I went to the zoo, and what did I see?

( Rose, with a lion )

( Rose, who pointed at a chicken and had her finger pecked )

( Rose, hanging out with the band )

I had a beautiful muse here, all about spinning plates and family life when you've got three children and the rush of managing to keep the plates spinning against all odds and how Rose is going to miss that wild feeling my other children were a part of, when we were collecting them all to go home or watching them all at places like the zoo.

And then I did a beautiful description of my kitchen on Friday night, with MsNotaGoth and Sneetch helping make dinner and mr_bassman  washing dishes and Rose demanding pieces of grated cheese, while everyone but Rose tried to talk about whatever was important to them at the moment.  It included me grinning maniacly as I went to check on doushkasmum  and sacred_chao who were hiding from it all in the family room.

But LJ ate it as it was posted, and I had to write it all out again.  Bummer

Also

I came home, mucked around with my camera and posted a bunch of photos of tent making.

Mead and other brewing update

The magic number is 1040.  That's the hydrometer reading of the mead.

The mead had stopped bubbling, except for changes in temperature, but there is still sugar to be made into alcohol.

So tonight I added yeast nutrient (about a teaspoon) and a new batch of yeast.  The yeast is EC something, and was described as a good "killer" yeast.  It will kill the old yeast, if there's any left, and start the process again.

If all goes well, we should be able to bottle the mead for secondary fermenting in two weeks or so and it will likely be drinkable at Festival.  The good news is that the mead is quite tasty, even at this stage.

I think we'll put the mead into bottles instead of one of the Abbotsford kegs because Festival is only 66 days away, that's less than 10weeks.

Allowing at least 4 weeks in the keg and 2 weeks fermenting plus a week for faff, means that the mead has to be out of the large fermenter in the next 3 weeks so we can make the Festival beer.

doushkasmum can you make cider in your big fermenter?