Shabbat, SCA event

[cellio]

Friday night's service had a lot of people, in part because it was a farewell for our music director. (Note: this is not the cantorial soloist; this person is our organist/pianist and choir director, and maybe does some things with the students.) He's been here for five years and he's really good, but he just got accepted to a masters program in sacred music, and Michigan is a bit far to commute. The choir has been sounding really good lately, and I hope they're able to find someone who'll keep that momentum going. (The choir doesn't rehearse over the summer, so there's time.)

Saturday Dani and I went to AEthelmearc War Practice at Cooper's Lake. The weather was good; there was a threat of rain mid-day but it passed. I spent a lot of time schmoozing with friends, including dagonell. I briefly saw lefkowitzga; that's the first event she's been to since Rebecca was born, so that's a good sign.

There was a lot of nifty stuff in the artisans' forum. One person caught my eye with her glass beads, and when I got closer I saw that she also had some not-quite-enamel pieces. I've forgotten the name of the technique (it's French for something like "hills and valleys" and I'll know it if I hear it again). I thought she had done cloisonne enamel, where you take your base (usually copper), place wire on it to outline your design, and then fill in the little walled areas with enamel and fire it. That's what it looked like. What she actually did was to etch out the base copper disk, fill in the dug-out areas with glass, and fire it. It was very spiffy. Fourteenth century, if I recall correctly.

Mistress Rhiannon displayed her multi-ribbon bookmarks (many late 14th-century, some 16th; I don't recall any in between). These are nifty, easy, and useful; I've got to make some of those, including for mundane use. Mistress Cassadoria had the next table over and was displaying her bound books, so we talked for a while about that.

One of the artisans (whose name I didn't learn) brought food, which she cross-entered in a cooking competition that was being held. She had a really tasty creamy almond tart; for the forum she made up individual ones for people to take. I really liked it and would like to get her redaction. Or failing that, a reminder of the source she used, and I'll do my own redaction.

I went to the brewers' roundtable and tasting. I haven't done any brewing in a while and should do something about that, but I brought along three meads that I made in 1998-99 for tasting. Two of them I remembered as not so great (but it had been a while since I opened one); the third I remembered as very good. I was delighted to learn that all three are now quite nice, and I got many compliments. I guess bottle-aging makes a difference.

The notes I took on all three batches, sadly, were casualties of an ill-timed disk failure. So I don't have precise amounts of ingredients, specific gravities, and all that. (dagonell, I seem to have been wrong about having better notes on one of them. Oops.) The three are:

• A piemot with grape juice and whole cardemom. The last time I opened one of these the taste was "whoah! too much cardemom!", but yesterday it had mellowed nicely. This was based on a recipe in Digby.
• A spiced mead that isn't nearly as harsh as I remembered it being. This was just an attempt to make a basic mead and wasn't based on a particular recipe. The spices were probably cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. The spices were definitely in the primary fermenter and were probably not part of the boil.
• Orange-ginger mead, nicknamed "independence mead" because I started it on the 4th-of-July weekend that year and bottled it the following Pesach. (This was before I was really keeping Pesach, in case you're wondering.) This was clear enough to read through, and I didn't use any chemicals to help that along. (No chemicals in any of them.) There were two rackings. I don't remember the source of the recipe.

The key ingredient in mead appears to be patience. :-)

Several other people brought tasty meads and beers, and one person brought kumiss (which I actually tasted after learning that it was based on cow milk and not mare's milk). Seabhac and he-whose-name-I-cannot-spell, visiting from Atlantia, brought a nice ale that I bartered for a bottle of. I was also able to barter for a nice pumpkin ale (and I normally hate pumpkin ale). I actually left with more bottles than I came with by one; Dani asked on the way out why I'd brought the six-pack and I said this was not the six-pack I'd come with. :-)

Lots of deserving people received awards, but court was long. Very long. Butt-numbingly long, in fact. I should have brought a pillow for the bench. :-)

All in all, it was a pleasant event.

Comments

[siderea]

Orange-ginger mead, nicknamed "independence mead" because I started it on the 4th-of-July weekend that year and bottled it the following Pesach.

*blink* Did Pesach come really, really late that year, or did you really leave it on its lees for about 8 months?

The key ingredient in mead appears to be patience. :-)

Apparently so. :}

Two or three years back, at the Winter's Edge event, we discovered that the mead I'd made for the bandstand of Pennsic .xxiv. had turned into a quality port. No, I have no idea. All I know is that it had hand-squeezed (and laboriously harvested) mulbery juice in it, that it sat for about 5 weeks before racking, and that at first serving it was a quite pleasant light, crisp, dry mead.

[lyev.livejournal.com]

(it's French for something like "hills and valleys" and I'll know it if I hear it again)

I think the technique is "Champleve" enameling (sp?), but without seeing the piece I can't be sure.

Glad you had a good time at the event, and I had no idea that you did mead making!

[amergina.livejournal.com]

You should get some info about the tarts in your e-mail.