We’ve all had those moments when we realize something has our attention and we can’t deny it. Earlier in the year I shared the inspiration and the recipe for my Orange/Vanilla Mead. As my second ever batch of mead the Orange/Vanilla came out better than most other things I’ve made this year. Everyone who has had it had said something humbling in response. I also scored a first place with it in the Northeast Regional Homebrew Competition will see my recipe commercialized by a local producer real soon. Wow, it definitely exceeded my expectations in a big way! In hindsight I realized that mead got a lot of love and attention because I was really excited about learning more about making mead. And now I’m clearly hooked! I have four more batches of different types of mead already fermenting and several other styles planned for next year. 

What caused this focus for me? It’s pretty simple actually. The accessibility of the flavors in the meads I’ve tried over the last year or so. Wine tasting can be an art form, especially if you attempt to train your palate to pick out all the aromas and flavors in the wines you taste. Those flavors are not commonly associated with the fruit form of grapes from which the wines are made. You have to hunt for them a bit, and not everyone is trained to or even interested in doing that. With mead, and more specifically the fruit driven melomels and spiced infused methliglins, flavors are added and are accessible in a much more straightforward way in my experience. Mead flavored with cherry and black currant is going to present those flavors to tasters easily. I’ve noticed that this creates a different tasting experience for many casual drinkers, one that brings them together because they can agree on what they are sensing. I saw this as an opportunity to add something new to my projects and create even more enjoyment for my family and friends as my loyal tasters.

So what I am making?

The first batch I was excited to make was a cyser using apple cider, honey and flavored with cinnamon. Apple pie filling anyone? I’m hoping that’s exactly the impression it projects when it’s done. We’ll see.

 

 

(The cyser all mixed up and ready to ferment.)

The next two are straight up melomels, one flavored with blueberries and the other with both cherry and black currant. Both will be dry and when finished should project subtle fruit and fermented honey aromatics, but seal the deal on taste. A recent taste of both confirmed that they are coming along nicely and are in the zone I was looking for, especially the cherry/black currant. Both started at a lower gravity than a typical dry wine would begin at, meaning the final alcohol content will be around 10% by volume. Not bad for something I hope will be enjoyed socially. Do we call that session wine, stealing a convention from the beer community?

 

 

(I thought the way the blueberries floated up to the top made for a captivating picture.)

The last one is something of a science project for my wife and I. It’s a mead because it has honey in it, but it also has brown sugar, molasses, vanilla and it will be fortified with Bacardi 151 that was steeped with pecans. The idea for what we are calling a pecan pie mead came from my wife Margot. We were toasting to our recent homebrew competition wins and got to thinking about what we should make next. Feeling like we should continue to explore mead and try something with more complex flavors in it Margot threw out the idea of a mead with nutty flavors. Nutty flavors are hard to capture in a fermentable once you move away from products containing malt. I could have used malt and made a porter or brown ale style braggot (mead fermented with malt), but I’ve got another idea for that style in the works already so I kept thinking. Adding pecan flavor using actual nuts or a pecan extract is the obvious path to take. That’s where the Bacardi 151 steeped with pecans comes in. I found pecan extract to be very expensive so I decided to try and make my own. I found several links for folks that had done the same thing to create a pecan infused alcohol to use in baking and cocktail making. Bingo! And it’s fitting we would make this particular mead during the holiday season when many of us will take down a piece (or two) of pecan pie. The aroma is already unmistakably pecan pie and adding in some nutty undertones is really going to make it sing.

My shift of focus to mead might be worrying to some, but fear not. I’ve also made a good deal of wine this year and expect to make some again next year, but the way things are going with the mead, cider and beer projects I am betting my wife and I will more of those beverages in 2012. That’s what you get when you follow your heart and let something catch a fire in your imagination.

I’ve included the recipes for all of these creations below. Be careful, mead might just grab your attention too!

Cheers!

Jason

 

Recipes

Apple Cinnamon Cyser

5 gallons fresh sweet cider

8 lbs honey

4 cinnamon sticks

4 Tbsp

Wyeast Sweet Mead Yeast

Pecan Pie Mead

6 lbs honey

2 lbs dark brown sugar

20 oz molasses

1 vanilla bean, halved the long way

Water to 3 gallons

EC-1118 yeast

 

Blueberry Melomel

6 lbs honey

1 – 96 oz can of Blueberry winemaking concentrate

Water to 3 gallons

EC-1118 yeast

 

Cherry/Black Currant Melomel

6 lbs honey

1 – 96 oz can of Cherry winemaking concentrate

1 – 96 oz can of Black Currant winemaking concentrate

6 lbs white sugar

Water to 6 gallons

EC-1118 yeast