MCI was awesome!! Congrats to all the winners (announced tomorrow!). The number of meads I have tried in my life increased by about a factor of 100 over this weekend. During the judging & paired dinner I know I had about 60 commercial meads on Friday. During judging I had about 25 homemade meads on Saturday. And oh my I have no idea how many I tried after that. I think it's better if no one tries to count those.
It was great to meet the folks who could make it. I really enjoyed getting a chance to judge alongside Pete, Wayne, and Ken. Vicky is awesome. Alan was a great roommate and brought some nice meads to try, and Kyle only spilled on me once.
Talking with the commercial meadmakers was also a lot of fun, and having them try my mead is a rare treat.
Non-competition mead highlights included trying some meads I've read about here, like Wayne's Filleul de la Nuit, two versions of the Braggo-docio (Wayne and Alan), Ken's Heart of Darkness, and the side-by-side Wayne's Wolf Moon vs. Dogfish's Chateau Jiahu [Wolf Moon wins!]. Pete's mesquite mead was great.