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Does anyone name their homebrew meads?

  • Thread starter Devin Petry-Johnson
  • Start date
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Devin Petry-Johnson

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Does anyone come up with cool names for their homebrew meads and/or do you make labels for them?

Up until now I have only named them by their ingredients (banana bochet, strawberry melomel, etc). But now that I'm getting better I have one or two recipes (for lack of a better term) that I will make again. I was considering coming up with some names. I noticed a lot of recipes in the Patron's section have cool names, but some of them are somewhat generic.

Does anyone bother to name their meads and do your friends and family know them by cool names? Or does everyone make them basically for personal consumption and not really bother? Looking for ideas.
 

Squatchy

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I have over 70 names for my meads. Along with about 7 or 8 that are called IDK2, IDK5 ect. This stands for I don't know what it is followed by the number of ones I don't know what they are.
 
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Devin Petry-Johnson

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Wow, 70 is a lot. Are they creative names or based on ingredients? Like is it "Tart Cherry Melomel" or is it "Odin's Red Elixer" or something like that? I would have trouble coming up with 70! So far I thought trying to come up with some Viking-themed names. I think there was a famous Viking known as Erik the Red, so I was going to do "Erik the Blue" for my blueberry melomel. I thought it would make it more fun.

I had to laugh at your IDK meads. I can totally relate, now that I have a lot of mead going myself. When racking, if I have more than I need to fill a carboy I have gotten in the habit of putting it in a jar in the fridge to cold-crash and then use it to top off other meads (or drink). But I forgot to label the jars so I had a bunch of IDK jars!
 

bernardsmith

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Great question, Devin. Generally, I don't spend any time designing labels or wracking my brain for wonderfully creative names that would best market my meads. I am not a commercial mead maker - Most often I want a name that informs me the key ingredients so that I know the aromas and flavors to expect when I crack open a bottle. Names that are more creative than informative can allow me to be less demanding of my work. Don't taste the apricots? Not a problem. Wouldn't know that this was made with orange blossom honey? Doesn't matter. But that said, creative names can evoke emotional responses to your mead that enhances the flavors and aromas and mouthfeel you have successfully produced. So Viking-themed names sounds like a lovely idea , though it may be a wee bit cliched... and while there does seem to be a fair bit of historical information about Vikings and mead , mead is a lot like world music - You can find mead made for thousands of years in just about every country in every continent on this planet (I think Australia may be the one exception), and most of those cultures and their mead making has sorta kinda been ignored by us in the West.
 
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Devin Petry-Johnson

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Very good points, as always. I have learned a little about Tej since I got interested in mead. And then there's a polish style that has it's own name, I think. But it seems like the generic "mead" term is most closely associated with Viking or Nordic history. And it's definitely cliched but I haven't really flexed my creative muscles enough to think of something different.

And I have no plans of ever doing this commercially, but I did have fun designing a personal logo that I'm using as my avatar. I think for the short-term, I'll just name meads based on ingredients. But if something really speaks to me I will probably try to come up with something fun. Still, if anyone has suggestions or ideas I'm all ears!
 

dingurth

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May 23, 2012
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I try to come up with a name for my meads, but usually fail. If I think of something I usually put it as the title of the mead log thread for it.
I would say by best name has been my "Black Harvest Braggot". Worst was "Spiced Cranberry Cyser". Names are cool, but I try not to break my back over it since its just for fun. ;)

I recently made labels for a couple of my meads since I want to give some away in a more professional sense. I still get some weird looks when I talk to normal people about homebrew, and even got the "is it safe?" question once (for the record, when people say "you made this at home?!" don't reply with "yep, in my toilet, just like in prison").
I think labels help to dispel that slightly since it looks more official than a plain brown bottle. I made mine on grogtag.com. Not super cheap but not ridiculously priced either. But great quality and they have some cool templates to play with.
 

curgoth

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I do label design and try to clever names for every batch. Among other things, it makes offering some to friends more enjoyable, and it's nice to have the ABV and calorie count right there on the bottle. I just laser print in black and white on removable paper labels as the lowest effort solution I've found so far.
 

Squatchy

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Except for my IDK batches. I make good. clever names for most of them. I make too much to make labels and all that. I don't bottle much anymore as most of my stuff now I just store in kegs. I do have 150 cases or so already bottled so as I drink that it gives me new bottles to fill and give away from my kegs
 

Mazer828

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I go through phases. I used to make kick-butt labels for all my meads, and create cool stories to go on the back labels. This was fun, and entertaining, but also time-consuming and laborious. Plus it made the process of labeling, and cleaning the bottles, twice as hard. So eventually I phased away from it. I still label all my bottles, because I tend to lay them down for a long time, and I don't want to forget what they are.

Names, I do spend a little time on. I like to make sure they're meaningful, if not clever and somewhat indicative of what's inside:

1. A cherry melomel spiced with cinnamon, and black pepper, I called Dragon's Blood.
2. A blackberry melomel I called Bramblepatch Boon.
3. A carbonated traditional dry-hopped with Citra hops, I called Citra-Ditional.
4. A persimmon mead spiced lightly with cinnamon, I called Per-Cinna-Mel.

Then there's others that sort of took on names of their own:

1. A session mead we all quickly became addicted to and drank too much of we called Dangerously Drinkable.
2. A sweet sack mead made with tropical fruit and spiked with spiced rum we called Tropical Port (the label had a picture of a dinghy tied to a dock on a tropical beach).
3. A crisp, dry, lightly oaked plum melomel that reminded me of something Tolkien's elves would have made I named "Into the West"

It's a labor of love. I love the naming, and the packaging. They give the mead personality. And honestly I think if you poured the same mead from two bottles, one completely plain, and the other with a well-designed label, a great name, and a wax seal on the top, I'll bet people would claim to be able to taste a difference! Might be an interesting experiment.

Great question. Have you named any of yours? If so, what are some of your favorites?
 

Squatchy

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I made my first cyser with clover honey and a blend of different apples. I didn't know better and bought a blend of mulling spices from Whole Foods. It had probably 10 or 15 cloves in the handful I tossed into my batch. I could hardly drink it when it first came out because of way too many cloves. I had read to never toss anything so I saved it. A year later it was magical. I called it Cloverdose.

I made a period recipe from Sir Digby. It claimed it was the Queens favorite drink. I called in "Queen Ann's Demise".

I made a Trad with Colorado wildflower. I blended the two and named it Coloflower.

We lived in Hawaii for many years. There was a street person with dreadlocks down to the middle of his legs. It was all matted together and he was dirty and sorta scary looking. The entire island of Oahu has knew of him as Mango Man. Parents would say things like " be good, or Mango man will get you". I made a mango mel and called it "Mango Man"

I made a longshot. And named it "what the hell."
 

m0n5t3r

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Mar 24, 2018
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No names (yet); as for labeling

* at first I used handwritten post-it notes stuck to bottles, mostly ingredient list, OG and alcohol content (like "traditional demisec 1.13, 16%, wildflower from x, 1 stick of cinnamon"
* when those started to fall off, I added duct tape, like any good engineer
* then I got some printable sticky labels and made an inkscape file with basically the same content as the post-it notes above; since at the time I couldn't leave things alone, the text started to ... grow (1 week later add tea; 2 weeks later add oak, etc.) and became untenable; also, I reuse bottles and those labels were a pain to remove
* since then I made myself a directory and a little script so I type "meadlog b10" and it does vim /path/to/mead/b10.txt, and I just write the batch number on the bottle with permanent marker

I'll probably have to start coming up with names and some sort of labels if I want to start offering mead to friends, tho. People don't look at you funny when you talk about homemade booze around here (most people in the countryside know how to make some alcoholic beverage or have a neighbor who does, and most city dwellers have relatives in rural areas), but mead is virtually unheard of apart from a few villages in Transylvania and there is a single commercial meadery that makes expensive mead which doesn't taste all that great, but they don't do a terrific job at marketing it either so it all cancels out :)
 
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Devin Petry-Johnson

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I love all those names. I KNEW there were some creative names out there, thanks for sharing. My favorites so far are Cloverdose and Citra-Ditional.

Mazer828, I think I'm the same way, with regards to phases. When I first got obsessed with mead about 7 months ago I got some plain labels ordered so I could write out names, ABV, dates, etc. But I'm starting to realize that it makes the whole bottle cleaning process take longer. But I agree that it's nice to have a somewhat professional looking label. I think I'll still label things so as not to forget what they are, but generally I'll only apply the really nice labels to things that I share or give away. If it's just for me to drink on the weekend then what's the point?

So far I've only named one batch. The batch was a blend of the last remains of 4-5 different honey types, all blended into primary. When I was a kid at fast-food restaurants with the self-serve soda (pop) machines, we would mix all of the different flavors into one cup (because we thought we were cool). The drink would be called a "suicide". So the name of my batch was Summer Suicide.
 

Farmboyc

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I am lazy and not too artistic. I use painter tape and write abv, year, type. Painter tape is a breeze to clean.

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Mazer828

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Sep 9, 2015
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I am lazy and not too artistic. I use painter tape and write abv, year, type. Painter tape is a breeze to clean.

Sent from my SM-A520W using Tapatalk
Lol. I'm envious of you come label scraping time. But when giving a bottle or two away... I'm happy it's almost store shelf quality. To each his/her own.

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Devin Petry-Johnson

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Lol. I'm envious of you come label scraping time. But when giving a bottle or two away... I'm happy it's almost store shelf quality. To each his/her own.

The ones I use are vinyl so they are waterproof and peel off without any residue. They would be more expensive than alternatives but then I found out my neighbor could do it for me cheap. We set up a little mead-for-labels trade.
 

Mazer828

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Sep 9, 2015
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The labels I use come from Staples, an office supply store. They're just basic printer labels, but they're water resistant. I think they're intended for like garage containers, etc. But they last, they don't bleed and bubble whenever they get a little moist, and when it comes time, they scrape right off with a sharp knife, no mess no funky residue.

On my labels lately all I include is the name of the mead (which usually at least somewhat describes what's inside), the year I bottled it, the abv, and my self- styled meadery name.

Providence Ranch Meadery, Corona Ca.

It's fun. What can I say.

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