Mead is truly the drink of the gods

[XemaSab]

:9

http://www.skyriverbrewing.com/

[Lethe]

1. oh, soft, my taste buds quiet, we have a visitor

Mead is delicious, but very very sweet. I drink lots of it at the renaissance faire.

Doesn't mix well with gin. :)

edit: my Asatruan friends drink barrels full of it....also very appropriate considering mead was drank by the Norse gods all the time.

[DarkTirade]

2. Gah. No, mead is not inherently sweet. It's like any other drink. It can be sweet or dry.

But because it's made from honey, people just expect it to be. So that's what tends to get made.

Grapes are sweet too, but there are plenty of really dry red wines out there.

[Kali]

5. yep

[NJmaverick]

3. I never had a chance to try this drink

How would you describe it?

[DarkTirade]

9. It's really no more describable than wine is.

There are lots of varieties, lots of subtle flavors, and while the base may be honey it's fermented honey, so that means it won't taste quite like regular honey. :) It's usually classified along with wine, and bottled as such.

I would not recommend just finding a bottle at a liquor or wine store and buying it though... 90% of the time you're going to get CRAP. Sometimes not even real mead... a lot of places will just mix cheap white wine with honey to make a sweetened wine that they call mead. It's not. They're lying. It's pyment, not mead. Pyment is any alcoholic drink that has both grapes and honey in it. In order for it to be both a pyment and a mead, the the honey has to be fermented. And obviously in order to be able to call it wine as well, the grapes have to be fermented. The worst offender, IMO, is http://liquorama.net/browseproducts/Bunratty-Meade.HTML">Bunratty. Some people like it... mostly people who like cloyingly sickeningly sweet drinks. I personally can't stand it.

If you find a bottle of http://www.chaucerswine.com/mead.asp">Chaucer's that's a good start. It's a fairly plain, basic mead. Slightly on the sweet side for my taste, but I tend to favor drier drinks. Most people would probably rank it in the middle as far as sweetness goes. It's not the best, but it's usually cheaper than the crappy ones and it's not bad. And they include a free spice packet if you want to try hot mulled mead. (which I highly recommend on cold days. I've started bringing cider and mead and mulling spices to family celebrations like thanksgiving and christmas.) It's kind of the basic standard that you can find in a lot of stores, one of the few that doesn't completely suck. :P A lot of the snobs online try to complain about it, but they're just... being snobs. :P I recommend serving either refridgerated, or heated with the spices. It's not as good at room temperature.

If you can find a polish or finnish mead (or mjod as they're sometimes called), those are often more like cordials made from honey than anything else. They are often very thick and/or very sweet. Some recipes will call for half honey, half water. Others will have more water... but then they ice distill it so that it will become thicker and sweeter... and have more alcohol. They're also usually very VERY expensive though, since the aging time is at the very least several years, and at the most a few decades.

[XemaSab]

10. Chaucer's was not very good

Sky River, now that was VERY good.

I've got two bottles of alcohol on top of the fridge for special occasions, and one of them's a bottle of Sky River mead. :9

[DarkTirade]

13. No, but it's decent. :P

Haven't tried Sky River.

[NJmaverick]

14. Thanks, now I am going to have to try some

[XemaSab]

12. It's a little like a white wine

but IMHO, it's a lot simpler and cleaner. It doesn't have that grapy flavor. :P

[NJmaverick]

16. Definately sounds like something worth trying

[GCP]

4. I got one of the worst hangovers EVER with mead

:(

[hedgehog]

6. Be very careful with it, especially if served a large flagon at a

Renaissance Faire on a hot day! My son-in-law was very happy and very in love with the whole world and very loud about it because it's about twice as strong as the beer he's used to drinking!


:evilgrin:

[DarkTirade]

7. Well then maybe he should drink more european beers.

The kind that get up to 12 percent or so. :P

[Mojambo]

8. Nice post, Thor. n/t

[LostinVA]

11. It's what Haruka and I used for the toast at our wedding

We got it from Magpie Meadery. We saved a bottle to drink on our 1st anniversary.

[vixengrl]

15. I wish I could get my hands on some--

I have two "great" (as in, can get all the Weyerbacher, Victory, random microbrews and Belgian imports my little beer-snob heart would like) beer distributors nearby, but no ready source of mead--last I had was from here:

http://www.gophila.com/C/Countryside/382/Montgomery_County/248/U/General_Lafayette_Inn__Brewery/717.html

and that was a good eight years ago. I brought home a growler of mead, and sad to say, quaffed the bulk of it in an eve, to the tunes of a PBS marathon of musicals and some Sarah Brightman. I was up all night with the muses upon me, singing along. It was either divine or I was stoned out of my gourd. Something like that if I'm belting Andrew Lloyd Webber tunes in the wee hours of the a.m.

I may give them a call so see if my local "Wine & Spirits Shop" has Sky River, but I'm not optimistic. PA LCB is getting better, but....?

[Kali]

18. make some!

its easy, just takes a while

[EstimatedProphet]

17. I've had good mead, and I've had horrible mead. I prefer good mead.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

19. agreed

:toast: