Day 1, AMF (after mead fest)

Summersolstice · Feb 13, 2006

It's 0600 on Monday morning after attending the Mead Fest in Boulder. After three full days of mead soaked indulgence it's time to return to the mundane world of paperwork and telephone calls at the office.

The meadfest started off with a party in Oskaar's room. I had a business meeting in Denver on Friday morning so I had to retire far sooner than I'd have liked. Each night ended in someone's room tasting glasses of some of the best mead around. Saturday night ended with a blowout party in a room packed with volunteers, meadery owners, and attendees drinking leftover bottles of commercial and amatuer mead from the tastings as well as bottles, labeled and unlabled, generously supplied by jolly folks who were just happy to be pouring their meads.

During the tastings on Friday and Saturday nights I sampled meads from each commercial supplier but I'd have to say that some of the best meads weren't entered into competition and were supplied by "amatuers".

The weather was a bit chilly but the snow on the mountains was beautiful. Boulder has some great restaurants and the Redstone (winner of more medals this year than I could keep up with) tour was very interesting (they use Montrachet!).

I'll leave the detailed weekend report for someone else but I'd like to thank Oskaar for his delicious meads and his valued input on my humble contributions, Mr and Mrs Gentlknght (congratulations!!!!) for their hospitality, and Vicky for her dedication and hard work.

I do have a few photos and will post them later (though Oskaar's will be absent) when time allows.

GntlKnght · Feb 13, 2006

I agree with you, Summer, it was a wonderful weekend steeped in mead!!! Meeting some of the GM contingent was great too! But you HAVE to enter the competition next year!!!

That goes for everyone! I was able to get feedback sheets, cause I was there. (yours will be sent soon, if you entered anything) Wow! It was great feedback!

Overall, it was a wonderful weekend filled with Mead and emotions!

Start planning for next year! I want to see more GotMeaders there!!!!! ;D

Ben

Greenblood · Feb 13, 2006

What a fantastic time! Had a blast getting to meet/drink with all of you. I'll be back next year with more mead, more friends, and more time to spend in Boulder. There are far to many fun things to do in Boulder. 3 days just didn't cut it for me. Se you all next year!

Cheers

Greenblood

jab · Feb 13, 2006

I will my endorsement of everything said above. It was a blast. It was great to put faces with names (and yes, at 5 am after having been sipping mead for nearly 12 hours Oskaar does look like his avatar!) that I have known only through the cold hard glass of my monitor.

I think the thing I found most pleasant were the commercial brewers. They love this event but I think they love the amateurs even more. It was exceedingly obvious that they were all in our position once and they were all very open and personable. They were able to slip back to a time when, like us, they were excited to swap a bottle of their best with another mazer and anxiously await the 'verdict'.

I also can't say enough about David (Redstone) and Julia (Honeywine.com) for the amazing amount of work and coordination they both put into putting on a class act festival.

Looking forward to next year!

Oskaar · Feb 13, 2006

Yeah,

Next year I'm going to scratch off a week and go Hog-FREAKIN-wild out there. What a great time.

Greenblood, myself, Viktor and Scott and Ross Pirtle were party animal buddies on Saturday Morning, enjoying a couple of great cigars, and some mead in the bitter cold (remember I'm from California)

Vicky, JAB, Dan from Munroe Meadery and Greenblood were the 5:00 AM gang when the party moved from downstairs to upstairs in her room. It was a great party in room 501 that just spilled over into the next room and then spilled over outside into the atrium downstairs. Finally we were having such a good time that the police wanted to come and join us so we had to break it up and go to separate locations to continue the craziness. A new low, I'm so ashamed! LOL

Greenblood is another party animal like me so we got along famously and tooled on people all weekend long! LOL

More in a bit,

Oskaar

Summersolstice · Feb 13, 2006

Oskaar, did you say 5:00 AM? I was exhausted by midnight! Ah, the excess of youth. I can remember a time when I could do it too. I'm glad you had a good time - I certainly did! btw - weren't you the one who jumped into the pool nude?

jab · Feb 13, 2006

Heh, yeah it was 5 AM. We didn't say we weren't tired, just too buzzed to know any better.

Heh, and yes, to everyone who wasn't there it seems we did have a bit of nudity. How is that for a party? My wife claims to be scarred for life.

Oskaar · Feb 13, 2006

Me, naked in the Jacuzzi with four or five scantily clothed women? That would never happen >

Cheers,

Oskaar

Angus · Feb 13, 2006

Now hold on!!!!!!

Missing you guys,and the Mead,is bad enough.

But missing the nudity!!!!! That is just wrong. Enough talking about this or us GMers who could not go may go postal.

Angus

WRATHWILDE · Feb 13, 2006

Oskaar said:
Me, naked in the Jacuzzi with four or five scantily clothed women? That would never happen >

I agree... they wouldn't be keeping their clothes for long >

Wrathwilde

Brewbear · Feb 14, 2006

It this a kind of neener, neener to the ones less fortunate to join????
I'm really glad to hear that the entire event was a blast, just wish i could've been there! Now we have to wait for the podcasts!

Cheers,
Brewbear

pain · Feb 14, 2006

Muahahahahahahaha...I was reviewing some of the stuff that got recorded, and Eric (one of the meadmaking brothers who are starting a meadery this year) had taken my tape player and done 'mead on the street' interviews, and got some great sound bites (3-5 minutes each) of several meaderies, kind of a virtual tasting.

I got all 4 of the talks, and those will have some parts posted here, and will be for sale for a nominal fee on the IMA website to help raise funds for them. I also recorded the awards ceremonies (where you can hear me pointing out Oskaar on live tape and in front of everyone - the look on his face was priceless!)

I got over an hour from David Myers at Redstone today, and will get Spruce Mountain tomorrow and Medovina on Wednesday, then I come home Thursday.

We spent the weekend mead soaked and happy, and your webmistress did this all on 10 hours sleep *total* from Wed. night last week to Sunday (4 hours Wed night, 3 hours Thurs night, 2 hours Friday night and 1 hour Saturday night). I think I must have been on drugs Sunday morning, because after 1 1/2 hours of sleep, from 5-6:30, Oskaar called me, and I took him down to Denver (a 45 minute drive) for his plane, then drove back (asleep, I think) and then spent a couple of hours helping the Meadfest staff empty the Mead Room.

The Mead Room is the room where all the mead sent in for the Festival is stored. Guys, there was like 5,000 bottles of mead in there, from all over the world. (No, I'm not kidding, I looked at it, stood there, and drooled)

I helped re-box, re-package and tote all this out to trucks to be taken offsite, then packed up my room (stuff was *everywhere*), then Julia and I came up here to her place and worked on getting results posted to the 3 websites (here, meadfest.com and meadfest.org), before eating some dinner and collapsing about 9 pm.

And no, it wasn't us who were nakies in the pool, that was Danny. And I *was* wearing underpants and a bra when I went into the hot tub, thank you.

Oskaar nearly charmed the pants off the heir to the Intermiel empire (largest meadery in Canada), much to the chagrin of the dozen or so guys who hung out around her every chance they got.

Andre from Intermiel brought not 1, but *2* bottles of fabulous fortifieds, one maple, and one blueberry maple. Both were divine, and Andre only got a little back.

For those of you who toured the floor tasting, I got a bottle of the Bartholomew mead liqueur (evil laughter) to take home, as well as the last bottle of the gold-medal winner for cyser (commercial) - Long Island Meadery cyser. Plus I won a bottle of Pirtle blackberry and a bottle of Mountain Meadows traditional for helping steward at the home-brew competition.

One thing I want to know, is *what the hell happened to Anthony?* We saw you at breakfast, then you vanished!

Meanwhile, I lost my voice (ask Oskaar, he laughed at my squeaky non-voice all the way to the airport), and am just now getting it back.

byathread · Feb 16, 2006

I vanished too apparently! Met a few of you at breakfast, but managed not to run into any GMers Saturday evening and missed the after party. Luckily, we met plenty of other friendly folks and continued to party way too hard all night.

PS - Lack of food + lack of water + lack of sleep + loads of mead + high altitude = one of my worst hangovers EVER! :-[
Worth every minute though!

<--- currently well-hydrated

jab · Feb 16, 2006

Hey byathread, ask Oskaar for help with the hangovers. That morning at breakfast he was going on and on about how the 'morning after pill' helped him. Maybe it's just me but I thought that was birth control (

), but hey...he has never steered me wrong before.

Oskaar · Feb 17, 2006

The stuff is called "Wine Chaser" and is available through Sav-on, Rite Aid, Albertsons, etc. Take two pills every 4 glasses of wine/mead or every 4 hours. I followed that recipe pretty religiously and it worked like a champ. Ask anyone who was around me how much I was putting down, I was using a large bowl red wine glass so I could really get a sense of what things tasted and smelled like so I was filling it up pretty good on every glassful.

Cheers,

Oskaar

Greenblood · Feb 17, 2006

I plan to try chaser on my next binge. Oskaar was in much better shape than I was on Saturday morning, and we were pretty well matched the night before. I was broken until after lunch.

Greenblood

Dan McFeeley · Feb 17, 2006

I got curious about the ingredients in Wine Chaser and looked them up. Here they are:

Active Ingredients – Homeopathic (per caplet) Purpose
Cinchona 12X Throbbing head, noise sensitivity
Lobelia inf 12X Nausea, dizziness, headache
Nux vom 12X Headache, light sensitivty
Quercus gland sp 6X Dry mouth and throat
Rhododendron 30X Wine sensitivity, headache
Ranunc bulb 12X Headache, fatigue
Zincum met 30X Fatigue, headache, nausea

Looks like an herbal concoction, and with Oskaar's endorsement, I'm sure it's effective. Some cautions, however, be careful taking *any* herbal preparation if you're already taking medications of any kind. Sometimes there are interractions between herb and drug that are not healthy. Your prescribing physician should be able to tell you more about this.

Another means of staving off hangovers is water, lots and lots of water. Excess alcohol intake causes dehydration, so it's important to drink water along with your mead, beer or wine. Drink water while you're drinking, and drink some more the morning after, if you've put in a hard night of heavy drinking.

Vitamin B is another one -- the process of metabolizing alcohol also leaches Vitamin B out of the system. It's this effect of alcohol, along with the tendency of chronic alcoholics to neglect their diet, that causes neurological problems such as Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome. So, the morning after, be sure to take a Vitamin B complex tablet. Be sure to take it with a meal, since Vitamin B is fat soluble, and isn't assimilated well all on its own.

On mead hangovers -- up until the early 1990's, mead was infamous for causing nasty hangovers. No one was asking why. My thought has been that it wasn't mead that was responsible -- it was poorly made meads, heavy with higher alcohols, that were causing the problems. Meadmaking has made lots of improvements, especially with information that has been distributed along Internet routes. Since then, that old reputation of mead being responsible for nasty hangovers seems to have almost vanished. At least, I don't hear anyone talking about it in they way they did some ten or fifteen years ago.

Greenblood · Feb 17, 2006

Not to turn this into a "hangover cure" thread, but Pedialyte with a B complex vitamin (as Dan mentioned) is my hangover cure of choice. Rehydrates quickly without the excess sugars in Gator/poweraid. Follow that up with a good stout and some eggs, and I am ready for whatever the day throws at me.

Cheers

Greenblood

Dan McFeeley · Feb 17, 2006

Greenblood said:
Not to turn this into a "hangover cure" thread, but Pedialyte with a B complex vitamin (as Dan mentioned) is my hangover cure of choice. Rehydrates quickly without the excess sugars in Gator/poweraid. Follow that up with a good stout and some eggs, and I am ready for whatever the day throws at me.

Pedialyte! What a great idea! Thanks for posting this.

Stout and eggs, are we leaning in the direction of an Ulster fry as the breakfast of choice for the "mead morning after"? ;D

This might be an idea for future after hours meadfest gatherings (steering the thread back on track

), having pitchers of ice water handy for people.

SteveT · Feb 17, 2006

I think a banana helps as well, I suspect that the body looses potassium as well.

Steve

Day 1, AMF (after mead fest)

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