Merry Mead Making!

Learning via drinking... the best kind of learning.

Today is an update on my mead making journey. My friends and I sat down and drank a lot of the stuff I brewed this past year when we met up the Friday before Christmas and learned a few interesting tidbits while filling our mead horns.

My mead horn.

I had mentioned before that I used two different yeasts in making my first two batches of mead. The first batch was a wine yeast, and the later was an ale yeast. They have drastically different flavors after fermentation, and I had initially thought that my first batch with the wine yeast was not yet ready to drink and needed more time to age due to a ‘hot’ alcohol taste at the end of the flavor.

Well, my best friend bought some commercial mead from the Superstition Brewery for us to try and compare the home made stuff to, and we were very surprised to fine the same ‘hot’ alcohol taste coming through on the Strawberry mead he bought. We were a bit shocked, and annoyed, and declared the mead equal to my first batch (that is, not yet drinkable) and went about our business chatting and doing other things before we came back to finish our cups and found that a little time letting it breath removed the ‘hot’ taste.

Intrigued, we wondered if the same would happen with my own mead, and with some more experimenting, and even more drinking, we found this to be the case. So the mead that I thought was previously not ready, was actually drinkable by letting it breath a bit. Testing on the ale yeast meads, revealed that the apple flavor came through much stronger and more sour when letting it breath as well.

I had heard about letting wines breath before drinking, but I had never heard about this with mead, though it makes sense since it is essentially a honey wine. It was amazing what simply letting the mead breath for 5 minutes did to the flavor profile, regardless of yeast.

I also gave out a bunch of bottles of mead for Xmas, and even took a bottle to share to my Freemason installation ( I have officially joined the officers line this year). Our DDGM (that’s District Deputy Grand Master) was in attendance, and enjoyed it so much he wants to buy several bottles off me from my next batch. I also intend to have some on hand for the toasts we do when we raise a brother to Master Mason.

We are having friends over for New Years this coming weekend to finish off the mead I have left, and I am going to thoroughly enjoy testing different breathing lengths to see what different flavors come through. I will also be starting up the next batch of brews for the coming year. Experimenting with different flavors has been fun and looks like it will continue to be a focus. Next on the list: Elderberry Mead, Maple Syrup Mead, 2 different apple Cysers, a tart Cherry Mead, and a traditional done with the ale yeast. Next year looks to be delicious.

Some of the new ingredients.

Brewing my next batch of mead seems an excellent way to welcome in the new year. I hope yours is an blessed as mine is shaping up to be. Happy New Year!