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J

Jagland

NewBee
Registered Member
Jun 19, 2009
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A Newbee wants to know a few things.......this is to all the experienced Mead makers and mentors......Do you prefer straight mead over combo's?
if combo's, which is your Favorite? if straight, then whats your favorite honey? or, and I dont want to offend any hard core meads in here, do you prefer grape or country wine over meads as your choice of wine?

lookn forward to the feed-back.

Thanks and have a great day!

Regards,
Jagland
 
Jagland, the mead that I prefer is generally the one that I'm drinking at the time! ;D

Seriously, I prefer dry to sweet, unless I'm in the mood for sweet, and then I prefer Polish styles (which are either metheglyns or melomels so the sweetness is counterbalanced by contributions from the herbs or fruit).

And for sitting and sipping, I'll always choose good mead over good grape wine. Just a personal preference. With food, it depends on the food. Some dishes are complimented by grape wines, some go better with meads, again IMHO.
 
Thanks Wayneb for your response. I'm dissapointed that no others responded.
As a newbee, not only to mead but to wine in general, (actualy I dont drink, was thinking about wine for the stomics sake, so to speak) i'm not sure which direction i'll go! I was hoping to hear from more people to get a true feeling whether they like mead over other wines. Being that i'm months away from finding out for myself, I was hoping to know the general concensus. As of right now I have 4 meads (including 1JAO) going, 1 blackberry (wild, picked myself) 1 grape, 1 Bananna, and soon to have 1 pumpkin wine (pumpkins grown by me have about 3 weeks to go) all 1 gallon batches.

Although I will say, I racked my 1st real mead the other day made with raw wild flower honey and was blown away by the taste after exactly 30 days! while the JAO
tasted like orange lighter fluid. (I did use champaign yeast instead of bakers yeast, so no doubt time is called for even though it is 2 months old) The blackberry while good, at 30 days does not compare to my 1st true mead. I no doubt that the mead in a year will be unbelievable.

Well thats my 2Cents, only time will tell. And the truth will set you free.
Have a great day all.

Regards, Jagland
 
Jagland said:
Although I will say, I racked my 1st real mead the other day made with raw wild flower honey and was blown away by the taste after exactly 30 days! while the JAO
tasted like orange lighter fluid. (I did use champaign yeast instead of bakers yeast, so no doubt time is called for even though it is 2 months old)
Click to expand...

To be precise, you didn't make JAO, you made a recipe for orange lighter fluid. Champagne yeast will take that recipe dry, leaving no sweetness to balance out the orange, spice and pith, and giving a load of burning alcohol. Quite frankly, you'll be lucky if age makes it drinkable. I wouldn't label it as JAO since you took a major deviation from the recipe.

As for your original question, I suppose it is just a bit broad, and Wayne's initial answer happens to apply nicely.

I enjoy a variety of meads including traditionals (where I think that semi-sweet is probably best), and melomels, and cysers, and on and on. I even enjoy batches where the fruit dominates completely and you might not even detect much honey character (does that cross over to a fruit wine?)

In addition, I enjoy a wide range of wines, and frankly, I like many wines more than I like many meads (especially some meads I have made). If you look at the virtual tasting thread, I've been recently educating my palate with a range of sweet wines (gonna try a few Muscats next) to gain some perspective on how they balance, and some of them are really delicious. However, when a mead is really good, I think it can stand toe to toe with any wine.
 
Thanks Medsen for your in-depth reply and honesty. I know the question is Broad and varying ..with all the different types of honey and fruits available to sort through and try, the variations are endless, which I suppose is the quest in the first place. So far as I have stated the Traditional mead is ahead of my wild blackberry in my 1st 30 day taste test, I'm looking forward to future answers.


I have a wine book I recently acquired by H.E. Bravery (1961) A european renowned home wine maker, He is not an advocate for using bakers yeast as he says it will not produce a wine on the level of wine yeast, but he does say when one is making root or citrus wine, bakers yeast can provide surprisingly good results and he recomends their use. (As a matter of fact JAO's recipe are not far deviated from Bravery's citrus wines recipe) I will definately try another batch using the suggested yeast.

As for my lighter fluid orange, who knows what the end product will be....
*On one hand I've been told that basically all yeast character will leave in time.
*That wine mellows with age.
*That fermenting dry then back sweetning for best results.
*On the other hand I've been told that a high alc. content with oranges produce a flavour likened to an orange-flavoured whisky, which some prefer..and at the moment mine falls in that catagory.
*As a matter of fact the list is endless of knowledge that must be sorted through for truth, which is why I posed my question in the first place to help build my bank of knowledge from mead and wine mentors like your-self. So I say Thank you.


Cheers,

Jagland

.
 
Jagland said:
As for my lighter fluid orange, who knows what the end product will be....
*On one hand I've been told that basically all yeast character will leave in time.
*That wine mellows with age.
*That fermenting dry then back sweetning for best results.
*On the other hand I've been told that a high alc. content with oranges produce a flavour likened to an orange-flavoured whisky, which some prefer..and at the moment mine falls in that catagory.
*As a matter of fact the list is endless of knowledge that must be sorted through for truth, which is why I posed my question in the first place to help build my bank of knowledge from mead and wine mentors like your-self. So I say Thank you.


Cheers,

Jagland

.
Click to expand...

Those are all at least somewhat true. ;) The alcohol "burn" flavor will mellow with time. How much time? Totally depends. Sometimes it could be a few months, other times it might take 5 years.

Yeast flavors can fade with time, or maybe not. Totally depends. Some yeasty flavors are desirable, like the creamy bready notes in Champagne (especially late-disgorged if you can find it). Yum, EC-1118!

It might be good to try sweetening it to bring it closer to the sugar content of what JAO is designed to be. Try mixing some honey or sugar into a small glass and see what it tastes like. Perhaps a mead & Sprite combo would be good too.
 
lol....me either.

The destination lays ahead...but the intersections are endless.
 
Thanks Akucek, ....I suppose somewhere on the forum I'll find what the ending sugar content of JAO is...by the way..I do have a hydrometer now.
 
FG of a few of my batches.

JAO (using Red star Champaign) 1.012 (aged 2 months)

Trad. Mead (K1-V1116) 0.998 (aged 1 month)

Wild Blackberry (71B-1122) 0.990 (aged 1 month)

I was surprised the JAO had a higher gravity, I wish I could have checked them from the start. I do have a vinometer on the way, although I hear there most accurate at higher alc. levels. will post when it arrives.
 
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