal frame system, which means the combs were free-hanging. When harvesting the honey, the waxy comb structure would have to be processed as well. If an extractor cannot be used–either because you want only to collect sections of a frame or the honey crystallized and won’t budge–then the old and trusted method of washing comb can make a honey solution perfect for fermentation.
How to wash honeycomb for mead fermentation
In the past, I have used the washed comb method for a variety of reasons, but I find it most handy with honey that has crystallized within the comb. Unfortunately, I do not have good luck in keeping my hives over winter for several reasons. After a long winter in a hive, the honey storage a surviving hive would have needed in early spring is now up for grabs, albeit in primarily solid form. As I do not have another hive to give the remnants to, I make leftover mead instead. And I must say, it is not at all a leftover choice: I find washed comb mead is much richer and fuller in fragrance and flavor than straightforward honey mead.
Whether you start with commercially bought honeycomb, with a couple of honey frames from a backyard hive, or a bucket of honey-dripping cappings (likely with the wax on temporary loan from the apiary), the process is pretty simple. Start by cleaning your equipment – this includes your hands and lower arms. Then gently break up the sugary comb into a food-safe bucket. When all broken up, liquid honey could also be harvested by letting it drip out of the comb on its own due to gravity (similar to the grated cappings bin). In medieval times this honey–from hand-crumbled but not mechanically crushed comb–was regarded as the best quality and called ‘life’ or ‘virgin’ honey.
To make a fermentable must, cover the sugary comb with warm water straight from the tab, taking care to use water that is neither too cold nor too hot. Emulating the medieval brewers, I aim for water warm enough to dissolve but not so hot it hurts my hands (no more than 140F). Because, as I found, if it hurts our skin, it will also melt the wax of the comb. I generally find about 1/3rd comb and 2/3rds warm water in volume, enough to submerge the solids, to make a good start.
When all sugars dissolved and the empty wax rises to the top, scoop out the wax by hand and squeeze the honey liquor out. Some medieval texts feel this liquor makes for crude honey must, probably as more contact with the wax imparts more wax/pollen flavor. Others find it appropriately frugal. Comb imparts a flavor to the honey, and this effect was apparently not always appreciated. I enjoy the spicy comb flavor – and apparently, the Homebrew judges did as well – so I squeeze my wax to maximize my must yield. To remove the tiny wax bits, finish by pouring the must through a strainer lined with cheesecloth.
I then float a fresh chicken egg in the must to check my gravity. Indeed, fresh eggs make for great hydrometers, and as we’re making medieval must might as well stick to this golden oldie! I aim to make the initial must extra strong, as it is easier to dilute than to strengthen, and then the egg should float high and sideways. Extra-dense must could still work when fermented with endemic osmophilic honey yeasts, as these prefer sugar concentrations over 15%. If you did not heat the must over 140-150F, then it will most likely spontaneously ferment within a day or two due to those. But osmophilic yeasts are not as vigorous and do not ferment to as high an ABV as traditional beer/wine yeasts.
The perfect fresh-egg density float is when the egg is bobbing upright and showing only a bit of shell above the surface. This density reading would make a semi-dry to sweet mead with a standard wine/beer yeast. Pitch a sturdy yeast strain like Montrachet, the D47, or KV1116, then proceed with your preferred mead brewing process. Washed comb mead fermented with osmophilic yeast should be consumed fairly quickly; it would be good and sweet in a few months when fermented with bread yeast. Fermented with a wine-strength yeast strain, it would be like any other mead and best after a year or so.
Why go through this sticky process? At first, my interest in recreating historic recipes was the driving force behind working with scraped comb, as this is most similar to free-formed whole comb. But when I found washed honey receives a slight flavor from the comb, a wonderful delicate spiciness, I got hooked! This contact with propolis and pollen, part of the waxy comb, makes for a unique and wholesome mead. And if you opt to make mead with low heat using raw honey, which already contains bee pollen, your mead would also have maximum immune system boosting properties as well! As if we need another excuse for our nightly wassail, right?
About the Author
Susan Verberg lives with her family, furry and human, on a small homestead in upstate New York. She enjoys growing European variety fruits for fermentation, especially wild ferments, in summer and researching traditional meads and herbal beers in winter. She enjoys sharing her exploits in mainstream homesteading magazines, as well as the occasional medieval brewing-oriented academic journal. Visit her website to learn more: medievalmeadandbeer.wordpress.com/
