Lochac Brewing Laurels Challange

Queen Elizabeth’s Methaeglen – A Lochac Laurels’ Brewing Challenge

 Your challenge, should you accept it, is to produce no less than two 300ml bottles of Queen Elizabeth’s Methaeglen, as per the recipe below, before Lochac’s Mid-Winter Coronation at which time the brewing Laurels will judge which entrant has best accomplished this task using the Lochac Arts & Sciences judging criteria listed at http://artsandsciences.lochac.sca.org/judging. The recipe recommends aging for six months, so you will need to get brewing promptly.

 You are to submit two bottles, each labelled with your name or the name of your brewery and the date of brewing, accompanied by documentation including your own redaction of the recipe and an explanation of any deviations or changes made.

 Entrants will be asked to declare their intention to compete to the Brewers Guild Clerk, Rurik farserkr (ben.paton@gmail.com) by 1^st June 2014 at latest. All entries must be delivered to him by Tuesday 24^th of June 2014 or, by prior arrangement, brought to Midwinter Coronation in Politarchopolis on Saturday 5^th July. Please contact Rurik for a delivery address and/or to arrange cellaring with him.

 The results will be announced at the event, if possible, or by email soon afterwards. The entry judged the best will win a beautiful hand turned wooden mazer.

You can print a PDF of the recipe and competition details here.  Queen Elizabeths Methaeglen

Original recipe from ‘The Feminine Monarchie, or a Treatise concerning Bees and the due ordering of Bees,’ 1609 By Charles ButlerChapterX “Of the Fruit and profit of Bees. Part 2”  1609 facsimile (Transcribed below)

 Transcription by Justin du Coeur http://jducoeur.org/Cookbook/bees.html :

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One excellent Receipt I will here recite: and it is of that which our renowned Queen Elizabeth, of happy memory, did so well like, that she would every year have a vessel of it.

First, gather a bushel of Sweet-briar-leaves, and a bushel of Thyme, half a bushel of Rosemary, and a peck of Bay-leaves. Seeth all these (being well washed) in a Furnace of fair water:

let them boil the space of half an hour, or better: and then pour out all the water and herbs into a Vat, and let it stand till it be but milk-warm: then strain the water from the herbs, and take to every six Gallons of water one Gallon of the finest Honey, and put it into the Born, and labor it together half an hour: then let it stand two days, stirring it well twice or thrice each day. Then take the Liquor and boil it anew: and when it doeth (?seed?), skim it as long as there remaineth any Dross. When it is clear, put it into the Vat as before, and there let it be cooled. You must then have in a readiness a Kive of new Ale or Beer, which as soon as you have emptied, suddenly whelm it upside down, and set it up again, and presently put in the Metheglen, and let it stand three days a working. And then tun it up in Barrels, tying at every Tap-hole (by a Pack-thread) a little bag of beaten Cloves and Mace, to the value of an ounce. It must stand half a year before it be drunk.