Keeping an Eye on Local Restaurants

Last night I had the pleasure once again of dining at The Rheinland Restaurant in downtown Independence. In my mind it shares much of what I envision for St. Crispin's...a very warm, welcoming restaurant with a genuine cultural authenticity and relaxed atmosphere. Of course, naturally this is a completely different creature, being a German restaurant, but still, there was a certain atmosphere they have that I'd like to capture. I had the Jaegerschnitzel, which is without question my favourite item on the menu. I also sampled Koenig Ludwig Hefeweisse, with a glass of Spaten Optimator with Raspberry Romanoff for dessert. Excellent!

This morning I visited the Farmer's Market (downtown city market), and I was lucky enough to again catch the beekeeper who supplied me with my last gallon of honey (blackcurrant mead). I bought two more, since I probably won't be able to see him til next year, and I'm still keen to continue my meadmaking experiments. Right now, there are a few possibilities in the running. A ginger metheglin, a dry crisp mead with up to a pound of fresh ginger root imparting an intense spiciness, a sort of "ginger wine". I could also follow a recipe many others have done, a Peach Ginger Melomel, but I think it would be too difficult to capture and retain the essence of the peaches well, without using untold pounds of peaches, and that introduces pectin haze problems, not to mention fermentor space. I think if I try either of those, it will be a pure ginger metheglin. Then there are the fruit meads...a berry melomel, even another blackcurrant melomel if I could find the juice for cheap, would be quite tasty no doubt. I've also read about this intense "Apple Butter Cyser" that might also be good, if a bit over the top. I also was considering a clone of Lurgashall Tower of London Mead, an English mead fortified with Scotch whisky. Luckily I was able to find a bottle of this, and while I haven't sampled it yet, I will try it out and see if I like it enough to try making my own. It certainly sounds interesting, but it wouldn't be cheap, and the temptation to use lower-quality Scotch to save money would be there, and if I'm doing anything I want to do it well. So in all likelihood, a strong dry ginger mead and a melomel using as-yet undetermined fruit will be my choices for this honey, but thats far off still.

Right now I go to start racking my Honey Koelsch (well attenuated, already...1.057 to 1.012!) into secondary. The sample I took this afternoon had a strong bitterness that I think will mellow with conditioning, and a honey-wheat character.