Mead Glorious Mead

We have been experimenting for some time now with various different honeys, trying to perfect our Meads.

We have used many different honeys, ranging from commercial Beechworth honey to single source regional honeys. These include Iron Bark, Stringy Bark and Yellow Box from the gum family, and most recently Orange Blossom, Clover, Salvation Jane ( Pattersons Curse ) and Leatherwood honeys.

Now while the 3 are still brewing we have received some interesting interim results and feedback.

We put together ( well I say we, it was really one of my sisters with her contacts in the medieval society ) a, ( for want of a better word ) "focus group",  with the idea of getting outside opinions about our Meads.

Some of the results were -

Honey from gum trees, which is very fermentable, generally produced 12 - 14.5% alcochol in our batch sizes.  They will need a long maturation time ( over a year ), to let the sharpness from the alcohol and the honey taste itself mellow.

Stringy Bark honey can give you Vegemite aromas. Who'd have thought that?

Orange Blossom honey is not very fermentable, generally producing 6 - 7.5% alcohol in our batch's. This makes it quite sweet but also very drinkable straight after bottling.

We tried several recipes as well -

Joe's Ancient Orange Mead, is a bugger to do in 5L carboys.  You have to cut the oranges up really small and you get a lot less out due to all the leftover yeast / fruit, not to mention the extra sharpness from the orange peel.

Blueberry Melomel, with 500gm of blueberrys - needed a lot more fruit as the taste was a bit washed out.

Sweet Mead needs a really long maturation time, as to make it you need to take the yeast to it's alcohol limit, making it very strong.

So all of this has given us lots of ideas to work with and changes to make.

We would like to thank our "focus group", and especially my sister for putting it all together and being such a great hostess.