The inaugural post: homebrewed plastic jug dry mead

So, the premise behind this blog is very simple.  Instead of seeking out delicious and tasty alcoholic beverages to drink and review, I seek out the most vile and abominable booze on the planet.  I also intend to give my honest opinion when I try a particularly horrid craft beer or "artisan" wine.

This begs the question: why? Why would I go out of my way to imbibe the bottom of the barrel?  Masochism? Maybe.  But, I've always had a strange obsession with gross drinks, the same way that I've always loved terrible movies.  Drinking a bottle of MD 20/20 makes me happy in the same way that watching a Troma movie does.  In fact, those two things are an fucking excellent combination!

What I'm not setting out to do is assert the superiority of my palate, or the inferiority of cheap beer, wine, or spirits.  All of my reviews reflect only my opinion, I am not claiming to be an expert and I am certainly not trying to tell you what you should drink.

So, to kick things off, I decided to review something nobody else has ever tried: my latest batch of homebrewed mead.  Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I also homebrew.  Given that I come up with a lot of my own recipes, there may surface the occasional review of my own concoctions.

Let me give you a little bit of a back story on this mead. Back in September, I brewed a braggot--essentially, half beer, and half mead.  Somewhere between not adding enough nutrients and oxygen, unfermentable sugars from the roasted malts and malt extract, and stress upon the yeast from high alcohol levels, fermentation stopped.  It was what is referred to as a stuck mead.  But the problem was that it was also cloyingly sweet. Incredibly sweet. Eventually, I had the bright idea to brew a mead without much honey, therefore not much residual sweetness, and blend that mead with the super sweet braggot.

Picked up 3lbs of mesquite honey from Trader Joe's, a packet of champaigne yeast from the local homebrew shop, and plenty of yeast nutrient.  The only problem was that I didn't really have a fermentor for my mead.  I decided to play Maguyver and make a fermentor out of an empty plastic Fred Meyer gallon orange juice jug.  The results were, well, a complete utter massacre.

Plastic, unless it is food grade, is not particularly suited for fermenting.  Plastic also presents a long-term problem because it slowly allows oxygen into the liquid.  The result? Bad tasting booze!

I'm trying it right now, and I think that it might be infected.  It smells sour and funky.  There is some interesting flavors of citrus and pineapple, but also a really strong vinegar taste.  I'm not doing an 'in depth" review of this, because I can't even finish a glass really.  I should just dump it down the toilet, honestly.


...but, who am I kidding, right?  We both know that I'll drink it.