Sky River Sweet Mead

[billyO]

Hello all. Not sure how helpful this'll be as I'm a relative newbie to the mead game but here goes nothing...(starting a new thread per wayneb's recommendation...)

I'm in my second year of mead making using honey from my hives (hope they're surviving the unusually cold weather this year, ~ 20-30 degrees lower than normal here in the foothills of Mt Rainier...), and decided that perhaps I should try some commercial meads to see if what I'm doing is close to what others think mead should be. I found out that Tacoma Boys carries a variety of mead and I bought 4 different bottles. I'm currently into my second glass of Sky River Sweet Mead and it's sweet, easy to drink and enjoyable (but I tend to have low standards). It's not very complex, and like the reviews written a few years ago, still very light straw color. I didn't taste any of the off flavor that Vicky Rowe and Medsen Fey mentioned in their 2006 and 2009 reviews but I may be biased.

I noticed that my first attempt at brewing my own mead last year tastes very similar to Sky River's Sweet Mead (so I think I'm on the right track) but when I tasted mine after 6 months in the bottle I noticed an off taste. At that time I was worried that I may have done something wrong, but after an additional 4-5 months in the bottle the "off" taste in my batch had turned into a nice, "buttery" finish, so I wonder if this could happen with Sky River. One problem however, is that there is no vintage date on Sky River's Mead, so no way to know if aging it would improve it.

The other bottles I bought for tasting are:
Hidden Legends Pure Honey Mead - Victor Mt
Mountain Meadows Moonlight Magic Semi-Sweet - Westwood CA
Mountain Meadows Sierra Nectar Semi-Dry
I'll post my thoughts when they get drunk, (or when I get drunk....)


PS- if this needs to be posted elsewhere, Oskaar (or anyone else in authority), feel free.

 

[Shelley]

I have found that I almost always prefer my small homebrews over the bigger meadery traditional meads. The flavors are usually more interesting. (The exception is older Moniak Mead from Scotland, which really did justice to the heather(?) honey.)

Anything other than a trad mead I can usually enjoy more, because it exposes me to different flavor combinations I haven't tried yet.

My measuring stick is pretty easy: if I like my mead, then I'm doing fine. I don't have ambitions to selling mead or competing with it -- I'm just enjoying it and sharing it with friends.

 

[fatbloke]

I have found that I almost always prefer my small homebrews over the bigger meadery traditional meads. The flavors are usually more interesting. (The exception is older Moniak Mead from Scotland, which really did justice to the heather(?) honey.)

Anything other than a trad mead I can usually enjoy more, because it exposes me to different flavor combinations I haven't tried yet.

My measuring stick is pretty easy: if I like my mead, then I'm doing fine. I don't have ambitions to selling mead or competing with it -- I'm just enjoying it and sharing it with friends.

Ah.....Moniack.......

I was given a bottle of this some months ago by UKTony. It wasn't one I'd tried before but Tony had explained about the heather honey and so on. When I checked their website, it would seem they've updated it and there was no mention of heather honey.....specifically.

That said, compared to the other commercial meads I tried (all details found on my blog linked in my sig line), the Moniack was head and shoulders, taste-wise

Yet without some idea of the recipe I could only go by flavour and the two basic tests available to me i.e. gravity and pH. The gravity was pretty close to the others I'd tested but the pH was considerably lower.

So presuming that the basic method of making the Moniack is as any other traditional, it suggests just using a mix of honey for a good flavour and back sweetening and whatever mix of acid it might be to mask excessive sweetness, while not modifying the taste/flavour and mouth feel........

Oh, and the pH as measured was 2.6 pH (again, all in my blog)......

 

[Vance G]

Hidden legend is the closest meadmaker to me and there mead is OK but I doubt anything you will find spectacular. I don't know if it is law driven or a commercial decision but all their meads are 12.5%ABV. They only make a bochet, a traditional and a sweet ,mead. The fruit ones are just the base mead with fruit juice added I think. I find my own mead with Professor Schramms recipes and modifications to be better. Except my sediment control is really terrible!