It was actually a lot of fun (I know big surprise there). There were two talks from the people at Moonlight Meadery in NH. One was on pairing cheese and mead and came complete with a bunch of cheese and mead samples. The other was just a more general information on mead making.
Some of their techniques seemed interesting, like the fact that they ferment everything at 62F very slowly (three months I think they said), only use one yeast strain (71B if I remember correctly), and don't back-sweeten at all. Of their meads that I tasted, all were very clean and not the slightest bit hot even though they were in the 16 to 18% ABV range. The apple pie mead tasted just like apple pie. Overall, I think most of their range was a little sweeter than I like but that's from tasting probably only 4 of their meads out of the 58 different styles that they make.
I think the videos are going to be posted on the AHA website but you might have to be a current AHA member to access them.
Beyond that, there were some other great talks and there was roughly 1000 kegs of beer to consume (for 1850 people). The food at the banquet dinner was beyond amazing. It was a great time!
