Complex Flavors Natural or Created?

Jmattioli said:

Will unblended straight meads fermented naturally to completion without acids or chemicals end up with complex flavors and balanced or do they normally require adjustment of acid and astringency along with sweetness when they are finished to get a complex great tasteing full bodied mead?

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Complexity is something that comes from the yeast strain and quality of the ingredients used in the mix, in this case, honey. You can get complexity in an unblended honey so long as the honey itself is of excellent quality, and the yeast strain is a type known for adding character to the mead.

Adding astringincy with tannin will work, but you could also try different spices for a metheglin.

Anybody else have any thoughts here?

-- Dan M.

Just a thought....

I was talking to a friend who is a wine maker (she has a vineyard in upstate New York) and she mentioned that they ferment with a few different strains of yeast and then blend the fermented wine together before bottling. That is in addition to blending different grapes together.

Seems to me that it would be a good way to get natural complexity in your mead (I'm going to give it a try on my next batch)


David

I love the show mead I make with local wildflower honey. Nothing but honey, water, yeast, and nutrients. It's all about using a good honey, something that is interesting and complex before fermentation.

I like Joe's question.

While I agree that yeast adds complexity, there is much more that adds to the complexity of mead than soley the yeast and honey.

In wine the complexity is not singly attributable to yeast and juice. There is the process of the crush, destemming, fermentation and MF; along with things like carbonic maceration and punch cap fermentation that will all add their own aspects to the the overall structure and complexity of wine.

Then, you get to the blending of wines from multiple types of grapes and the different cooperage that the wine rides in it's trip along the aging timeline.

In mead the water and other liquids you add are another important element as are the nutrients and acids you may use like dates, raisins, persimmons, etc, or a powdered yeast nutrient, engergizer and acid blends.

Also, I like throwing some oak cubes into my mead for a few weeks to add another layer of complexity. Sometimes I blend the cubes from various toast levels using different ratios, or sometimes I start with a very light "oaking" and layer a couple of more toast levels one at a time.

Hope I'm not stepping on anyone's trade secrets here, but complexity is a very important thing to any fermented beverage in my opinion. Obtaining it takes some time an patience, and the honey and yeast are a good start, but not the end all from my perspective.

Oskaar

I can hardly wait to see what my well water does when I move to my property in OR. :-/