michaelsbagley

Oooooooohhhhh... Beginner with good questions... Okay, for a bigger batch... I am a VERY BIG advocate of using glass over plastic containers. So my strongest suggestion is to go to the local homebrew or winemaking stor (which are often enough the same place, but not always) and buy a 5 or 6 gallon (19 to 22 litre) glass carboy.... But I know a lot of people getting into it prefer to spend less money up front, and upgrade their gear later (which is more expensive in the long run), but in that case, a hard plastic 5 gallon (19 litre) water cooler bottle will do. I recently tried using a soft flexible plastic 2.5 gallon (9 litre) water jug, and almost lost the batch for being cheap (as it is I noticed the leak on time and only lost 1/4 of the batch). If you have to use plastic, spend the extra few bucks and get the HARD plastic. You can sometime find 3 gallon hard plastic water cooler bottles that are basically the same size around as the big ones, but just shorter. 3 gallons is actually a really good batch size for beginners. I found these at the local Lowes. As an average, you will get just over a dozen wine bottle size bottles of mead from a 3 gallon batch, 5 gallons will get you about 2 dozen bottles. If you use glass, you should spend about $5 and get a proper home brewing/wine making airlock (available at the same place you buy you glass carboy). If you go the cheap up front route, balloons are your friends. Make sure they are bigger sized balloons so they can stretch over the bigger neck sizes of the plastic water cooler bottles. An optional but convenient tool that will make your life easier, is a FOOD GRADE plastic bucket that holds one to two gallons more than your batch size. Your batch size will be the 5 or 6 gallon glass carboy or 3 or 5 gallon plastic water cooler bottle. Another tool you will likely need for doing bigger batches is a syphon hose. There are really cool hand pump ones that can be bought for about $20 to $25 online or the local wine/beer making store, or you can go buy 6 to 8 feet of half inch wide fish tubing from the local pet store and be prepared to suck for all your worth... (that was not meant to be dirty) Here is a LINK to the "5/16" Auto-Siphon" tool, also available in the 1/2" Size or in the Mini Size (5/16") Another item I almost forgot to mention is a funnel. A large food grade funnel is indispensable to many of the steps involved. A friend of mine recently got a really cool one with a "splash guard" (basically one half of the funnel extended up a few inches taller than the side you would logically pour into. It worked really good, and only cost him about $4 more than what I paid for mine. I'm pretty sure I am going to upgrade this piece of equipment at my earliest convenience. Once you have those tools together, it is the matter of recipe and ingredients. For ingredients, you want to use a good honey (that junk in the grocery store with the bee on it is not good). Basically if you can sample the honey before buying it, you are looking for honey with flavour, not just sweetness. The more flavour your honey has, the more flavour your mead will have. The honey bee stuff is very sweet and has almost no flavour... It makes bad mead, trust me I know... I learned the hard way... Farmers markets are usually the best place to get bulk honey for cheap. Some health food or bulk stores carry decent stuff as well. Yeast is the next main ingredient... you can use bread yeast in a pinch... But a wine yeast is ideal, specially a white wine style yeast is usually best, but some red wine style yeast do good. Ale/beer yeast (but avoid lager yeasts) can do a decent job as well. Yeast is a very complex issue, I could write a long thread just on this topic alone... But I think that is the core basics. Water is the third ingredient... If you have to use tap water, try to take the time to filtre it through your Brita or whatever.. Or the one advantage to buying a plastic water cooler bottle to brew in, is you now have a bunch of water that is great for brewing with. On that note, I am going to take a break here, try and pretend to work for a while, and post the next steps later.

Ooops... No... My error... I hadn't read back and failed to realize it was the linen workman's cap this was about and not the women's style hoods. The RH pattern DOES NOT include the workman's cap that I know of. Sorry about the misunderstanding on my part.

Huh, I think it pegged me rather well... Best Occupational Category You're an ORGANIZER Key Words: Self-Control, Practical, Self-Contained, Orderly, Systematic, Precise, and Accurate 2nd Best Occupational Category You're a DOER Key Words: Emotionally Stable, Reliable, High Energy, Practical, Thrifty, and Persistent Although after looking at the Key Words for Creator, I wonder if that may apply better than either of the two above categories? I would be very curious to see how many archetypes this colour test breaks things into.

It's a good thing a new thread was started strictly about stays with none of the banter of the other thread...

Oh sorry.. The linen caps... Reconstructing History has a pattern for them... But unless there are a few more items included in that pattern that woukld be of use to you, that would likely not be a good option pricewise. This is an item I have not found a "free" pattern for to scale or draft up... But that does not mean it doesn't exist.

ROFALMAO!!!! That was as priceless as the 80s tribute!!! Thanks Cheeky.

Thank you all for the B-Day wishes... Gee most of the time people are late with this, being a day early this year, you are all very much on the ball!!! Nell, the 80s flashback was most appreciated, i'm still chuckling over that one.

Thanks for the compliment Quartermaster James!!! I hate to contradict the wife (because I get my backside whooped for it), but it is not a good idea to use these for alcohol (it can deteriate the pitch coating), I would alos avoid anything too sticky (as it would make it harder to rinse them out, and possibly make the inside sticky). They should be okay with low alcohol adult beverages (beer, ale etc. and MAYBE wines, meads) but then you run the risk of your drink going flat (in the case of beers/ales) if you don't drink it quick enough.... Enjoy!

This past weekend I went to help Nick out with his first batch of "mini-mashed" ale. He's brewed a few times before using kits, but this was his first attempt at bringing it up a notch. We had gone out a week or two ago to shop for all the ingredients, so it was just a case of mashing (steeping) the few whole grains in the recipe, and then boiling the rest of the ingredients. He used the "Pirate Nut Brown Ale" recipe from the below book as his base, but reduced the amount of malt extract used to balance out the addition of three pounds of a really nice dark rich and flavourful honey. Anyways, the recipe was actually chosen because it looked like the best nut brown ale recipe in that book, and not for the name... But the name is a nice bonus. This should be ready for drinking in about 3 weeks or so, I'll definately share my thoughts on it if Nick doesn;t come around to speak for himself. Cheers.

Happy Natal Day QJ!!! Almost makes me wish your package would have arrived a day later, than it would have served a double purpose...

Like on the First Page of the thread you are reading? There are two examples there... Sorry if this isn't the one you are thinking about.

I have read, but not tried first hand, that many champagne yeast strains are resitant to alcohol up to 19 or 20 percent... So hypothetically, using champagne yeast you could ferment up to almost 20%.... Of course champagne yeast is also notorious for eating delicate flavour profiles, so you would likely end up with a strong and relatively flavourless substance.

I can't speak to the polishing or not polishing brass... But as for linseed oil on the stock, I'm on the Traditional Muzzleloading Forum and I poke my nose into the "Gun Bulders" section from time to time... And historical finishes on guns come up a lot... Linseed does seem to be historical, but most of the modern builders seem to dislike to loathe the stuff. It seems most modern linseed, even the stuff sold as "boiled linseed oil" isn't what it used to be. I think (and I'm reading between lines here so take this with a grain of salt) modern boiled linseed oils aren't quite as boiled as what period boiled linseed oils are. So a couple of suggestions I see come up on the muzzleloading forum is to either add "japan dryers" to the linseed oil, or if you are VERY BRAVE and VERY CAREFUL, boil modern boiled linseed oil into a greater reduction. Hope this helps.

Welcome all, We're still getting set up, but this will be the sub-forum for discussing brewing, mead making, wine making, etc. etc. This will be for all makers of fine beverages (and beginners too) whether you are using modern methods or trying to recreate historical methods. Why the "Empty Keg"? Because the discussions are about what to do to fill the kegs up (barrels, casks etc.) ... Make something to put into the keg. Here's to some good discussions, shared recipes and any other topical conversation that are to be had! :angry:

I love HPL!!! Now that I am done and through with the Potter books forever... I might pick up my copy of the "Dream Quest of the Unknown Kadath" and give that another once over before tackling some more history books.

BEES

Okay, it seems like Mark is better organized and further sighted than I am... Which is good thing, and why he is in charge and not me. So we are doing the pirate re-enactment on the May 9th-10th weekend on the Santa Maria, and we are ALSO booked for the Saturday Sept. 19th for "Talk Like a Pirate Day" (one day only for TLAPD, and no sleepover on the ship either for TLAPD.... ). So mark your calenders, come out for one, or come out for both, we'll be happy to see you any way about it! And that should conclude the "Home" activities of the Scioto Pirates for this year, although many of us will be seen throughout the continent at many various other events, as individuals and perhaps as a group.... Now back to the more foreseeable future, I also am planning to brew a 5 gallon (19 litre) keg of good ale for the May weekend event (perhaps even based on a period recipe). So if we wind up partly celebrating any B-Days, there should be plenty of libation for the purpose. The cherry wine will be very drinkable by then as well... I doubt there will be any mead available for the May event though. Another suggestion Jennie had on the food was, if we have enough people interested, and a particular recipe folks are keen on, we could set up a slow cooker/crock pot in the ticket booth as well, so we may have some basic modern cooking facilities in addition to charcoal cooking on the ship stove. Seems like the plans are coming together wonderfully, and we're still four months out.

Maybe your a masochist?

Are there modern galley facilities on board? How does one handle the cooking ? There is a ship stove (elevated fire box) on the ship. And we also have access to the fridge in the ticket booth for the ship, but the fridge is usually fairly full of soda (that the ship sells) so fridge space is limited. Kate said something about a charcoal grill in the park, but honestly I can't recall ever seeing one there... So to answer the question more directly, no there is not modern galley facilities, but primitive cooking facilities are available. The ship stove/firebox should be able to accommodate two dutch ovens. Jennie (Mark's wife) is the master (mistress) of all things cast iron, her camp cookware collection is HUGE, so no one needs to bring any cookware, just bring your eating bowls/plates/utensils.... I think that should cover cooking... Oh, I will be bringing oatmeal for breakfast Sunday morning, there will likely be other stuff for breakfast too (in case M.A. d'Dogge is able to show up), but oatmeal will likely form the core of Sunday breakfast.

Lady B, there is sleeping on the ship, but that requires a certain fortitude of spirit... As there is no privacy (not a big deal for most, but some people are very private sleepers), and space is limited, so narrow sleeping rolls and/or air mattresses are preferred... But yeah, hotels are not needed as long as you are willing to rough it on the ship. Sterling, you do know Mission is planning on coming? Are you really sure you and Dutch wanna lay about "sick bay" all day? I'm sure if you leave at a reasonable enough time, you should be able to get some sleep in, as the event is later starting (11:00 AM) and there is pretty much no set up involved (no camp etc.). Glad to hear so many are going to give this a try! If half the people interested make it, this event will at least double in size from last time!

Okay, okay... Kanga.... I mean Roo.. No, I mean rue, I'm rue-ing already...

Nell, while what you propose makes sense from a certain standpoint, think of the counter debates to your line of reasoning. Most average people of the day had only one set of clothing, sometimes two. If you wore the same set of clothing every day for 20 years what kind of shape would you think it would be in? even with regular repairs. Modernly we have many sets of clothing, most of which only gets worn once every week or two, so we can keep clothing for years with out it falling apart, this was not the case back then. This is rally just my opinion, but the whole "inheritted clothing/accessories" thing really doesn't fly in my mind because they wore their clothing more and more harshly back then than we do today. As an example, the only item of clothing I come close to wearing every day are my shoes, I am fairly certain that I am not as hard on my shoes as they were back then, but I am harder on my shoes than most modern follks... And I rarely have a pair of shoes last me more than 6 to 8 months.

Well the sadists pushed all the snow to one side of the parking lot, so anyone parked close to the building had no trouble getting in or out, only those of us that parked on the outside of the parking lot got snowed in.... I made sure when I got home I parked on the side without the solid ice berm... Letome poor other sucker sweat getting their vehicle in and out today. I need to upgrade my digging out device, the collapsable plastic shovel I bought last year to dig myself out of situations like this didn't hold up to ice. I think I may just follow BlackJohn's lead and buy a metal bladed trenching shovel.

LOOK HERE on this other forum, someone is selling a small canon for $1000... As I understand it, that is a pretty good deal... This is the orignial thread where he was asking $1200 for it

McDrago, I have a pair already made and ready to go. I made them too small for the intended person, who happens to be about the same size as me, so I can;t use them for myself. They are historically accurate in design. They should fit someone in the 32" to 34" waist range. They are a medium brown colour in a light weight wool with a linen lining. Let me know if you are interested, and make me a reasonable offer. Please note they are hand sewn. I just need to add buttons to finish them, I can do brass or pewter buttons at your preference. For picture, find a picture of Mission from PiP this year, if he is wearing brown breeches, they are the same. Here's a look at what they look like from the side....