Mead Review

Last night I had my first actual glass of mead.

Well, first I had to go to Walmart at three thirty in the morning to get a corkscrew since there doens't seem to be one here at the crew house. Surprising, the amount of people shopping that early in Walmart, but then again I guess sometimes spending your guvment money just cant wait.

After pulling the cork I poured a glass. It's not horrible, it could be way worse. My major criticism of it in fact is that it's too sweet. It's almost sickly-sweet, but not as bad as plum wine (which is one of the few liquors I've found that I just can't really deal with). Of note is the slight carbonation it has retained, which I think makes it a little nicer. It seems to have mellowed out a little in the bottle, based on the smell I remember at racking and the smell last night at opening.

The alcohol content tested out to something like twelve and a half percent, so it is decently strong - about on par with standard wines.

It may be sweet, but will still f--k you up.

I'd like to try making some more, though with a few minor differences. I think I'd like to try a different strain of yeast (maybe a turbo yeast in hopes of seventeen percent alcohol), and a bit less honey (so it finishes drier).

I might even create a second, lower alcohol (i.e. twelve percent) batch in my other carboy using apricots and cherries from my trees since their getting ready to produce ripe fruit.

I'm also playing with the idea of bottling them with some carbonation - I'm still not certain about this as I really don't want to have to go through all the hassle of using champagne corks or cages, etc. However, if I can manage a slight carbonation I should be able to get away with just a normal cork. The other thought I had was using beer bottles with standard caps (or maybe oxygen reducing caps) to overcome this, but that means sanitizing a lot more bottles than if I used wine bottles.

I plan on probably drinking the rest of the bottle tonight, since last night's initial amount didn't leave me with a hangover (something I was actually really worried about).