The Award-Winning Gargamel

"You've just made one very happy Italian!" - a reveler at the Thunder party, after tasting The Gargamel

Ingredients:

3 of the 3 lb cans of Trader Joe's Mesquite Honey

~3 gallons water

4 giant cloves elephant garlic

2 drops olive oil

1 package Lalvin D47 wine yeast

Tools:

1 3-gal carboy + gas trap

1 1-gal carboy + gas trap

1 auto-siphon

2 large pots

iodine (for sterilizing)

1.5 tsp K-sorbate (for stabilizing)

1 large spoon for skimming

As usual, sterilize the shit out of everything that will touch this mead using the food-grade iodine. Heat up the water in the two giant pots until nearly boiling. Distribute the honey among the two pots and dissolve into the hot water while skimming the tops (Trader Joe's Mesquite Honey usually doesn't result in a lot of scum). Once the honey is dissolved, cover and allow to reach room temperature. Pour into 3 gallon carboy and pitch yeast. Allow to ferment 8 weeks. Stabilize and rack. Divide out approximately 1/2 a gallon of stabilized mead into the one-gallon carboy, and allow to clarify for 2 weeks (put the rest back into the 3 gallon carboy - it's good mead). 4 days before bottling, take the 4 giant cloves of elephant garlic, cut a bit of the tops off such that garlic is exposed, rub with a bit of olive oil, wrap in aluminum foil and allow to roast at 400 degrees in the oven for 35 minutes. Allow roasted garlic to cool, then tear large cloves in half and fit them into the one-gallon carboy. Bottle after the garlic soaks for 4 days. Don't worry about the weird green color the roasted-brown parts of the garlic takes - it's not rotten. I highly recommend bottling after 4 days in order to capture the unique garlic-bomb smell, such that you can achieve an effect similar to the one I managed at the potables competition I entered this in.

The Story:

As Lady Sylvia asked: "Why garlic?"

The story of this hilarious mead dates back to the 2008 Great Northeastern War, when Vance came back from the potables competition frothing at the mouth about how the contest was rigged by the Arts and Sciences "weenies" running the event such that their friends were always guaranteed to win due to documentation. After checking the website, I found that it was, indeed, true - where the GNE War website claims "documentation is optional" - the potables competition proved to be an entirely different environment than advertised. Documentation was worth 20 out of 100 points total for each brew, thus making it impossible for any brew, no matter how good, to win over any brew that came with documentation: a fact that only the friends of those running the panel knew about in advance. Vance and I decided that the 2009 Great Northeastern War would be the perfect time to teach these people a lesson, so we came up with our own special "contest" between the two of us: each of us would enter a "specialty" mead - a mead built off a completely vile and unappetizing concept, yet somehow surprisingly drinkable, and with perfect documentation. The first one of us to successfully make a vile brew that managed to place in the competition would "win." Vance's brew of choice this year was his Peppercorn Capsicumel - a medicinal mead, mine was The Gargamel - a roasted garlic mead.

I imagine the judges may have suspected something this year - either because they read our documentation 15 minutes ahead of time, or because Vance and I were sitting at the "obnoxious pilligan" end of the contestants' table constantly high-fiving each other and giggling - they put our meads at the very end of the tasting line (there were 19 meads in the competition), and they put mine dead last (perhaps such as not to ruin the everyone's palates for any subsequent meads). The look on Lady Sylvia's face when they uncorked The Gargamel was priceless - she looked so angry (along with several of the other long-running past winners at the other end of the table) when the garlic smell ballooned out of the bottle and fishbowled the entire tasting hall. No words can describe the pride I felt upon overhearing one of the audience members complain "oh man, I can smell it from over here." The woman pouring tasting proportions poured out less than 1/4 of the amount she had been previously pouring into everyone's tasting cups. One could say it was a "pungent aroma." Lady Sylvia's end of the table was in an uproar bitching about the smell - she started grilling me about the mead and the process, but let me tell you - I am, if nothing else, a woman who knows all about the monster she creates. And I knew that the mead tasted nothing like it smelled. It was sweet and smooth, with just a hint of savory garlic. It messed with everyone's mind. It did exactly what the bottle and the documentation said it would. There was nothing they could do, except give the Gargamel 3rd place in this year's potables competition... over Lady Sylvia's highly-anticipated maple mead.

And that is the story of how The Gargamel "won".