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Please become a member today at Heritage Radio Network.org. Today's program is brought to you by Firesider, a health tonic based on the traditional New England cure-all of raw apple cider vinegar and honey. For more information, visit firesider.com. I'm Damon Bolti, host of the Speakeasy. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn.
If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for thousands more. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday at uh roughly what? Roughly like what? Like twelve?
Yeah, we're gonna like twelve to twelve forty-five, one o'clock, Robert's Pizzeria in Bushwick. Br Brooklyn. Call in all of your questions today, by the way, mead related questions. We have a special mead presentation and dump meal related presentation. Call in all of your questions to 718-497-2128.
That's 718-497-2128. Uh joined uh as usual with Nastasia the Hammer. Lopez, how are you doing? Good. Yeah, how's your week then?
Good. Fine. Yeah. So uh a little later on, your sister, you wanted to tell your sister like my sister's calling in at twelve thirty, she says. She and but so Nastasia, for those of you that are regular listeners to the program, uh I bought her for her birthday a crock pot and a copy of Dump Meals.
That's right. Dump dump meals. And uh and so Nastasia can't she's like she after she's like, you know what, Dave? I just can't be bothered. No, my sister has a normal size, a nice normal sized kitchen.
I only have one. I bought you a miniature crock pot. But my coffee machine, I only have one surface for anything. So anyway. You can make coffee in a crock pot, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Oh, weird. Anyway, and I wouldn't recommend it. So anyway, so go ahead. Anyway, so she's been making dump meals for the past four days. So she like like breakfast and dinner.
She'll get she'll talk about it. Natalina, right? Natty uh Lopez is uh the cooking issues dump meal correspondent. So she's gonna be calling now. Nastasia, you said that uh your that your sister doesn't necessarily have any sort of she's not in the food business.
No, and she's 22. Yeah, but my point my point. She's been eating cafeteria food. By the way, she's got a boyfriend, you freak shows out there. Got a boyfriend.
But if you've been eating cafeteria food, you say your age, it's like, you know. What? No, I'm saying she's so young, like she's only been she's only been out of college for a month. Anyway, so point being she has no knowledge. Right.
But I'm not gonna like hopefully she's not listening to this and like get highly doubt she's gonna do it. Good, good. Even though she's gonna call in? She's at work. Oh, where what is she working?
Uh Hearst. Oh, so we're gonna get her fired from her first job out of college by having her call in and talk about dump meals. Sweet, sweet. Joined in the booth with uh remember, we're going with Dave Id, as opposed to me. Dave, how are you doing?
Good, how are you doing? Doing all right. You have a good week? Very good week. Excited for some mead talk.
Oh, yeah, mead talk. So our special guest for today. Uh what? Who is that? What?
Who is that? Oh, yeah. It's right there. Uh uh, the engineer, yeah, and Dave's over there. Yeah.
We met. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So our special guest today is uh Raphael from Enlightenment uh wines. Now Enlightenment Wines, say say hello. Hi.
Hey. So uh Enlightenment Wines, uh why don't you tell a little bit about it? It's actually you have a tasting room here in Bushwick, but uh that's not where the actual production happens, right? Um well it will. Uh I've been making the meads upstate for the last almost ten years.
And uh now we just opened a production space out uh off the Jefferson L. So we have a tasting room and we have a beautiful uh facility for making wine. Right now, I did not know this because I'm stupid. The technical term for a like a mead maker is so you are a mazer. Right.
It's it's it it's it's helpful that that way you don't have to tell people you make wine, because when you say that they think of grape wine, and that's not really what I do. So and also it's it's um you know when you're a mead maker, you're also an herbalist, you're also a forager. You know, there's a lot to it that's not just in the production space. Uh in the same way like a winemaker often grows the grapes, but you know, they're not necessarily thought of as farmers. Uh so a mead maker has a similar kind of uh broader uh activity.
You ever have this happen to you? You haven't I mean you make mead, so you are amazer. So therefore, uh by the way, uh Twitter handle is uh N NY Mazer at NYMazer, right? Or you're right, which by the way, uh I've used about once, and I think it was to contact you. Oh no, well start to start using it, buddy.
You know, especially now that I'm not to teach me how to use it. It seems very popular. Uh well, I don't know, I'm not necessarily the best at it. We gotta find like who's a Twitter maniac, Nastasia. You're not.
Nobody we know. Yeah, we're like social media dunces. Anyway, the uh the point being that uh this is what happened to me for the past month. Right. So you read all these articles from roughly correct me if I'm wrong, roughly like four three to four years ago.
So you're looking at like uh between twenty twelve and twenty fourteen, everyone says the mead's coming, the mead's coming. You have an occasional bottle of mead, usually by one of the larger producers in some of the wine stores. And then when I finally get around to saying, okay. Now the mead that I had when I was uh uh you know young in my twenties was garbage, garbage, bad. You know what I mean?
Like I in my opinion, I mean maybe it's the way they wanted it. Maybe they wanted it to taste like it had all sorts of other weird fermentations going on in it and oxidized and messed up and like just not right and like not fermented out. And I think people were going for too much alcohol. But anyway, the me my mead experiences have not been the best. And like a couple of months ago, I was like, this is ridiculous.
It's one of the oldest beverages known, right? Yeah, people drank it and drink it for since time literally since time immemorial, right? And also by pretty much every human culture on earth, right? Yeah, anyone that had access to honey, yeah, they figured out some way to make mead. So it's the the short answer is it's gotta be good.
That's the the it has to like there's literally there's no way that it can't be good. Something with that kind of a history to it, that it's just the ones that I've had recently are bad. And then uh, you know, I ran into the problem over the past couple of months that now I think a lot of wine stores that maybe started carrying, because I went to some of the places that were on some of those articles from before from the mead explosion of a couple years ago, and a lot of them just aren't caring anymore. So you want to talk about the current state of mead and like trying to get it carried in wine stores and price points and problems and yeah, there's I mean, there's a lot to talk about. I think uh Well, I mean, part of part of the the Enlightenment Wines Project is that it it's largely self-taught, meaning that um, you know, I wasn't uh I didn't apprentice in a winery or I didn't grow up as a a craft brewer or anything like that, and then decide to make mead.
And that's partially because I wanted to start from scratch and and really with very few tools, right? So I did it without electricity practically for five or six years, partially to get back to understanding how it was really made initially. And now, you know, whatever, I started making this stuff in 2000, right? So I've been doing it for a while. Now that I look back and I see the um the growth of mead and and who's making it and why uh it's not always been made properly, I think it's pretty obvious.
Uh part of the problem is first of all, you gotta think about the people with the resources to make it, right? So they're typically brewers, right? So uh when you make mead, there's um, you know, the equipment involved, right? If you if you come at it with a brewing mentality, you've there's a bad side to it, which is that um it's sterile, you're heating things, you're filtering them, you're doing all this very, you know, brewing is basically pretty high tech uh compared to winemaking. That's bad.
It's good because brewers are used to sort of mixing things together and making alcohol out of it. But uh that first part of the process, uh especially brewers who are used to uh from the last 10 years of trying to make increasingly alcoholic beers, increasingly hopped beers, right? That's the American way. Right. So you end up with a very high alcohol wine, which is uh typically sweet, pretty undrinkable.
On the other hand, the people with the real resources and the knowledge base to make good mead, which are natural winemakers, right? Which are people who are used to barrels, this stuff isn't sterile, it's very low tech, it's very takes a long time, all that kind of stuff, um, and are used to the fact that every year's gonna be different, that there's vintages, they're not trying to produce a Campbell soup can, right? That in that world, in the mentality of the natural winemakers, a lot of the things that are fundamental to making mead, which is uh adding herbs, adding fruits, mixing things together, uh specifically adjusting the sugar at the beginning, right? You know, you can decide how much honey you want to start with at the end of the day. You mix water and you can dilute it, right?
Those things are an anathema, natural wine makers. So the for them, and I'm speaking very generally here, it's a big leap to get into wine making. So what that's done is left a real hole for uh for for the mead industry to have someone sort of step in who's using natural winemaking practices but applying it to honey wine and kind of fruit wines, you know. And you could say the same thing about fruit wines also. I mean, if you go upstate, there's lots of wineries that'll sell you uh, you know, like a dandelion wine, which is like a sugar wine where they wave dandelions over it, I think, or something, and you can't taste anything, or like a really sweet, like cranberry wine.
And there's nothing actually fermentable in dandelions anyway, really. It's just a flavor of color thing, right? I mean, you have to add the sugar from something else, anywho, right? Right, exactly. So here's it, here's our dandelion.
Oh, I've always wanted to have a good dandelion wine. I told the story, I think a couple weeks, I don't know, months ago. My grandpa made a dandelion wine, he was really proud of it, and I was really young and such a dick that I was like, dandelion wine is like we it's some sort of like weird hick Pennsylvania thing you're making me. And I think you'd be right, actually, because dandelion wines is what's actually considered like a country wine, right? A farmer's wine.
So the the history of the dandelion wine is really amazing. Uh, and if you look into it, it's really you'll you're gonna find this in herbalism books, right? So, like most alcohol made for the you know first half of humanity, it wasn't really to get you drunk, it was to preserve plants. It was to preserve medicinal qualities of plants. So uh New England farmers, for example, when they come to New England, right, and they're trying to grow stuff, and you know, they're for the most part don't know what they're doing, and and they don't have any citrus, and they all have scurvy.
Everyone in New England has scurvy for like a hundred years between you know January and June, pretty much, right? Is that is that true? Is that actually true? Yeah, because if you're if you're if you do subsistence agriculture, what and you don't have access to and you're not making sauerkraut, right? Which many of them like if they weren't German, if they're English or something, they're not making sauerkraut.
There's just so little vitamin C in the system that you know they're eating like grass and stuff in the spring. And so if you have a dandelion wine, which dandelions are incredibly packed with uh iron and vitamin C and all these kind of things, and it's preserved. The tradition of dandelion wine is that in the early spring, kind of right when you start seeing the dandelions, you take a shot of it after lunch or something. It's a tonic. It's not something you'd like to sit around with a snifter.
It's a tonic, it's really medicine. So uh, and had all these cura all qualities for it, but you know, really if you look at it, it it's probably just simply that there it's like you know, when you have low levels of scurvy, you start having like you know, it's vitamin C deficiency. You have like you get sick, you get colds and stuff. Scurvy uh like but like the advanced scurvy styles you would like it because it's like uh it destroys the connective tissues of your body, so your teeth fall out, your old wood. You get yellow.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's like a tan but the wrong color. Sweet. Yeah, so anyway, uh good business. You can try some of it.
I would love to. Um by the way, what's what's the what now is this a mead base with dandelion in it or this? You know, I usually end with this, but because it's the most bitter, um, it's the most complicated. Like nostasia. Um but uh there's um we can we can start you can start with this.
This is the apertif. Now to make this, you have to actually pick a shitload of flowers, right? You can't cheat. So um, you know, and you have about a week to do it in, right? So the bloom for dandelions is tiny.
Like they kind of grow all year, but they're really only around for like a week in a big amount that makes it efficient. So is the acidity from it strictly because you let a little acetic stuff happen to it, or is it? Yeah, I mean, you know, honey wine, you have to like people think that mead is gonna be like a single honey mead, right? No, thank you. Um it's makes it's a great uh spritz.
Uh they use it at PDT for uh one or two of their drinks. Oh, those weasels are always on top of everything. What's the bottle price on this? Weasels! They're weasels.
Uh, wholesale? I don't, you have to get it from us. Oh, so they're doing it illegally. No, no, no, we have a license. Oh, we have a license to distribute?
Yeah, I'm a farm winery, so I can sell you a bottle right here. Oh, really? Yeah. Strength. Uh actually, one of the brilliant things about our tasting room is that because we're the first people in New York really to really, I think, take advantage of this.
So we've got a farm winery license. So in exchange for the restriction of using New York State ingredients, we are allowed the privilege of be uh of opening a bar next door. Full full liquor bar. You know, we can have whatever we want, we can serve whatever we want. But you can go there, you can have a drink, and if you want, you can buy our bottles right out, right to go.
So you can like have a glass of mead, you can go out, or you can you can have a glass of beer for that matter, or any number of the cocktails that we make with this stuff. But the nice thing is you can buy the bottles right there and go home with them. So now what's the what's the the liquid base? What's the sugar? It's honey.
Okay, right. So I can feel some of that, that floral hit. You're gonna smell the honey more than you're gonna taste it. How did you get the how do you get the the acid? Is it just from letting it like a multi-floral thing happening?
Right. Well, so for so in typically in uh in a dandelion wine, you'd actually use a lemon juice. Um so you know, in general, the honey wines, uh what I was gonna say was that like it's actually very hard to make a mead just from the honey in the water. Uh it doesn't have the tannins, it doesn't have the acids, right? It doesn't have the structure.
Also, it doesn't ferment very well, right? Doesn't it stick? Well, if you start with a really heavy ABV and you're trying to make 20%, yeah, you're gonna have a hard time. But I don't typically have that. But it's if you again, if you're using processed honey, which I don't, uh there's almost no nutrients in it.
So uh, you know, I'm using unfiltered, like raw honey, it's got pollen in it, it's got bee parts in it. You don't you don't like dump urea in like beer makers do, right? No, no, but sometimes you know what that stuff is? Yeast yeast food? Yeah, I mean, you know, there's all kinds of I mean that's a whole other like new yeast nutrients is a whole nother thing.
But um, you know, typically you either need to bring a fruit into it to bring the acid in the tannins, or you're gonna bring some kind of herbs in it to bring the tannins up. Uh the traditional recipe for dandelion wine requires the lemon, lemon juice, um, which I'm not allowed to use until we can start figuring out how to get the lemons out of out of the greenhouse. You need an orangerie, my friend. Right, exactly. So there is, I discovered in uh the park in the cemetery, there is a New England like ic uh orange that will go through the winter.
It's this tiny little uh it's called a trifolate orange. Yeah, yeah. And uh those grow here? They do. They're used as a rootstock for other things.
Sometimes they grow out, and you can see them. They're like nasty full thorns. It's like full thorns in these little tiny golf ball signs oranges that have no juice. But there's that there's acid in there. We're working with that.
I can use sumac. Sumac's delicious, but very highly colored. Yeah, I take away the dandelion. I mean, I love sumac. I use sumac all the time.
And it's easy as hell to forage in uh New York. Yeah, so this has sumac in it. We can try that one next. I love sumac. There's something about sumac that's just so pleasing.
Uh have you had to pick it and take all the hairs off? Yes. Oh, well, you I don't take the hair. I'm typically making like uh like uh sodas and cocktails, so I don't ever it doesn't sit a long time, so I just I just do basically a quick boil steep strain spin-off and get totally clear. How do you avoid I've had a lot of trouble with sumac enough that like we had a fight this summer and we're not working we're not hanging out this year because it was just I was like killing myself because it I couldn't get the okay, so I would like multiple wash, rewash the same thing over and over again.
And then but if I cooked it, I would get this sort of green vegetable flavor, which I didn't like. Yeah, you have to rip out the centers. Yeah, yeah, it's like unbelievably tiny. First of all, yeah, people have you ever never picked, first of all, the reason sumac's not popular, it's incredibly delicious, it's because people are dumb and they're not you're not dumb, I'm not calling you dumb, but like people associate sumac with poison sumac. Right.
Staghorn sumac, which is the one that I have growing near me, and there's a couple other different kinds of uh varieties. Well, and also it's super variable, right? So flavor-wise, yeah. So when I forage for it, I have to go bush to bush and taste them, and sometimes they don't taste like anything. I found some stuff out in Montauk that had so much acid on it.
They were wet from the humidity and white. Like white, like cream on them. But hairy. No, it was like they were literally citric acid crystals on the outside. I mean, it was like kind of like a marijuana like wet dream, but it wasn't.
Of sumac. Of sumac, yeah. So sumac, when you harvest it, there's some smoother ones, some hairier ones, but when you the thing is it looks nice and friendly and pretty, but when you start picking apart, you get this weird greasy feeling on your hands, but I don't know what that's from. And then inside is all this like nasty business. Right, which could have but like bugs, whatever.
And then little seedy thing. Not could have, does have. Yeah, definitely. No, I mean it's it's it's it's great if you want to make a cocktail, you want to make a punch. For me, the, you know, when you talk about foraging something, you're talking about like, can I get 50 gallons of it?
Yeah. Or not. You know, and so part of uh it's very strong, it's very strong acid. In other words, you can make a good amount with let's say you were to get like a laundry bag full of stuff, which is a pain in the ass. I'm not gonna say it's not a big big big big big, yeah.
But that's a that's a quite a bit of sumac as an adjunct. Not as a used it for this year. I'm gonna go back to hibiscus for it because I like it's a little richer of an acid. And uh I did uh I did a three flavor uh soda once that was all red. It was rose hip, all you call New York for uh rose hip, uh hibiscus, and sumac, but I just can't give up sumac because I love it so much.
Ooh, listen to that. That's Nastasia's favorite noise in the whole world. I like this. This is called well, this is the night eyes. Uh this is we blew when we open we opened about a week ago.
And we've been Oh, congratulations. Oh yeah, thank you. Thank you. Um we just blew through this stuff because we start selling it by the bottle and people just hang out with it, and it's just gonna be a little bit more. Getting all crunched out with it.
It's just gone. So what's the ABV on this sucker? Uh like twelve. So you're starting with uh let me see if I can do my calculations, somewhere around 20 bricks or something like that. For I don't know.
I have a funny story. So I don't use bricks. I use I use a hydrometer and I probably should use a bricks but it's kind of like when I was a kid like my dad went out and bought us all like uh hockey sticks for because we had a frozen pond and I didn't know anything about hockey so we just all got really sticks. What he didn't know is he bought the whole family left-handed sticks. So I learned left-handed and that's just how I play hockey now if I play hockey.
So I use a hydrometer for this if uh you don't know what a hydrometer is you should it's kind of this miracle tool. So like it measures the density of a liquid and it looks like a thermometer. And if as a as the liquid is more thin it sort of sinks and then as it becomes more thick because of the sugar it goes up. It costs about seven dollars the next best tool you can use to measure like the alcohol or sugar content in your uh liquid costs like five thousand dollars. Right.
There's like really literally nothing in between that is useful at all. So I I'm a huge fan of these kind of um these very simple tools that are very low tech. You can make a hydrometer and actually I learned recently that in the old days do you know do you know this? What the old I don't know about it. Do you know what the old hydrometer was?
No what? An egg well I know and I measure salt brines with eggs. Yeah so they would use an egg and so I've never heard of people using it for liquor though. Yeah no well I mean it's not good for alcohol but it's good for one thing which is measuring the sugar content of the initial thing and they would talk about the the circle that the egg made like whether it was like a half dollar I mean there it's English right so they use pence or whatever but it suckers. Yeah that's yeah.
But see, I have a I'm old school refractometer guy. 100%. So I just discovered that thing. It's amazing. What's nice about it is it just takes like a drop.
And you can walk around with juices. One freaking drop. Yeah, it's really good. You know what I used to hate? Filling tubes up with stuff and flowing.
No, no, you're right. No, no, this you're totally right. So the rack refractometer is really cool. The problem is when you're switching back and forth, people who buy refractometers, especially if they don't think about it, they don't think about what it's actually measuring. See, everyone is using a hydrometer.
They know they're really they're just measuring the density. And so when But what if there's like stuff in there? That's what I understand. That's the thing, right? So like you know what you know, right?
If you like any kind of any brew or or wine calculator, you can know your initial your initial gravity, and you assume that m almost all of that initial extra gravity is due to sugars, right? And then and then when it when it ferments out, you do the calculation, you do bang. But refractometers don't work that way. You know what I mean? Now there are people that have calculated final gravity.
So by the way, there's there's you know your initial or you know, original gravity, and then your uh what do they call the the finished one, the the F I don't know. I don't know. Whatever. And so you you take these two numbers and the second gravity is really a bull crap number, right? Because let's say it comes out at you know one, which zero zero zero, which is theoretically the density of water.
What that really means is you have some alcohol and some sugar because the sugar is just out to like 995. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you want more, yeah, you want more alcohol than obviously. So but but my point being is that people have tables where they know what your initial amount of sugar is, and then by reading the final gravity of it, you can figure it out. The problem is refractometers aren't measured that way.
So ref refractometer is literally looking and and and the the responses for sugar versus alcohol, I don't know how linear they are over the range you're checking. So literally you have to have someone who just takes a bricks, which is a particular scale, right, measuring you know refraction, because uh all it's measuring is light bending. And then you have to have someone calibrate the the uh the final uh the final alcohol reading based on a particular uh um OG, and that just you just have to pray it's linear in that range. And if it is, you can use it. You know what I mean?
And then there's there's also some weird relationship between the two that's not linear. No, there's not no, you just have to tabulate. Which is why I like I just you know, I kind of stick with my thing and I kind of know I mean to be honest It's always good advice to stick with your thing. It's and also your tongue is also the your best weapon, right? I mean, that's the uh you can taste the sugar at unbelievably tiny amounts.
And so at the end of the ferment, I I I you the the hydrometer is like gets less and less useful, and then you start tasting it out. You just want to make sure it's not stuck before you take it in. Right, so like this guy, right? So this is a sparkling wine. It's not carbonated.
This is made like a pet nap. Um you know, there's still yeast in the bottom. It's uh, you know, you basically ferment out dry, then you you add a little bit of honey or sugar back in, and you continue the fermentation in the bottle. Uh if I was really smart or I was like some old French guy been doing this for 500 years, like I would just bottle it when I knew it had the right amount of sugar in it. But because I don't have access to either that like historical tradition of like really knowing that very you know, when you make the same wine every year, you can kind of just taste it.
But uh for me I have to go dry and then go back for the secondary. All right, let's we uh we're gonna talk about this particular uh uh uh wine in a second. We got a caller on the arrow. Is it uh is it a mead related caller? What do we got?
What kind of questions we got? Caller, you're on the air. Hi, Dave. Hey. Is this my sister?
Hello? Hi. Oh, hi now. Yeah, I thought I thought you got to. Yeah, no, hey, you're on the air.
So this is gonna be a dump meal. We're taking a mead break. Could you tell me what a dump and your listeners, I guess, what your dump meal is, and and I hope it's something not what I'm thinking it is. Uh well, it all as I like to say, all meals end up as dump meals. But the uh so uh so Nastasi, you want to describe the dump meal?
You want Natty to describe the dump meal? It's well, Natty, describe what you've been making. Okay. So I did um four different meals with a crock pot, and I basically just threw a bunch of stuff in that the recipe told me to. It's basically go to the local Circle K, buy some stuff, and dump it into a crock pot, walk away from it, come back and eat.
That's what dump that's what it's like. Can I just say stay away from dollar store bacon? Just stay away from dollar store bacon, especially in your wines. But yeah, dollar dollar store mead making. I think I I would pay for that.
I mean, a dollar. Okay, I'm just that's my dear. So Natty, what what have you been working on? What what what dump meals have you tried? Um so I did an oatmeal, which I left in overnight, and that turned out great in the morning.
I did ginger teriyaki chicken. Okay, how okay, t tell us first of all, oatmeal in a crock pot mean okay. That's gonna work. I mean that's just gonna work. That's oatmeal in a crock pot.
Now talk to me about the chicken. What what cut of chicken did they recommend? Um they did chicken thighs and chicken legs. Okay, okay, okay. So some props.
It wasn't some jerk with uh boneless, skinless breasts. All right, so it wasn't inherent chicken dust you were making, and then what? Um, and then I had to do like a full can of ginger ale and a full bottle of teriyaki sauce and some other things. Wow, this person likes some sugar there, the full can of ginger ale. Let me ask you a question.
Did uh did you have to brown that chicken beforehand? Sorry? Did you brown the chicken beforehand? No, I I just put it in there. I just washed it off.
Washed it off? That's our mother's favorite chick. You washed off the chicken? Before I put it in the crock pot. With with what do you mean you washed it off?
You wash your chicken? Well I just wanted to make sure it was clean. Anyway, then I also did spare ribs. Wait, aren't you supposed to wash a chicken? No, you don't wash a chicken.
Well, but it's got that like slimmy stuff on it. Well, but then that's then that means you purchased a crap chicken. Oh. The uh the uh hold second. Like sometimes you can wash off if there's like bits of blood and you wanna get them up.
It's it's not a freaking fish. You know what I'm saying? With like where you're ripping the bones out of it, it's a freaking chicken. It's already been dredged through like the hell and gone. They've already beaten the crap out of that thing.
They put it into fundamentally a giant like washing machine made of rubber to rip every dang feather off of it. It's been completely eviscerated and sprayed down. Anyway, okay, hold on second. So wait, so you th this these thighs and stuff, they had the skin on. Yeah.
But you in no way treated the skin in any shape, form, kind. You literally threw this thing in with ginger ale and teriyaki sauce. So the dump meal lady's idea of browning the skin was to dump teriyaki sauce into it. Am I s am I s am I on track here? Natty?
What? Alright. Like the this lady's idea of browning the skin, the lady who wrote dump meals was to add teriyaki sauce. That was in lieu of browning the skin, right? One sec.
Hold on. What? This sounds like it's a nightmare waiting to happen. I mean, I don't know. Uh is there any sort of Are you back?
Yes. Is there any sort of sauteed onion or garlic? Anything? What? Is there any sort of sauteed onion or garlic in with this dump chicken?
Um, well, there were two different chicken instances, and one of them had onions in it. One? What about this first one with the with the ginger ale? Um, the no. So let me get this straight.
It's just ginger ale, teriyaki, washed chicken in a crock pot for like eight hours and nothing else? That's all. Oh, and rice at the bottom. Rice at the bottom. And did you add the rice at the very get go?
Um, yes. So that wasn't overcooked at all then? How was it? Tell me how it was. Was it delicious?
Did you enjoy it? Yes, I did. You did? What was the texture of the rice like? It was really fluffy and nice.
It was almost like a risotto. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Nastasi, are you gonna let your sister say that it was almost like a risotto? An unstered crock pot. Listen, listen, listen.
What, the chicken? No, the rice. The rice is floating. No, the rice is gonna sink to the bottom. No, I know well it's okay and it's in the crock pot.
It's like everything that you, you know, okay what about the other chicken that you made, Nanny? The shredded chicken. That was just with bell pepper and um uncooked bell pepper? That one in the crock pot for it. You throw uncooked bell pepper into with the skin on into a crock pot, okay?
Next? And then I think it was just the chicken breast, boneless. Breast, boneless breast for eight hours. Okay, what liquid did you pour into this? Um water.
Water. And what else? Nothing else. Wow, how was that? It was good.
Oh, and um, I guess like taco seasoning. Taco seasoning. Let me ask you this. Like, when you picked up the chicken, if you allowed it to cool, when you hit it against a table, would it actually like friably shatter? Was it was it like a chicken leather, or did it like was the chicken in any sense still juicy at all in any way, shape, kind format?
Or would you have you had to sh did you shred it? I yeah, it was easily shreddable. Yeah, she sent me photos. It looked really good. It looked juicy.
And then you put in a taco or what? Then you put in a taco, right? A tortilla? Yeah. Yeah.
Can't go wrong. Well, why would you ever use breast meat for that? Basically, what you're saying, it's just like the only thing that didn't work were the spare ribs that I had to do. Oh my god. Tell me how the spare ribs.
Tell me about the spare ribs. Wait, wait, wait, say what? A normal can of what? A whole can of beer. Whole can of beer, what beer did you choose?
What? What beer did you choose? I did like an IPA, but it smelled bad, so I didn't want to do it. And then I think it was like a whole whole bottle of barbecue sauce, too, and it just looked really gross. So I didn't want to do it.
But you did it anyway, or you didn't taste it? I mean, like I didn't even cook it. It just smelled nauseating. Wait, how old did how how old is your sister? Twenty two.
See, this is the problem with Instagram. They want food to look good. It doesn't always look good. Soup, sometimes don't look good. Well, you know, but the thing is that you didn't give the alcohol time to cook off, maybe.
Beer, beer-based, beer-based braises, like for instance, the famous like Guinness uh beef that they uh that the Irish folk make, is good, but not at the get go. You have to yeah, that actually does have to cook uh quite a long time. But the lack the lack of browning disturbs me. Like in these recipes. It's like, I don't know.
Anyway, so listen, are you gonna continue? Are you gonna make some more dump meal? Uh you're gonna make some more dump meal uh for us? Are you gonna continue to be our dump meal correspondent? Yes.
Alright. Look at that enthusiasm. People call people call in your questions for uh like you know, eventually write in your questions for Natty and her and her dump meals. Yeah. Anything else to add about these dump meals?
It really says don't brown these freaking things before you throw them into the freaking crock pot for real. What about the onions you threw into this other thing? Did it brown the freaking onions beforehand? She's gone. Oh, she's gone.
She's gone. She couldn't take the abuse. She couldn't take the abuse. She's not used to it like you are, Nastasia. I answered this browning question three times.
I just can't believe it. Done. Done. Who does that? Chat room says no browning in dumb meals.
No browning in dump meals. That's cheating, right? I think there's a joke in there somewhere. Alright, so let's talk about uh okay. Name this wine that we just drank that you're almost sold out of anyway.
Can I have a little more of that stuff so far? Yeah, yeah. I mean, we've got three more to go through. So Nastasia, I'm sure you can you like this, right? You can keep this.
Really? And Nastasia hates almost everything, and I guarantee you know I know where you like it because it's got some of the same notes that orange wine has in it, right? It's got Oh, well, can let me tell you something else. You you originally asked the question. I actually did a lecture about this called Why You Don't Drink Mead, right?
Okay. And you know, the initial question is like uh mead is the fastest growing uh pro uh segment of the alcohol market, right? So that's great for our investors and us, you know. We're like, here we go, let's do it, right? But uh when we look for allies, and it's very different than the uh craft beer movement, which I think you know kind of came up together because there's so much good craft beer that people want to make.
Um and there's definitely good mead makers out there, and I can recommend some, but uh part of it is the branding. You know, my I operated like a kind of a club for about five or six years. That was most of my mead went to people who signed up on the email list, so I got to meet them, I knew who them knew they were. Uh one of the nice things about this product is that it's got a really nice gender balance. Men and women tend to like it equally, which is drinkers and makers or just drinkers?
Drinkers. Drinkers. It's got a broad age range, it's got a good gender balance, which isn't necessarily true for beer and hard liquor, right? And one of the problems is is that the the uh the branding for a lot of mead is like based on this like really inaccurate mythical Viking axes the super macho stuff super hetero super macho. And I think it really turns off a lot of women who would normally actually like the product.
So I I think that would be the third the third kind of leg of the stool of like not how not to make mead um what are your what are your thoughts on the upper east side of Manhattan. I've been there have you have you like have you ever like so like no offense upper east side oh yeah yeah we went we both went to school up there actually I was on the upper west side that's right yeah yes but like the thing about the upper I like no offense I'm gonna say so it's gonna it's like a generalization but a lot of people in the upper east side is like honey so sweet. Honey so sweet right so right I don't want anything with honey it's sweet. You know you how many times at events have you heard people say stuff like that to you mistakes but not honey sugar and honey. But no you're right you know you're right look grape wine is made from sweet grapes rice wine is made from sweet rice.
Honey wine is made all alcohol starts out sweet. Bingo and so the you know our biggest challenge is just education. You know we just have to that's why we make dry wines we tell people listen, this this isn't gonna be sweet. It's one of the first things we we talk about. It's why we name the tasting room honeys, because we want to like bring we didn't want to hide that.
We want to be forward about that. It's like this is a honey-based alcohol, but honey has a lot going for it that's not sugar. You know, it's got this great bouquet, it has all this different different variability. Um so try this one. This is the this is like what you now, for lack of a better word, the straight white mead, right?
You know, like we're trying to work out, talk about, you know. Part of what's exciting about this is uh we get to create the vocabulary for this product class, right? You know, we're trying to position ourselves as making the best meat in the country. So that gives us a position to say, like, what is it? How do we talk about it?
What does it look like? What kind of glasses do you put it in? All that stuff. It's really exciting. Big space, big, big open space.
Um what I have not been able to do is figure out what how to talk about the mead that we make that's just the honey wine. Because I don't want to say it's straight, because that's got issues, and I don't want to definitely don't want to call it white, right? Because it's you know compared to what uh so but this is and I don't want to say it's plain, because it's not. Be like, look, this is the Chardonnay of uh meads. This is the Chardonnay meat.
I think that's all I gotta say to people, listen. Who is Anastasia? What do you gonna drink? Chadi ups. Remember that?
Like this is like that is the short thing. Okay, so this isn't the bottle. We haven't uh bought this is on draft right now at the at at Honey's. Uh so we haven't bottled it yet. I'm gonna go upstate and bottle it like in about a week.
Um but this is basically what we're serving on draft. Right. Before we before you taste this, we didn't talk what's the what's the one with the bubbles called? Okay, so the bubble is the bubble one is basically it's a sparkling honey wine with apple, cranberry, cherry. These are tart cherries from upstate.
A little bit though, right? Only little, I hope. It's okay. A little bit, and then uh uh sumac and rose hips. Rose hips, rose hips are the bomb.
Yeah, rose hips are great. So, and then sometimes I alternate the sumac with the hibiscus, which uh depending on what's in season and whether or not I'm having issues with sumac. What do you call that one? That's called night eyes. So it's got uh it's got it like a it's like it's almost got a little bit of that, like not oh not over, but it's got a little bit of that kind of orange winy flavor, even though it's not like a big thing.
Yeah, because look, this is this is these are wild yeast. I make this stuff in barrels. It's funky. It's quite nice. Yeah.
So this you're gonna taste it more. And what's the uh what's the ABV on this sucker roughly? What are we doing? Oh, pretty much across the board. I shoot for about 12, 12 minutes.
I like that. Why would why do people want to make these things that require turbos and it's a macho thing. I really think it's like how it's like let's increase the alcohol. I mean, I don't know. Aroma is intensely honey on this, right?
Yeah. Well that's that's you know, it's honey's delicate, right? So you start mixing fruits and stuff, you're gonna lose a lot of that um a lot of the more subtle features. Uh what I like about this is we we ferment this in used red oak, ri used oak, which has like a little bit of a red wine like left over in the wood. So that comes out, gives it a little body and a little color.
Well, I like that. What do you think? That's good. And this you're calling this one straight white? Yeah, that is basically.
No, no, we call that knot. We call that knot. But it's not really a clock. N-O-U-G-H-T, yeah, exactly. That's our like zero.
Have you seen this advertising campaign for it's called like white I think it's like the most offensive thing in because like they're printing the F bombs on the street on paper, but it's called White Girl Rose. It's like everything's offensive about that. What is that? No, it's it's better. It's offensive marketing, is it not?
It's by that guy, that terrible man. What terrible man? Fat Jewish. You mean my dad? Uh who is it?
That's the guy's name. Yeah. He calls himself. That's what he's called. The fat Jew.
Yeah. The Fat Jew, sorry. And he has uh he makes a product called White Girl. I'm sure he's gonna make a billion dollars. Yeah, no, I mean, look, thank you.
Well, I uh I'm gonna I'm gonna plug our spot again because we just opened uh we need some folks to come down there and uh check this stuff out. It's at 93 Scott Avenue. Uh you can go to Enlightenmentwines.com. This address is on there. And we're open every day, but Monday.
What stop is it? Off Jefferson L. You can walk. It's like you gotta cross flushing. And it's nice, you know, it's a great afternoon.
No offense if you're a doctor in that hospital, but oh my god. You're at that hospital on flushing? Yeah, yeah, but we're not that close to that. No, yeah, no, no. That's the other direction.
No, no, we're right down here. You could walk from you could walk from Robert's. I had an interesting ER visit there once. I've heard I've heard crazy stories. The doctor actually was good, but the ER itself was like Yeah, well, welcome to America.
Yeah. Um, okay, so I want to make sure you try this because it's just a little bit left. Um this is the Floralia, and I want just to give you the sense of a progression. So that's basically like our natural honey wine. What's your bottle price in this, by the way?
Will be uh rough. We do 25 on our pretty much across the board unless it's sparkling, or we're just trying to have like a commemorative bottle. So, you know, if it's expensive, I put it in a smaller bottle. That's the deal. Uh but I'd make sure they're all the same height.
So, all right. So this one is called Floralia. Now, this is what you do. Now, this is actually a lot of people think the thing you just had is a classic mead. Like, I want a real mead.
I heard you wanted a real mead, right? That's all I know. I never listened to your show. I just got it. I mean, I don't know.
I I would. I didn't know about it, right? Plus, we're usually very technical. Yeah, that's on the internet, right? So uh but a guy came into the bar and he's like, oh yeah, I was just listening to Dave Arnold's show, and he's like, he just wants a real mead.
And I was like, oh, well, you should tell him we're doing this down the street. I mean, you can it's really close. And I think the people would expect that a real mead in quotes would be this kind of like uh single variety honey, right? Because that's a sort of grape wine mentality, right? Like the whole thing about grape wine is uh a single grape from a specific location and time who's like carried through to its sort of essence.
Um that doesn't really line up with honey winemaking exactly because I would I really feel like there is a big difference between say a wildflower honey and like a apple blossom honey, right? They're they're different. And when you ferment them out, they'll be di they will be different. What about nasty honeys like buckwheat? Yeah, sure, it'll be subtle, but I didn't want to, but in the real world, m in the history of mead making, let's say, and I I don't really believe in any kind of real authist authenticity around any of this, because it's it's the whole thing's very sort of abstract and vague.
But what one thing is for sure, it's that the idea that someone would make a mead and it would just be honey, it's probably unlikely. Uh it doesn't have enough tannin. Uh even the one that you just had is um it's made in oak, right? That's where you get that mead. I'm cheating.
You gotta cheat. There's somewhere you gotta cheat. What's more likely is they would have made something like this, which is uh a mead with herbs in it. So there's all kinds of horrible Latin names which I'm not gonna even mention and I can't pronounce. Like methag glue.
Yeah, exactly. They're gonna like I'm taking them out of the book. That's all it sounds like Society for Cronative Anachronism stuff. Right, exactly. And again, it's another one of those things that hurts.
Do you do that? Do you have like a Harlequin outfit or cod piece somewhere? No, it's it's gone. Like it's gone. It's gone.
I mean like I burned that last week. I mean, the the the the real the real issue of I like cod pieces. It's like, you know, the people who, you know, there's a public perception around mead that it's a it's white and it's European and it comes from Vikings and all this kind of stuff. But the truth is is like the people who drink mead are Africans and Indians and Chinese people. Currently, yeah.
Yeah, and and have done for their, you know, the hero. Have you gone to Ethiopia to actually drink their stuff? I haven't. Um we're trying to grow uh gesho right now, which is the herb that is required for test, and I can't um get it to start. So uh is there a decent Ethiopian one here in the US or no?
Not that I've had. Uh they serve, I know the guy, for example, there's an Ethiopian restaurant in Bushwick that's fantastic. Um they have a honey wine, I don't love it. It doesn't have gesho in it. Um so you have to, if you're gonna have an Ethiopian honey wine, it needs to have this herb in it, or else you're just getting like a kind of another processed mead that says it's made in a traditional Ethiopian style, but it needs the herb.
And if the herbs in there, it's gonna gotta be on the label. Uh there are a bunch of strange psych more southern African meads as well, or no? There are a zillion kinds of meads out there. And there are a zillion other things that people do with it. They distill it.
I mean, uh, Jamaica has a whole distilled honey wine culture that's super interesting. China, I mean, it's a uh in China, you know, also there's a huge a lot of my influence right now is I'm reading a lot of kind of uh Asian uh herb books because there they use wine uh like to preserve the herbs in a way that we don't do in the European culture so much. So like a chrysanthemum wine or chamomile chamomile chrysanthemum wine. Um right. We our herb wines are mainly they're they've been taken out of the wine category, like removed.
So going back into sipping situations. This thing this thing happened uh when they invented the FDA, which is that they they made it basically illegal to have any medical claims on any kind of alcohol, right? So ironically, the the f like the Los Angeles winery that survived through prohibition did so by making medicinal products, and then people just drink them to get drunk. But like I make an elderberry wine. Elderberry is like an incredible immune-supporting antiviral thing.
And it will work if you drink the wine, but I'm not allowed to say that. I can't put it on the label. I can't even talk about it. Um but so for example, this one, uh just to get back, this is I think something more like a mead that you would have had uh in in the old days. So this is And it's called what?
Floralia. Um and it's it's just an herbal mead. You could pick different herbs. This is uh forage juniper, lavender, and marjoram. Uh lavender's coming out, huh?
Hey Mar, we had someone I had someone on Twitter who was like marjoram. And they're like, it's useless. Marjoram's delicious. Fresh marjoram. Yeah.
Can't use it track. Why would you dry it? I don't know. People dry a regular. Uh so this is you can drink this straight, uh, but it's a great cocktail base.
So, you know, this is like instead of like instead of uh so you would use this in place of like a Dolan Blanc or in place of like uh a Cokey uh Americano or something like this. Well, I I this is where I should probably introduce my partner Arlie Marks, who I think he's met you, he said he did a stage with you at some point, but uh he's running the cocktail program in the front of the house. So he he takes some of these things and then we'll make uh these kind of wonderful cocktails. This uh I forgot what he's doing, like a flip with this right now, which I he had to teach me what that was. But it it drinks it drinks like um it's like a honey vermouth.
Yeah, exactly. Um that's a it's a fair like place to place it. Vermith tends to be a little bit more alcoholic. Um I'm starting to make things more specifically for cocktails because the there's so much opportunity to like do all this weird stuff, right? Uh and so typically we'll take something like this or the black currant wine, which is I think the last one here, which you can try, uh, and we'll serve them straight, like in a you know, small pour or over the ice or something.
Or you can like this one makes uh really beautiful negroni. Uh if you want to like do uh a named kind of classic. Uh and that's what we've been making down there. And then we also have this really nice herb program for the roof. That's uh like a lot of the exotic herbs that I'm experimenting with for the meads, because we really have to broaden our appeal.
Uh we use in the cocktails too, so that's since they're around. So like there's a lemon mint margarine that I'm really not uh marigold, sorry, lemon mint marigold that like they'll use for uh what are your thoughts on herbs that are like now considered toxic in large quantities, but like people still use them in the day, like roux or what's tansies and all these other things. Yeah, elderberry. Uh, you know, it's the the toxic is such a like difficult unspecific word, you know, like our relationship, right, Seth? You know, you know what's you know what's toxic?
Alcohol is toxic, you know, and you drink that all the time. I I think a lot of these herbs, um, you know, you'd have to use huge amounts of them uh before you got ill. In many cases, if you heat them, the toxins go away. It's a little tricky with uh alcohol because I have to get federal uh uh permission basically for everything that I use. So there's a list of generally recognized as safe, right?
Yeah, yeah. But that list itself includes was created in the 40s and is horrible. Like it's like you can put penny royal. Penny royal is an abortive and really like very toxic, right? You know, used by herbalists very carefully.
Fantastic name. Pennyroyal. Yeah. You can pour that in there. So like that's considered generally recognized safe.
Lead ice is not on the list. Spice bush, you can't, Lindera benzoin, not grass, so I don't use it at the bar. Right. So I'm pretty suspicious of that list in general. It's not an accurate list.
It was made a long time ago. And for example, something like uh elderberry, which is on the list in some cases. It's like it really depends on how you use it, if you're using the stems, the berries, or whatever. There's a really great um article in the Nordic food labs about elderberry where they really try and tease apart the chemistry of that. Yeah, I know those guys, they're good.
They have a really good actual um uh science person, uh Ariel, doing a lot of their a lot of their stuff. Oh, they while we're opening this last one. Let me do some shout-outs. Brian Kestenbaum. I'm gonna read this.
I'm gonna read. You're gonna read what I'm gonna read here. Okay. All right. Uh where is it?
This is from Allison for Brian, right? Uh unusual request. Uh my husband Brian is a fan of cooking issues and listens all the time. Turning 40 on July the 14th, and I'm Bastille Day, huh? Why do you gotta share it with the French?
Why do you gotta share your birthday with the French? Makes no sense. And it's not like and his birthday shifts every year to coincide with the French stuff. No good. No, you that's not saying it's no good.
Whatever. I'm collecting videoslash sound recordings, photos from his favorite places and people around the world. Any chance they may be able to give him a shout-out on the show uh or send some sound recording that I can add to the collection. Let's do it. What should I say?
It's turning 40. Happy 40th birthday, Brian! From Cooking Issues Crew. And Jackie Molecules would say hi if he was here, but he's off on tour in Europe, thinking about your 40th birthday. What do you say, Nastasia?
Happy birthday. There you go. Happy birthday, Brian. Wait, how many people listen to this show? Tons of things.
I don't know. A lot. And they are they all over the place? Yeah. Everywhere.
All around the place. That's so exciting. Everywhere. Hi, everyone. Everywhere.
Hello, the world. All right, so let's get back to this. Uh the the rest of the questions that I would have asked, I'll have to do uh to do it. You can just do them like really fast. No, I can't wish.
I can't. I can't. I can't never. But let's taste this last one. This last one.
Um this is the uh St. Crimson, which is just a this is a kind of a classic black currant meat, which has been made for a long time. That is a kind of classic. But I don't know how much it's like. Does it drink like a like a meeting?
Okay, just tastes. So that is also drier than I thought it was gonna do. They're all dry, yeah. There's no sugar. You know, I don't like using sulfites and filtering and all that stuff.
So uh the really the only way to bottle something and not uh use them is to just get rid of all the sugar. I can dope this with some gin and carbonate the hell out of it. Yeah, it'd be very good. There's a there's a lot that you can do with this. It's uh it's a great thing.
Although uh Jim from PDT was telling me, because when I made this for him a few years ago, I was like, he's gonna love this. This is gonna be great for cocktail. But I think you can get a black currant flavor out of the distilled version at a cheaper price. If you just want that. But this looks nicer.
Also, this has that um you know, everyone's into that change of color sweet pea thing these days. But this really butterfly pee? Yeah, and this this in the blue one, people hey man, we've been on that we've been on that freaking train. Woo woo. So those those uh who's using that in coffee?
I don't know. There's an article in the paper again. Which article? Which paper? I don't know.
I didn't read it. Do they still make papers? The big one. Yeah. Times?
Probably. Well, wait a minute, what's fun about this and the elderberries? You know what you know what the butterfly pee is actually called? You know it butterfly is the euphemism for female parts. Oh.
Yeah, the scientific name for that f uh uh plant is uh is uh a lady body part of the colour. That's not that's not a yeah, that's not a bad one. Not a bad word. I know. But then why call it butterfly?
Why call it butterfly? I'm saying, why can't you say it? Because I don't know exactly how it's spelled in Latin. Methiglium. Um Yeah, anyway, you can change the color of this too.
It's it's also super um a acid-based sensitive. So it'll go blue or red. Yeah, but the problem is I'm always gonna keep it acid in a cocktail. Like someone who serves you a basic cocktail should get beaten about the head. I'll tell you this.
If you want to stabilize bluer colors in cocktails, do a pre-shake before you add the acid with uh egg white, which is basic. And I found that for some reason, even when you shift the cocktail acidic afterwards, you'll maintain more of the bluer side of anthocyanins than you would. What about like a gelatin? Would that is that also basic enough? No, no.
No. Because I want to get this in one of those frosty machines. But you want it to be on the bluer side, not less on the red side? You know, I just like the I just I just like that it changes colors. You know, it just I just it's just cute, you know?
I mean, the classic thing to do that is doesn't taste so so bueno, so I used to do this uh uh with the butterfly tea. We were gonna do a an absinthe service where we were gonna do like uh um a pondon water uh and then we were going to uh keep that one neutral, so be on the blue side, and then drop it into uh acidulated uh alcohol, and then it would go red as it hits the alcohol. Yeah, right? In a drip, in an absinthe drip. Turns out that A, it didn't have any flavor, so at least the one I had.
So I was like, I can't just do a visual gimmick. This is crap, it's not what I'm about. And two, bars are dark. Right. And so like this is more of a cafe, brunch timey outside thing.
Yeah. You know what I mean? So I've done the color change. You know what's really stable with those colors is uh whipped cream. So like it like I've done really, really with a lot of the flour, dark, dark blue whipped creams that are like those things I heavily stabilize them with um actually the flour itself will stabilize it because it's got like if you just blend the flour and don't get rid of all the solids, it's got enough kind of solidity there, but you could also do like an agar fluid gel or something to get it to um get it to go.
Um so I didn't get to any of my normal like tech related questions, but I feel I had one. I had someone ask me some interesting questions about spoilage in sous vide bags. There's also a question on flavors melding together, which would have been good, but I'm gonna try to get Harold McGee to write in, uh call in on that. He's still in Spain, being Harold McGee in Spain because he's the master. He's been working on that for you know, oh well, I have a question for him.
All right, what's your question? I don't know why, but every winemaker will guarantee tell you this that when you take the wine out of the the barrel and you put it in the bottle, it tastes like shit for like however long it feels like doing that for like at least two or three weeks, even if it tasted good in the barrel, and then it'll come back. Huh. And it it's like it's getting used to the new container. It's like absorp absorbing whatever oxygen got hit in the eulage?
I don't know. It makes no sense to me. By the way, so uh before I go, quick questions for people. So like uh so what's your average fermentation time? Uh it's temperature dependent.
And like what's the case? Everything you're drinking here is about a year. If I want to be a jerk about it, I could probably push it to six months. That's for like, but like is there do you is it like is it like a primary secondary situation? Do you have to rack off the uh rack, yeah.
I mean, it's just like making wine. You you just sit it it's does its thing. You rack it if you feel like racking it. It's closer to wine than to beer. It's almost a hundred percent really freaking quickly like beer speeds, orange juice.
Yeah, but doesn't I can make this ferment quickly? I just think it's a good thing. I mean it still tastes good. No, yeah, no, yeah, yeah. Orange juice like on a fat.
I don't know why, but it's just like I don't pitch I don't do a hard pitch. I'm keeping it at like 55. But are you putting sugar in it? I take it to well, I want the alcohol. I'm I'm take so sugar.
No, but I mean do you add additional sugar in the beginning? Yeah, yeah. So like uh actually the the first batch, I'm on my second batch. The first batch I did white sugar to get it to about 15.5 bricks because I wanted about eight percent alcohol. And so like orange juice by itself would be like six?
Yeah, because it's like 11.8% sugar, and uh and i it just wasn't gonna be stable enough for me. And uh and so anyway, so I wanted it closer to eight percent. So I added enough to get it up to 15 uh bricks. Uh and this next batch I did and it fermented out. It did its primary in like a week.
But what temperature? In a wine cooler, 55. Oh, cold. Yeah. That's intensity.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like I I started it at set at 70 on the counter until it started going. You're doing carboy? Uh yeah.
And it was oxygen starved. I put I put an airlock on it from the get-go. Like not even open. Like, and then I threw it in the in a wine cooler and it still fit finished. It was monster fast.
Yeah. I don't know why. And I I was pitching at the normal pitch rates, you know what I mean? Do you know what kind of yeast you were using? I mean, you would hate it.
Yeah, you're saying. I used to I used I I don't always use natural yeast. But um, but it's relatively neutral. The yeast I was using is relatively neutral. Yeah, no, I mean I did honey this time to take it up to 15 though.
Instead, that's better. It definitely tastes better. Yeah. What? One minute.
Okay. Oh, all right. Okay, so I'm gonna uh I'm gonna invite everybody to come by. Uh if you come by and I'm there, I'll give you guys a tour. Uh uh and I'd love to see you down there sometime.
Really nice. All right. Well, Raphael from Enlightenment uh Wines and give him the address again. Uh our casting room is called Honeys, and it's at 93 Scott Avenue. It's on the other side of Flushing from the L train.
Opens at five, right? Yeah, five tonight and until nighttime. We're up and late. All right, well, now I can say that we have pictures. Can I what?
Oh, and I would like a few more Instagram followers, Frank. Frankly, I think I have a very nice Instagram. All right. Uh uh also uh NY NY MAZER. No, no, Enlightenment Wines.
Enlightened Wines. All right, Enlightenment Wines. I can now say that I've had mead that I enjoy. Nastasia. So thank you.
All right, very good. Thanks for coming on. Cooking Issues. Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio Network.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network.
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