Jonah’s been making mead. Or claiming she is. I told her that if she were going to go through the trouble of fermenting 5 gallons of something, she ought to at least make a drink that I like. I suppose it’s possible that I might like the mead, but considering I really don’t like the taste of honey, I doubt it.

Her reason for making mead? She’d picked a couple gallons of rose hips and that’s all she could think to do with them. So we had to buy lots of honey to make an icky drink with a useless fruit. Woohoo.

She’s been checking it every couple of minutes. Immediately after sealing it she pointed out with glee that that water lock showed signs of increased pressure inside the container. I didn’t point out that this was probably because it was warm.

I’ve been amusing myself reading her mead books and telling her everything she’s doing wrong, though nothing I say tends to faze her. “Did you aerate it?” “Uhh. I tried. I rolled it around.” “Oh, that won’t work. It’ll never work now. It’ll be a dud.” “I’ll just add more yeast if it doesn’t work.” Actually, I think it’d be really hard to actually screw it up. Mead is apparently the easiest fermented drink in the world to make. And seriously, people have been doing it for longer than Joanna thinks the Earth is old, without even knowing that such a thing as yeast existed. That said, it’s still an awful lot of bother for something that’s going to taste like honey.

I’ve always wanted to try my hand at making beer, but everytime I look at what it takes, I’ve decided it’s way too much work and equipment considering that I’m probably not going to be able to make it as good as I can buy it, and the money savings isn’t as good as one might think. But still, the idea appeals to me. So maybe after Joanna makes some nasty mead, I can coerce her into making beer while I supervise.

In any case, watching her bottle of really nasty looking crud is making her happy, and that’s good.