Chicken in mead sauce -- a recipe from Lindisfarne

[Caj]

Chicken in mead sauce recipe

I tried this last night and it was pretty good. I used a whole lime rather than a tsp of lemon juice because I didn't feel like wasting a whole lemon. A bit more mead, too.

I have access to decent mead made up the road in Watkins Glen---none of that dippy stuff mixed with pears and blueberries, but just plain simple mead. I find it's hard to get a good mead because everyone thinks it needs to be "fixed," either by flavoring it or balancing it out so it's more like white wine.

Anyways, if you ever wanted to sample fine Scottish cuisine that doesn't come with its own stomach, here's your chance.

Caj

[I.D.10-t]

http://www.winehaven.com/HoneyWineMead2370.php
MN wine is not great, but the mead is nice.
Warm it and drink ONE glass. More than that seems to have bad effects on standing up again.

Never touch melomel’s.

[chas]

Mead is REALLY easy to make. Something like a pound of honey per gallon. I like to use an ale yeast for the primary fermentation, then a white wine yeast for the secondary. Let it go for at least two months in the secondary -- I had about a hundred grenades to defuse once. Some campden tablets don't hurt. Let it age for six months before trying it, preferably a year or two before really drinking it. The only thing I've ever flavored it with is cider (or, the only thing I do to cider is put honey in it).

I put it in Chinese food sometimes instead of Chinese cooking wine.

I don't drink the stuff -- too alcoholic for me; I stick with beer. My wife does, though.

[mcfeeley]

Mead is relatively easy to make, although it takes a bit more than one pound per gallon. More like two to three pounds.

There are some great sources for mead making, for interested readers. Info on the venerable Mead Lovers Digest is at: http://www.talisman.com/mead/index.html

and the GotMead formus are at http://www.gotmead.com/smf/index.php.

There is also rec.craft.meading on the web.

Yes, mead can be a bit potent! Mine are generally a bit more than wine strength in alcoholic content, although I haven't taken the trouble to try and calculate alcohol levels.

I did have the pleasure of presenting the Chieftains with a few bottles of my meads at their concert this year at the Chicago Symphony Center. They were too busy getting the stage ready for the concert so I wasn't able to present them in person. From the response we got back, the meads were enthusiastically received.

[Wanderer]

Meadmaking is fun, but time consuming. Homemade meade is one of the ways I wooed my wife.

Unfortunately, I haven't really had time for it since my son was born

[Denny]

Meadmaking is fun, but time consuming. Homemade meade is one of the ways I wooed my wife.

Unfortunately, I haven't really had time for it since my son was born

there's a message here...

[Nanohedron]

Dude brought some homemade mead to a céilí once. I don't quite know how to describe how delicious it was, but elegant and lavish while very drinkable comes to mind.

[Caj]

Yeah, that's why I don't dig the fruity stuff. It's not "drinkable."

Plus it brings back unpleasant memories of the fruity crap kids would drink back in college, circa drinking age, when they wanted to get drunk but still had a palate spanned by Coke, Juicy Juice and chocolate milk. There was some nasty sweet pear-flavored wine you could get for cheap at the store that just cried out, "card me." So every time I taste a pear-flavored or strawberry-flavored mead I feel like my chest hair is going to fall out.

A winery up the road from me makes some 5 varieties of mead, each with some kind of fruity stuff thrown in. Even their hard cider is flavored with stuff like pears or maple syrup. They basically make wine for people who don't like wine.

Caj

[chas]

Mead is relatively easy to make, although it takes a bit more than one pound per gallon. More like two to three pounds.

DOH! I meant to write 1-2 pounds per gallon. My wife prefers a dry mead to a sack mead -- the stuff with over 2 pounds per gallon tends to get pretty sweet, although killing the yeast frees up the fermenter sooner. Best stuff I ever made was with some wildflower honey that was mostly blackberry. The honey was the color of molasses, and I had about 12-13 pounds of it for a five-gallon batch. It was about the colof or a German dark beer, sweet, and had a hint of blackberry flavor.

I made a quasi-mead with maple syrup a few years ago. It turned out really sulfury, although the sulfur is abating now. That stuff is REALLY sweet, even with a gallon of syrup for a four-or-so-gallon batch.

[Wanderer]

Meadmaking is fun, but time consuming. Homemade meade is one of the ways I wooed my wife.

Unfortunately, I haven't really had time for it since my son was born

there's a message here...

Yeah there is... I used a locally gathered unpastuerized wildflower honey in that batch, and I never made another batch that got as many rave reviews...

12lbs honey
1tsp acid blend
4tsp yeast nutrient

boil for only about 5 minutes, so as not to drive off too many of the subtle floral flavors.

used Montrechet yeast.

Racked into secondary fermenter early after 12 days, to get it off of the heavy sediment that had already formed (to prevent yeast bite). Moved to 3rd fermenter 2 weeks after that, and then bottled one week later. (I dont' usually move the mead around that much,as the risk of contamination is high, but this stuff turned out great as a result)

According to my mead diary:

Alas, this batch is no more It was so damn good, everyone drank
it all up. At the New Years Eve party, Hito, Dave and Riaz
called it "the best mead they'd ever drunk" and bequeathed me
the title of "brewmeister"

Did I mention my son was born in october?