Yarrow Mead

I have put down my next brew of yarrow mead. Mead is a wine made with honey, it has a very strong flavour and is drunk like a dessert wine.
I haven't documented this very well nor taken photos of the process as I'm not nearly as nervous as last time. In fact, my confidence may be my demise with this brew as I realised that I hadn't sterilised a couple of pieces of equipment. Ah well, too late now.

This is the recipe I used: http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/brewing/fetch-recipe.php?rid=yarrow-flower-wine
I made a couple of adjustments which I hope won't be too detrimental. Instead of oranges and lemons I used citric acid (maybe I should have used tartaric). And I added a campden tablet to the brew so that it was sterile. Unfortunately I didn't listen to my instincts that there was too much water in the recipe and sure enough, upon reading the root recipe (basic mead recipe) I realised that instead of 5L of water I should have used only enough water to make the whole brew 5L. You live and learn.

It will be a shame if the brew doesn't work as I used 1.5 kgs of organic raw honey which isn't cheap. It comes from the farm where I buy my raw, fresh milk and they have since sold out. Most of the honey is clover but also 500 grams of manuka, I didn't want to use full manuka as it has a very strong flavour and is expensive.

The main ingredient of course is yarrow.

Yarrow is a "weed" that grows all over Dunedin. I collected my flowers from the Leith River banks as there I knew it hadn't been sprayed and was not near a road so not covered with exhaust. (and further upstream from scarfieland and all the rubbish which is thrown in). The area was also covered with hemlock which is very poisonous so I had to be careful with Taman but it only took one explanation before he was telling me to be careful and correctly identifying the hemlock and the yarrow. We collected a bag full and Taman sang a yarrow song which he'd made up. He promised to record it when we got home but has since refused. The morning felt like a very wholesome gathering activity as did the elderberry collection.
The whole shopping bag was only just enough for the two litres we needed. I had thought I'd have some left over to dry for yarrow tea, a useful herb for colds, congestion and fevers. It's the end of the season too so a lot of the flowers were getting a bit passed ideal. It's not really an ideal time for me to be putting on this brew as I'll be away in a couple of weeks but I wanted to get it going before the yarrow season finished.

This clip has taught me a lot about yarrow.

Yarrow is almost globally spread and has a long history of use. Yarrow can be used for many things, it has antibiotic properties so is good for cuts, burns, bladder infection, kidney infections. It can be used to stop nose bleeds. It can lower blood pressure. Yarrow is also one of the best fever reducers, along with peppermint and elderflowers. So yarrow tea is amazing for a cold with both antibiotic and fever reduction. Yarrow has been used with hops, mugmort, wormwood and other herbs to brew beer which preserves the beer and adds the bitter flavour. (There's an interesting history of why beer is most usually made of hops).


Todays research stint had me watching this clip which I enjoyed, the singer is Bethany Yarrow, daughter of Peter Yarrow from Peter, Paul and Mary. I have a feeling that as I research different weeds which often have rich folklore histories and medicinial uses, I will be listening to a lot of folk music.

I watched a few clips for "Yarrow", a traditional Scottish ballad. Yarrow refers to a place not the plant.

Then while reading about the song on wikipedia I saw that a band called Scatter had released their version of Yarrow and I tried to track that down as it sounded like a band I'd like. I couldn't find their version of yarrow but I found a couple of different tracks by them. I really like free noise, improv music.

It's amazing how far my distractions will go when I should be writing an assignment for occupational science on occupational identity and occupational satisfaction.