Backlog: Brainy Brew

In the neo-Alchemical, nerdy manner of today's modern mages, its label bears a Latin name --- or rather, the uncorrected version thereof (we tend to get as close as we can with Latin, sometimes): Potus Agiliorum Salterimens. The drink of a quick, leaping mind.

It has an astringent taste, unpleasant only if you dislike that sort of thing --- odd herbal flavours, hard alcohol, and the like. Otherwise, it's quite palatable. (Try wormwood, you wimps.) Modern-magisterial too is the bottle, with raised glass curls on it I quite like, and no screw-threads.

Agiliorum Salterimens was one of the early potions to come out of my "lab" when I began studying Potistry and herbal medicine. It's a basic tincture, macerated for a few weeks or so and then strained. (The wonderful thing about tinctures is that they last and last and last. This is also a problem, because if you don't use potions quickly, and enjoy making more, they tend to find corners in your cabinets and breed like crazy and suddenly there are bottles everywhere.)

While the recipe is in The Book but not etched in my head, I can recall that gingko is a primary ingredient. Rosemary is in there as well. And so are . . . kumquats! For some reason, the Potion Muse suggested I toss these in the mix --- I suppose because the scent and taste of them did something oddly stimulating to my mind.

 Objective accomplished.

The Umbridge Trap

BREAKING NEWS - Released for the first time...

 There's no need to make it any longer. But these photographs of a confidential potion in the making are a simmering scandal in the making!

 Quite a few people were displeased by the conduct of Umbridge during her so-called term as Headmistress Aspiring, and the solution to the problem of her presence found many creative outlets, with many interesting results. One set of accounts that never reached the public were those regarding the development and testing of the 'Umbridge Trap', a curious potion so vile in its poisonous sweetness that its concocter used it to rid his laboratory of flies and jikzeedles.
 Umbridge was reported by certain student eyewitnesses later as having displayed phases of apparent mania, brainfreeze, spontaneous babbling and random spells of staring at pink objects, such that ordinary functioning was impossible until she broke out of her haze. These phases are now known to be the work of a potion created, and tested at random on his unsuspecting victim, by Severus Snape, the resident Potions Master at the school.

  It is not known why Snape did not release this potion anonymously for use in resistance efforts against the Ministry. It would have given a great many people reason to laugh, and might have saved plenty of others from angst, if he had.
 Speculation has been put forth that he did not wish the general populace to know exactly what went in this mixture, wishing people to think his products to be made of unfailingly superior ingredients. As one entry of notes for the brew read:
 Multiple combinations and recipes have been tested, yet the most effective are invariably those of the foulest, most common sort of confection - as if proof is needed that the target victim has absolutely no taste whatsoever. Any more subtle concatenation proves to give poorer results.
 The potion, apparently, was ingeniously able to mimic a variety of substances in its composition, such as those shown. They include, above:
 Marshmallow cookie sandwiches, artificial gardenia essence (in bottle), congealed cotton candy, stale angel-food cake (aged to crispness for several months in air), cheap party animal crackers, and pink wafer cookies (also stale). Bottom: Weighing of total mass, with congealed cotton candy being strigiled for impurities.
 Target victim appears unable to resist these confections, wrote Snape in his notes.
 Two of the felling agents used to produce mania and other physiomental disruptions included bat wings and belladonna.

 The creation and administering method of this brew are rare insights into a clever and devious mind but more importantly, may prove what has been debated for a long time: That, though privately it may have been, Severus Snape liked to play.

Backlog: Vintage Brew

Pop quiz: An easy one this time. What contains as much Vitamin C as an orange?
Unless you're a dunderhead, you know it's three rosehips.
Rosehips are what we herb and potion nuts call a nutritive, for obvious reasons: Besides Vitamin C, they have a healthy handful of other vitamins and nutrients --- a sort of food-in-a-fruit.

Not this winter but last, I gathered a stock of plump dogrose hips --- at Solstice, to be precise. The best time to gather rosehips is after the first frost --- this is when the nutrient content is highest. It happened to be frosty that night, as well, and like a moron I forgot to eat enough raw garlic and got a cold. (Winter Solstice rites in my home district are a rather brutal all-nighter if you get poor weather.)
The hips then went into maceration (steeping) for a wildly long time, even for my tinctures: Six months. I wanted to extract as much as possible, and see what the result would be like --- and, knowing nothing would explode, thought: Why not?

The product --- shown above in a test-tube --- was very dark and concentrated, wonderfully rich and tangy and piquant with citrusy bite.

Next came settling and decanting.
Rosehips are most nutrient-rich in their outer rinds --- most fruits are. Their insides are full of seeds and a prickly fuzz. These need to be removed unless you want a cloudy potion, and the best method I've found is to simply let them settle, then decant or pour off the clear upper layer. For the last dregs (to minimize waste of a valuable potion!), test-tubes were used to allow as much settling depth as possible (above, with sediments). The final result --- clear ruby drops of pure health. Won't Pomfrey be pleased.
This winter, I may or may not make more of this tangy tonic, seeing as I have a couple of bottles of it already and it lasts awhile.

The idea of "aging" a brew, creating richer flavor and furthering extraction, is appealing. But I am not the first to think of it: The Chinese have been known to macerate herbal mixtures for as long a time. Technically, such a length of time is not required, at least not anymore --- for example, if percolation is used, a decent extraction can be obtained in a couple of days. I have yet to set up for this method, however --- it requires certain tools.
Until then, I use a method that produces a genuine vintage brew!

Jan 9: The Day Of Black

What were you doing on Snape's birthday?
It's midwinter here, and thus is either clear and tit-puckering cold, or rainy and gray. (This year, the 9th fell on weather of the former type, which is great for cloaks and frocks.) Not having internal heat, except for a heater that runs my juice bill up and an apartment that gets cold again in thirty minutes due to poor insulation, I have learned to be tough, whether or not I always enjoy it. Sort of like Severus. Though there is a certain coziness to staying in one's damp, chilly lair doing things one enjoys.
I passed the evening doing such things --- namely writing and drawing and brewing.

The brew above is pretty straightforward. It turns just about anything you place into it a nice black. (It's actually a clothing dye-bath: The spoon at the surface reveals the density of blackness) Lovely. Happy birthday, Sev!

Its equivalent for edible potions would be the classic iron cauldron: Decoct an herbal tea for at least 20 minutes, it's going to taste distinctly of metal and appear blackish. And be great for us, ah, women whose iron drops at certain times of the year and leaves us distinctly peakish --- surely that is the reason for my periodic, rabid longing for fresh blood and rare steaks... !

Where you been, Sev...?!?!

Lost in my own world, all right?

%$#%@%#$#^%#$**  FUNKY SEV!!!!!!!!  **&$&^#^%^$&^$%

It's been a long time since postings appeared on the Snapeshifter blog, namely because:

a) The Snapeshifter has been uber-busy doing other things --- namely, in tracking down certain persons who received pieces of Severus's soul upon his death, and writing about them! One can only spend so much time in someone else's world, before it becomes necessary to create worlds of one's own, and channel them.... needless to say, this world --- and these people --- are extremely demanding. Trust me. I am, after all, the Conduit.

b) I hate I hate I HATE Muggle equipment. They don't find a good thing for two seconds before they insist on making it obsolete WHY can they not stick with one WORKABLE system ?!?!?!?  snark
In the main, this is reason Number One. Snape dislikes computers, and has had issues with making them work --- namely, in that one must find alternate ways to load photos onto this site when one system goes obsolete, and half the fun is the photos! Fortunately, we have just found such an alternate route.
Not that anyone actually reads this blog, or cares.
Only the authrix, the Channeler herself, cares... after all, one must keep records as reliably as possible in the potion business...

Since last post, the Snapeshifter has begun frequenting Gothic dance nights to stay in touch with the Inner Snark and work out all those pent-up Emo-kinks. Seriously funky. (This is also a great place to meet fellow Snape-soul channelers.)
So where do the kinks come from?
For three years, the Snapeshifter was almost as unlucky as Severus: She didn't have a job she hated, but rather, had no job. Period. This gets difficult, since one has bills, if one hopes to maintain a nice bed and potions lab in a space better insulated than a cardboard box. Luckily, The Woman Who Was Snape found a job and has held it for the past year-and-a-half....

LET ME DROP EVERYTHING AND WORK ON YOUR PROBLEM.

....she's an operator (smooth or not, you be the judge)!

Don't let the face fool you. I'm very glad to have this job, even when I have to drop everything and help someone. I have my paycheck, I have my desk I can always return to...
And best of all, let's be real here. How long does the average operator's phone call take? Less than a minute. The rest of the time, I am allowed to write, draw, use the computer, and in short, do all those things that make a life richer for us creative people. Ex-xcellent.

Finally, the job lets me pursue a childhood interest that got put on the laboratory's furthest-back burner...

 
 ...gymnastics!
 Practice occurs between one and three times per week. Four is possible, if I'm feeling very masochistic. We're not training for the Olympics here, after all --- just State Champion 26-35 year-old-division will do, which I indeed won last year. You never know, I may need to knock off an enemy counterspy in a magically-unfriendly situation.

Brewing has continued sporadically since the Snapeshifter last went public. Not on a serious basis, mind, what with that busy-ness we mentioned; but as needed, most certainly. The latest news on brews, however, is a topic for another day...