Time to celebrate, Viking style

It took slightly less than the two months that the recipe called for, but after many weeks of waiting, my mead — that golden nectar of the gods — is finally finished. And boy, does it pack a punch.

The glass carboy I had the honey/water/fruit/spice concoction fermenting in sat atop a counter in my kitchen for eight weeks. It sat there, taunting me, gas from the fermentation process bubbling out of the air lock I had in the top.

The process was long, but also fascinating. A few days in, the yeast created a by product in the top of the jug — an ugly, pretty disgusting to look at, brown foam. But I let it sit, not wanting to disrupt the process that was happening inside the cloudy jug.

After about a month, the bubbling slowed down and things got boring. The jug was still cloudy (the recipe I was following said the liquid would turn clear, which meant it was done), but the bubbling had slowed to almost nothing.

I worried I had messed something up — that because of my bumbling interference, I had killed the yeast and stopped the natural process of turning the sugar in the mixture into alcohol, thereby leaving me with a jug of warm honey and water. Which, really, would just be gross.

But I decided to wait it out. I would check on the proto-mead every few days, and it was always the same. But one day, about three weeks ago, when I checked on it I saw that the liquid had started to clear. It was still working!

I was excited, to say the least. But, again, I had to restrain myself, because I was still two weeks away from the two-month mark. So I waited, biding my time. A week later, the liquid in the jar was perfectly clear. It was still a golden color (which is normal), but I could see right through it and out the other side of the carboy.

By Memorial Day weekend, though, I couldn’t take it anymore. The bubbling had stopped, the liquid was clear and it was just a few days before the “early June” time when the mead should be finished. So I decided to throw caution to the wind and transfer the mead out of the carboy. I used an empty apple juice jug for lack of a better container (it’s still probably better than what Vikings used).

I poured a sip of the filtered liquid into a red party cup (classy, I know) and tried it. It was warm and stronger than any wine I’d tasted before (I can’t know for certain, but I’d estimate it to be around 16 to 18 percent alcohol. It’s a doosy). But it was good. And even more importantly, it was mine. Made by my hands, in my kitchen, specifically for myself, my friends and my family.

And now that this first batch was a success, I’ve already started planning future batches. This one-gallon batch yielded a good amount, but I think I’ll make a five-gallon batch of the same recipe (a delicious orange spice mead) and bottle it to give to friends and family for gifts. And I also want to make a cherry mead.

Something tells me this is the start of a wonderful new hobby.