So, what have I been hyping up this week?
You guys already know.
If you're on my TikTok, or on my Instagram, or on my Twitter, you have seen that I had
an announcement for today.
I'm gonna start with that.
Before I say anything, I have the announcement here, and I want you to guess first what it's
gonna be.
I'm gonna tell you anyways, but I want you to guess.
Does it have to do with my wine?
Did I finish my wine?
Well, it's still aging, so yes.
But that's not the big...
That's not the announcement.
Let me tell you what happened.
I was in contact with a buddy of mine, a really close friend, and a friend of the podcast,
who reminded me of my origins, where I come from, you know what I mean?
What I used to be like back then, that I loved, and I'm doing again.
So, drum roll please.
That was a very cheesy intro.
I've started a new show.
That's right.
It's a brand new podcast, it's called Morbid Universe.
Now, why that title?
It's horror.
It's morbid.
It's the macabre.
It's creepy stuff.
That's entirely what the podcast is.
It's a far more serious podcast than this one.
There's no jokes.
There's no background music.
It's just dark grittiness.
That is it.
It's me researching the darker side of life, things that people normally don't really care
too much about, or things that will scare you, things that go bump in the night.
Now, if you like the more serious episodes, you're going to love this series, okay?
Because I'm telling you right now, there's no set schedule because every episode is thoroughly
researched.
The pilot episode has just released.
Give it a listen, and if you love it, let me know in the Instagram DMs, because I'm
making another Instagram for it as well.
Anyway, on to today's episode.
Wow, what a week.
I've been juggling two podcasts this week, and trying to make my own homebrew mead, which
is a type of wine, a honey wine.
Here's the thing.
People were concerned about the legalities of the stuff, and I'm telling you right now,
it's legal for me to do it.
It's just not legal for me to sell it, which is good because I had no intention of giving
it away.
It's all mine.
Having said that, there were some bumps along the road, and just like the cheese episode
from back then, I think it's time you guys knew just how crazy things get.
All right.
So a lot of you are probably thinking right now, how difficult could it be to ferment
your own beverage?
Here's the thing.
I was saying the same thing.
I was saying things like, well, this is so simple.
You just give it time, the proper maintenance and whatnot.
But the thing is, with anything, there's a learning curve, and there is a massive learning
curve when it comes to making wine.
The thing is, right, I did not know that the climate, the soil pH, every single detail
of everything, every atom, anything that moves is important when it comes to making it.
I'm incredibly annoyed right now.
Every time I try to record, I suddenly have gas.
I don't get it.
I say in the podcast recordings, I don't want to burp.
I'm not going to do it, but I can't help it.
I can't.
I just, I don't know.
Maybe I need to see a doctor, but that's fine.
I got life insurance now, which don't get me wrong.
That's not, I'm not going there.
It's kind of dark.
I believe that for the other series.
Anyway, back to the meat making.
Is it hard?
Yes.
But for all the reasons that you wouldn't expect the difficulty to come out of, the
thing is, right, many of you have been watching the saga.
Many of you have been keeping track, looking on my Instagram post and seeing that there's
not much, what's the word?
It's not, there's not many updates because the thing is, it is a slow process.
However, I had to buy star, star sand.
I had to buy bottles.
I realized I got scammed way too late.
Some of the bottles that you can buy online are like $30 and I found them in store for
12.
That's almost double the price that I paid more than double the price because of shipping
and handling.
Turns out they were at my local store, just full of a much cheaper, more inferior wine
that you can just pour out.
That's it.
I wanted the jug, the gallon jug, and that's it.
Is it for fermenting?
Probably not, but you can use it for it because it's got someone else's face and label on
it.
Yeah, it might, it might, you know, run into some difficulties, but not, it's not too difficult.
It's not too bad.
You've got your pipettes, you've got your, um, hydrometer, you've got your yeast that
you have to keep refrigerated, make sure it's refrigerated.
Also activate it before you add it to the meat.
Keep in mind, all of this, every single thing I mentioned is just to begin with.
I mean, I'm excited.
Everything's got moving parts, but when everything is done, you just sit there and you wait.
And it's nice.
You never know when something's going to go boom.
Um, I still need to apologize to my cousin because, well, we'll get to that.
We'll get to that.
Don't worry.
It's just the journey's been insane so far, but the thing is I only have a few days in.
My first mead is still aging.
However, my first mead, that's what I'm talking about.
I've made sparkling orange juice in the past and it was a great success.
It was very easy.
The easiest beverage, much easier than mead.
Mead on the other hand, takes a lot of care, time, processing, and, um, something I learned
the hard way.
You've got to kill the yeast.
I did not know that.
Yeah, you can kind of see where we're going and if you don't, I'll explain later.
Then there's the cost of everything.
Right now because of, um, stuff at work, I have more free time, which sounds bad, but
don't get me wrong, it's not the worst.
It's, uh, I, I use, I utilize my time when I do have it and I do love having free time.
I also have time for my girlfriend and my family.
I love having that.
I'll work in no play mix, Jack the Dole Boy.
However, when it comes to working on this, okay, let me, let's start from the beginning
again.
At this point I have a one gallon jug.
I have something called a stopper, which is, it's a one way valve essentially that you
have to fill with water and it makes sure that nothing goes into the meat that you put
on top.
There is what else?
What else?
The meat, uh, the honey.
Okay.
What am I saying?
Sorry.
I got distracted cause I was like, there's so much to it.
I'm trying to think of all of it.
There's the yeast itself.
I forgot the word yeast.
That's why, um, wine yeast specifically or champagne yeast is my favorite, my preferred
put down the fridge.
So so far three things.
That's it.
And distilled water.
It has to be distilled.
You can't use just regular tap water.
It's got chemicals in it.
You want something distilled with nothing in it in order to not change the flavor profile.
So bam, there you go.
Another expense.
And what else you got?
Well, if you're making meat, you need honey, three pounds of it minimum.
And I got raw unfiltered honey.
So that's what I got, but I did have to sterilize it.
It wasn't pasteurized.
So I had to do it myself.
At this point, we haven't even begun to ferment because I started getting spices.
I got recommendations of all kinds.
The first one I went with is the most simple, a single stick of cinnamon.
That's it.
Little did I know a single stick of cinnamon packs a hell of a punch when you toasted a
bit and I did not know that.
So I toasted the cinnamon on a warm skillet and then dropped it in the wine.
What's the term?
There was a term for it.
What are the technicalities?
Basically the stuff you're going to ferment already.
The liquid with the sugar in it.
You got to get the distilled water and put the honey in it, but you shake it vigorously
a lot.
Okay.
You got to make sure it's all mixed in there.
It's not too hard.
It's just very laborious.
Maybe one or two minutes of shaking and shaking a gallon of water is not too hard.
Once it shook, I personally, my first gallon, I did not pasteurize because I used a filtered
honey.
I used unnatural stuff basically, but it was fine.
My first one, brown sugar, sugar and molasses, two pounds of that and honey.
Mixed it all, put a single cinnamon stick in there and then carefully put it in the
jug after the jug has been sterilized.
I cannot stress that enough.
Everything has to be sterile.
Anything that's going to touch the liquid must be sterilized.
Not for the reason you think.
It's not going to kill you.
Okay.
You're not going to die.
But it will change the flavor because think of it this way.
Anything that goes in the liquid, even the fingernail, even just dipping your finger,
it will come out in the end taste.
It'll probably, if you got the dirt in your fingernail, it'll taste more earthy afterwards.
It's a very specific science.
I don't know how to explain it, but I've noticed it from my personal brewing.
I just realized I'm giving a crash course on how to make mead, but I don't know.
There's something about the process.
When you're older, you make stuff by hand.
It just feels so rewarding when you're done.
Let me put it this way.
You know what?
Before I go any further, I'm going to taste the mead just to make sure it's doing okay.
Wait here.
Okay.
You're with me so far, right?
At this point, we have a mead right now in my hand that is aging.
I'm going to taste it to see how far along we've come because the more it ages, the smoother
it gets.
Now, bear with me.
That little click, that was me opening the bottle.
This is a fermentation bottle specifically made for this.
Down the hatch.
That is... I'm proud of myself.
That is good.
I love it.
It tastes... You have a cinnamony bite with the sweetness of the molasses, of the sugar.
Everything is there.
It's so good.
This is my first successful batch, but I did not get here without fault.
We're going to get into that right now.
Fault number one, I bottled it far too early.
What do I mean by this?
Well, one, I had to drink.
I had the yeast and it was foaming and everything.
Very bubbly and it was... How do you put this?
It looked like a beer, which was fine.
I thought, well, I'm making a wine.
It looks like a beer.
That's fine.
It is not fine.
It is very, very different from a beer.
The process is incredibly different.
Yeast plays a big factor, bigger than I ever could have anticipated until it was too late.
However, let's just get into it.
I'm just going to drink some more actually.
I can't even get over how fucking good this stuff is.
This is proper wine yeast.
This is proper... Proper wine yeast what?
This is proper wine, honey wine.
God damn, I'm really struggling here.
Sorry, that thing hits hard.
And smoothly.
That's the important thing.
It's smooth.
All right, enough blue balling.
Let's get into it.
What do I mean by bottling early?
Let me put it this way.
I got six bottles, evenly distributed the liquid into all of them using a very special
pipette or a siphon.
It's called the siphon.
You have to disinfect it very, very thoroughly.
I have not racked the mead.
That was my first mistake.
My first mistake was not racking the mead.
The reason I didn't do that is because I didn't know you had to.
However, at this point the mead still has yeast in it.
So whatever sugar is inside making it delicious and bubbly, you got to get rid of it.
I don't know how.
At least at the time I didn't.
But I was also blissfully unaware that I was putting active yeast in bottles that were
very pressurized.
There's a naughty no-no word.
Pressurized.
When it comes to brewing, you do not want pressure.
And the same goes for distilling, but I'm not a distiller.
I've never done distilling.
I just know that the same rule applies for both.
What I do know is you do not want pressurized bottles in active yeast.
And I learned that the hard way when I first popped open a bottle and scared the shit out
of my girlfriend.
I am so sorry, babe.
And it scared me too because I thought, okay, the level that it burst at was significantly
higher than I had anticipated.
When I first popped it, I was looking at the foam that came up and I realized something
is really wrong.
This is not good.
I'm scared.
All these thoughts came out real quick, didn't they?
But the thing is, it was a learning curve.
I did not know what I was doing, at least fully.
And what I learned immediately after hearing that was I had made a mistake, a big one.
But silly old me did not know that these bottles were as bad as they were.
I learned later, only much later, when I tried to open another one and the lid flew off the
bottle.
Not just a little, not just far.
It shot out with enough force to break the ceiling fan.
Thankfully it missed and just hit the ceiling itself.
I have a very high ceiling, which should tell you a lot.
And it's very scary to see it, especially because this is where I get to apologize to
my cousin.
I put it in front of her asking if she wanted some and it flew above her head.
That's why I felt bad because the explosion sound is not normal.
It's something called a bottle bomb and I made it by accident.
Basically you get pressurized gas underneath the lid and the lid is a special bottle that
holds in everything, no matter what.
The problem is, it's not supposed to be that pressurized.
That's where I fucked up.
It's okay.
I learned that there's something called wine stabilizer and I did not use it.
It kills the yeast and leaves the flavor profile as is without messing anything up.
The thing is, I also know I don't want any unnatural chemicals in my drinks, so I found
the natural solution was to boil water and pour it into it.
Not so that it dilutes it, but so that all the yeast in there is immediately killed.
You essentially shock it.
And I did that.
I had more of the meat and I feel good right now.
I only had a few sips.
And it warms the belly as it should.
I gave it the ingredients that just make you feel warm in your stomach.
It also makes you feel good.
It's a feel good drink.
At some point during the...
When I discovered that the bottles were under immense pressure, I realized there and then
that I had to do something.
The problem is I had six highly pressurized bottles unaware of when they were going to
blow off or not.
One of them that I had opened was very full.
Full to the brim and with pressurized liquid so strong that it also blew off the lid.
The problem is not only did it blow off the lid, it broke it in half.
So I had to fix it manually and well, I was just kind of scared the whole time.
You ever see those champagne bottles that they like blow off the lid and it just goes
flying?
This is essentially what I did.
Unintentionally, keep in mind, I did not want this to happen because essentially all the
yeast was still alive, not a single bit of it was racked or removed.
So I had a very bread tasting wine and I did not want that.
So what do you do?
Well, in this case, I tried my hardest to save it, but every time I popped open a bottle,
a big number of the liquid would shoot out.
In fact, it's still pretty bad.
Right now what I have is four bottles instead of six.
That means a bottle, a bottle and a half actually.
The half bottle is what I just drank.
It's my sample, my sampler, which was pretty good and very, very much still aging, but
it's, it's good.
It's getting to the point where I want the flavor that I expected and I'm happy about
that.
I just wish that it wasn't such a rough road to get here.
You know what I mean?
Okay.
So we have this wine pressurized in a bottle.
Every time I open it, a lot of the liquid shoots out, but at least three fourths of
it stays in there.
The math doesn't add up, but you're getting ahead of me.
So I put this all in a cauldron or I guess a deep pot.
You know what I mean?
And it all fit, thankfully.
So what I immediately did afterwards was boil as much liquid as I could, at least two cups,
two cups of water and I poured it in and thankfully the yeast died almost immediately because
boiling water does not mix with yeast and it did solve most of the problems.
The thing I had on my hand was a bunch of bottles.
I had a re bottle and I did it quickly.
Everything sterilized and whatnot.
It was just nerve wracking to do all this while the, the wine was just sitting out in
the air.
The thing is you do not want oxygenation in your wine.
It can make it taste very bitter.
I didn't want that too much oxidation will ruin the taste and it almost did, but thankfully
it did not because I worked fast.
And when you work fast on these things, you tend to have a very, a very good tasting wine,
very good profile anyway.
By the way, have I seen to have more energy in this podcast episode?
It's honestly because I'm just so excited that it came out the way it did.
After all of this, after all these messes, I have a decent wine.
However, keep in mind right now what I have in the fridge is the one that was bottled
and I had to kill the yeast and at this point I had to do one last test.
I left it out for a day and I was worried the whole time because I had to get it at
room temperature and let it sit there for 24 hours.
After 24 hours, I opened the bottle and no gas.
I had done it.
I fixed the problem.
Now the only thing left was to let it age.
Honestly it's been two weeks, not too long of an aging process, but it tastes so much
better and it doesn't explode.
How great.
I love that.
So this wine, thankfully against all odds, survived everything wrong that happened to
it.
I would count it as a win.
The only problem is it was immediately followed by the biggest L I've ever taken and how
do, what do I mean by the biggest L?
Okay.
I mean, I got way too overconfident.
I made another batch.
This time I made it so that it could age with the skins of certain fruits.
This time I put strawberries, blueberries, all kinds of stuff, very delicious drink,
at least when it was, before it was fermented, it was going to be a much drier drink, but
with more color.
That was the goal.
The problem, the big problem is that fruit skin tends to expand when in contact with
yeast, not right away.
That's the problem.
So I put it to age and thankfully I have this little quirk about myself where at two or
three in the morning I'll get hungry and I'll get up and I'll get something from the fridge.
And while I was doing that, I thought I might as well check on the yeast and the wine.
Before I even got to the fridge, there was the stopper that was on top of the bottle
had been launched off of it.
It burst off.
Why do things get explosive when I do them?
I don't know and I really hate that.
I don't like this, but I opened the door where it was aging in a small room and there was
just fruit skin everywhere.
It was three in the morning.
It shot up almost touching the roof.
It was, it was bad.
I only came in afterwards and it looked like a crime scene.
I thought I just spent like $30 on fruit and it's all gone.
It had been oxidized.
The yeast shot out of it.
It was incredibly contaminated and that I spent about a half hour cleaning the room.
It was so devastating.
I really didn't like that that happened, but it smelled good at least.
That's the one thing that I could say.
The problem is I was now covered in fruit skin on my hands and legs and I just, it was
a long night.
I threw away the entire batch.
It was a scrap.
It was an L. It did not taste, it wasn't going to taste good because it was way too contaminated,
way too much had gotten into it.
The fruit flies got to it before I could and once the fruit flies get in, just throw it
away.
Don't even risk it.
That's a, it's a big no-no.
It's, but just like with the cheese episode, I've, I know that you guys know me.
Did that stop me from trying again?
No, it did not.
So the next day I got up, I got some fruits, did the same thing.
I got much less fruit.
This time I only got blueberries because all of the strawberries at the store were rotting
and I didn't want to spend more money.
Now what I have now is a wine that I made and I made sure to filter out the damn skin.
That's where I messed up.
Okay.
At least at first I only put in half of it.
I thought, okay, I'm going to put significantly less and see what happens.
I now have an interesting colored mead.
It looks like wood.
It looks like dark wood.
It's not going to be what I'll call it.
Don't think that that's only distillation.
I don't do that, but it's, it's a nice color.
I like it.
I look at it and I think this looks like my skin color.
Admittedly, it looks very brown, like my skin.
And my brother pointed out kind of looks like Kanye West skin color.
I don't know why he mentioned specifically Kanye, but I guess it did.
And I aged it.
I'm aging it right now.
Actually, it's nowhere near done.
Maybe near Christmas it'll be done, which is good because I put a lot of spices in it.
This one I do.
I went ham.
I put half the amount of cinnamon, but I put ginger and a bunch of other stuff.
This drink in particular, I won't tell you every spice because it's my spice.
I did it.
It's mine.
You can't have it.
It's not yours.
It's mine.
I also can't, um, I can't know if it's good or not until it's done.
You know what I mean?
Right now it has become a bit of alcoholic, just a little.
It's not all the way there.
It needs more time, way more time.
But immediately what I noticed was that the skins of the blueberries were on top, right?
They were on top of the drink and I guess they mixed with the yeast and shrunk and dropped.
They shrunk down into little clumps and they dropped down.
It was interesting because I got to play with it and I also added citrus peel, which boosted
the strength of the yeast and it made it way faster.
It was such a cool process seeing it.
Citrus peel used in another, another situation other than, you know, cattle feed.
I didn't know you could do that.
So I was having a great time when I finally saw the other day.
I did this thing, right?
I let it sit in with the yeast for two weeks, really gathering the beverage's flavor and
not touching it yet.
But the other day I racked it properly.
As you guys know, big, big plus for racking.
Because after it came out, it was smooth as butter.
It was clean.
It was not clear yet.
Not clear.
It's getting there.
It's got to be racked two or three more times maybe.
And I'm trying not to overrack it.
But people said don't overrack.
It'll mess with it.
And I'm really trying not to, but it's kind of hard not to.
You know what I mean?
Because at this point I've made mead, which is honey wine.
I have not made actual wine yet.
We're working up to it.
I'm starting with an easier drink, working my way up.
But either way, it's not going to be super easy.
You know what I mean?
I mean, we're basically fermenting sweet water.
That's what it is.
So right now what I have is one successful mead that was just flavored with cinnamon
that's aging.
Another one is also aging, but this one in a different light.
It's not refrigerated.
It's not cold.
It's room temperature and it's it's cellar temperature basically.
I'm going to see what the difference is between both.
There's going to be a significant difference with both beverages.
Having said that, I really want to thank someone.
Nick, you came in clutch.
I want to thank you because I wanted to confirm something and you did confirm it for me.
The thing about yeast and in and made, it's not supposed to be bubbly.
It's not a beer.
It's supposed to be flat.
And it is now it's flat.
But the one that's aging still got a bit of bubbles in it.
And I'm going to leave it for a lot longer because it needs to you know, it needs more
flavor and needs to be stronger.
Like me.
I've been working out more.
Look at me.
I'm so buff.
You can't see me.
I'm not making YouTube videos.
I'm not good.
Not about this.
When it comes to yeast brewing, all of the stuff, it is a science.
It is an absolute hill.
It is a hurdle.
I thought making cheese was difficult.
It is because it takes like three hours.
But wine takes months.
I mean actual months.
I test and I test and I use the oxidizer when I first started.
And then I wait till I see oxidizer.
I think it's right thing.
But I do a lot.
I'm a lot more.
Yeah, that meat hit different.
Oh man.
It's been a long day.
I recorded two podcasts today.
And you know what?
It felt good.
It felt really good.
This journey of making meat has just begun though.
I'm not going to say that I'm going to sell it because I can't do that illegally.
Unless I get the paperwork, in which case I'd basically have to start my own business.
Like my brother.
By the way, Garcia Pest Control.
Check him out on Facebook.
And it's fun to me looking at all the gadgets that I now have that I can use for making
my own stuff.
I'm not going to sell it.
Again, I got to reiterate that.
It is not for sale.
I can't do that.
I'm just practicing it.
And I don't know.
It hits different when you're doing something that you're kind of excited to try.
Because the thing is, I basically live near Napa Valley, which a lot of wines are coming
from here.
A lot of your favorite wines come from Napa Valley.
Because the grapes here grow.
And I just, I don't know.
I look at these grapes, these vineyards.
I look at these massive breweries and I just think, I want to be a part of that.
It's been one of my life's dreams to make my own wine professionally.
To have my own wine line.
I would absolutely love that.
The end goal for me is to have my name on a label that sells well.
Will I get there?
I don't know.
I also wanted to be a movie star.
That hasn't happened.
But the thing is, never give up on your dreams, okay?
Because I never have on mine.
The biggest thing we have is hope.
And I don't know if you could tell.
I'm very hopeful.
The one thing I hope for is that you guys are there for the entire journey.
You know what I mean?
I hope that you guys tag along.
Because there's going to be quite a lot more stuff that I do.
YouTube, I've started doing that as well.
In fact, RSS.com hit me up and said, you can now make YouTube videos with your recordings.
You can just upload it.
You know?
And I thought, I might do that.
Not sure how, but I'll look into it.
That looks interesting to me and I would love it.
Anyway, whew.
A long episode.
All in one take.
That's going to do it for this episode of the Meatweed Podcast.
Please check out the other podcast that I made.
It's called Morbid Universe.
It will release at the same time and date as this podcast, okay?
Because the thing is, this episode I like talking about stuff that I'm passionate about.
I'll talk about whatever.
Morbid Universe on the other hand is specifically things like disease, death, anything with
a macabre.
You know?
That's why it's called Morbid.
And our first episode is going to be about aliens.
Because as you guys know, Las Vegas had a recent alien sighting.
Is it legit?
I don't know.
I did a bit of a deep dive.
The problem was, things didn't go as planned.
Because well, you just have to listen to the recording in order to find out.
Although I was not expecting what happened during the recording, I'm still kind of looking
over my shoulder afterwards.
You talk about beings from another planet, you tend to freak out a bit when stuff happens
behind you.
And there's a lot happening behind me.
Especially this thing.
What is it?
You'll have to listen to the episode to find out.
Anyway, I also tried crumble cookies for the first time today.
I gotta say, $5 a cookie is a fucking steep amount.
But you know what?
My fat ass loved it.
I'm not gonna lie.
They had Reese's peanut butter cookie and it was so good.
Alright, Instagram.
My link tree is in the description.
For some people it doesn't work.
Recently I've had to do a bunch of copy and pasting.
Hopefully it does work this time.
Anyway, I will see you guys next week with an episode of Meet We Podcast.
However, Morbid Universe is not scheduled yet.
When will it come out?
When it is fucking ready.
That's right.
Cause I'm gonna do a lot of work on that side.
Alright, see ya when I see ya.
And don't drink and drive.
If you're under the age of 21, don't drink at all.
Alright, see ya guys.