Back to work: The Maple Mead Fiasco

The last post was a simply a hiccup in my blogging;  this post represents a San Andreas fault sized gap in my blogs.

There's a lot to talk about, so let me separate each item into individual blogs.  The first item is about my meads.

Last Saturday, I had a close friend over, and we decided to take a quick sneak peek at my Maple Lapsang Souchong Mead.  I had tasted it in the past, and it was delicious, but I wanted to show it off.  I had the glass carboy in the refrigerator because I was trying to clarify it... apparently that was a big mistake.

I took the mead out of the refrigerator, and as I was placing it on the island in the middle of my kitchen, the side of the bottle grazed the edge of the countertop.  This mere bump must have caused the bottle to resonate at precisely the right frequency, because the next second, the glass bottom of the carboy was on the floor and I was standing watching as a gallon worth of mead poured out of the bottom of the carboy.

It was all over in about 5 seconds.

It turns out that carboys are made from three pieces of glass - two sides, and one bottom.  I found a reasonable picture online which shows these three pieces:

The "cup bottom mold seam" is where the bottom separated from the other two pieces of glass.  Fun.

Well, I've started another maple mead, and it's fermenting like crazy.  I hope that it will be a much more enjoyable experience that my last maple mead :)