If you always wanted to make mead yet never have I have put together the video for you. This is my easy guide to making your first one gallon batch of mead in eight easy steps. It is inexpensive and makes a good mead. You can watch the tutorial on my youtube channel here: How to Successfully make your first batch of mead
Maybe you can identify this polearm? If you can then send me an email!
I got an email from a collector of Medieval weaponry (Nathan). He recently acquired a great looking polearm and he is having trouble identifying it. He sent me pics hoping I could help but I am having trouble too. It is almost a bardiche but the blade doesn’t connect to the pole at the base. And I dont think it’s a poleaxe because the blade is just too long. Anyhoo, I thought somebody out there might be able to recognize it. There are no markings at all on it. Here is one pic and if you want to see more pictures of the blade, handle, overall and more you can see them on my website here: An Unknown Medieval Polearm (It is about 5′10″ overall length)
Every year for the past 75 years there has been a convention in Vermont where amateur telescope makers meet. Ever since I was a teen I have been wanting to go to this convention. Finally this year I went (Just this weekend past). It was an amazing experience and there were so many wonderful telescopes there! And the night sky was so amazingly dark!
Stellafane is a world famous club and event and people come from all over the world for it. If you are really into telescopes and telescope making you have probably heard of it and maybe you have even gone to it.
Anyhoo, I will be posting lots more information to my telescopenerd.com website and for now I have a youtube video showing some of the telescopes. You can watch that video here
There aren’t a whole lot of medieval castles in america and the ones we do have aren’t 500 years old like their european counterparts. Anyway, I have a goal to visit as many medieval castles as possible and I am starting in a radius around where I live. I have visited a lot of these so far this year and the latest one is an interesting little castle on in connecticut on the bank of the connecticut river.
It is called Gillette Castle and it’s quite a unique little place. It was built in the period between 1915 and 1919 all out of local stone and all to the architecturual plans of its owner William Gillette. He was a famous theatre actor in the last century and is most famous for his portrayal as Sherlock Holmes.
It is quite unique on the outside and on the inside. I have never seen a castle like this and I called it decayed baroque 
The picture will tell you why!
It’s a fun trip and if you live in new england you might want to make a day trip and go out to see it. One of the unique things about it is that there is a ferry across the river that you can take to see it. Kind of different, and very New England.
And if you want to check out more medieval castles and see the ones I have visited so far you can visit my website here: Medieval Castles
I watched a movie last night (Outlander
Early on our main character is given a flagon of a drink and after taking a sip he spits it out because it tastes terrible! Of course that drink is mead and nothing could be further from the truth! The same thing happens in the recent Angelina Jolie Beowulf movie. To make things even worse in Outlander they dig a big ditch to capture the dragon and they fill it with this bubbling and scummy mass of mead. Of course a flaming arrow sets it all on fire. Hmm… this really burns me up -no pun intended.
Mead is just not like that. I think this whole “Mead as a barbaric drink” is just not warranted. It is made from honey. Could it be that bad?
Here is a picture of a bottle of mead that I made. Does that look scummy to you?
If you want to learn more about mead and making it yourself I have everything you could want to know on my website here: The Joy of Mead Making
