This recipe was originally developed by me back in the Dark Ages of meadmaking in the US (i.e. ca 1980-1981) to be used as a festive, semi-sweet spiced drink to be enjoyed during Yule events in the Principality of Ansteorra within the SCA. (That's east Texas, for y'all not familiar with SCA geography.) Back then very little was widely known about fermentation of honey-based musts, so we did a lot by trial and error (actually, we learned from more than a few errors!). However, I had some knowledge of winemaking principles that I'd learned from my uncle, so I wasn't as completely in the dark about fermentation processes as many of my contemporaries were. Over the years I modified the recipe slightly to account for newly acquired knowledge about proper "feeding" of yeast, etc., but the basic ingredients and their proportions haven't changed from that original batch. The recipe as described herein is the "modernized" version, with some historical notes that I thought might be of interest. So this has been in near continuous use by me and by some of the folks that I later taught meadmaking to for over a quarter century -- I guess that might qualify it as a "heritage" recipe of sorts!

Meadowfoam honey is unique. It has a vanilla character to it that makes it beloved by most who try it. This character comes out well in the mead, and with a touch of oak, makes for an excellent traditional.

This mead took Best Melomel and narrowly missed getting Best of Show at the 2008 Home Meadmakers Competition.

This is a "Burgundy Styled" Dry Mead. Which translated means that I'm using a faux barrel fermentation technique by adding heavy toast French Oak in the primary, and a tannin addition as well. This is to give me that oak and fruit kind of character I like in the Classic French Chablis and Chardonnays.

Brewed this one on 3/16/08 while we were waiting for the Corned Beef to simmer at our annual St. Patty's Day bash. Normally, we would brew this in December or January and serve it on tap for the bash but things didn't work out that way this year.

The original recipe (years ago) was targeted to be a cross between Oskar Blue's Old Chub and Northcoast's Old Stock. This is slight modification from the original recipe. Between time constraints and other issues we were missing some ingredients. I'll point out the differences at the end.

I'm putting this in Patrons section due to the secret step. It's really no secret but it makes a BIG difference in the finished beer.