BetterBeerBlog

The American Homebrewers Association (AHA) has designated the first Saturday of August to be Mead Day. Mead Day is meant to raise awareness for mead as well as foster camaraderie amongst meadmakers. Some of you might be wonder what mead is? Simplistically put, mead is honey wine. I hate to describe mead that way but it’s the closest approximation. Fruit juice is to wine, what malted barley is to beer, what honey is to mead; in other words, honey is the fermentable sugar that gets eaten by yeasts and transformed into mead. Arguably the oldest alcoholic beverage in the world, mead is probably the least known.

For the past 3 years, this year included, I’ve been holding mead tastings out of my home to do my part to help promote the beverage. While I can count the number of meads I’ve made on one hand, I genuinely enjoy the beverage and would like to see its popularity increase. What better way to do so than to introduce it to our friends?

We were originally supposed to have our annual mead tasting event on designated day (this year it was on August 7th) but that day happened to coincide with my good friend’s wife’s birthday dinner as well as the Bistro’s 13th Annual IPA Festival. We decided to postpone our tasting a week and attend these two events instead.

Our 3rd Annual Mead Tasting Event started off with a crash, literally. While Mrs. BetterBeerBlog was bringing out a tray of tasting glasses to use for the evening, the bottom of the tray gave out sending a few years worth of beer festival glasses crashing to our kitchen floor. We lost our GABF tasting glasses, a couple of the aforementioned IPA Festival glasses and a mini-snifter I was quite fond of. I thought the event was snakebit; first we postponed it, then this?! Luckily for us, that was the end of our troubles.

Generally speaking, many of the meads we tried were pretty good. I make it a point to collect throughout the year as varied a number and style of meads as possible. This year we sampled over 15 different meads, braggots and pulque. While pulque doesn’t qualify as a mead, it’s an interesting beverage if you really like the flavors of agave. Here are pics of the meads as we tried them as well as my brief notes. I didn’t take formal tasting notes as I usually do as I really wanted to enjoy the evening with my friends so you’ll have to forgive me as much of this is from memory.

Sweet Mead, BetterBeerBlog, unknown ABV

This was the very first mead I made. I totally forgot to take an original gravity reading and as a result, I have no idea how alcoholic this mead is. It’s made from locally produced wildflower honey from a couple I know of in Campbell. The sample in the glass is cloudy as it’s from the bottom of the bottle. Even though this mead is 3 years old, it’s still pretty good, in my humble opinion, but a lot of people at the party liked it as well.

Dry Mead, Rabbit’s Foot Meadery, 13% ABV

Rabbit’s Foot Meadery is the hometown kid. Located in Sunnyvale not too far from where I currently work, Rabbit’s Foot Meadery is an award-winning meadery that also makes braggots and cysers. After the homebrewed mead, I thought I’d calibrate everyone’s palette with their Dry Mead. They have a 2-bottle purchase limit of this product so I’m guessing it’s one of their more popular items. In any event, it’s probably my favorite of their meads as I prefer a drier mead. In addition to being fairly sweet, I can also taste an oaky character to the mead. If I remember correctly, they start their meads off in stainless and then age them in barrels. I like it. It’s only in hindsight that I can tell you that Rabbit’s Foot Dry Mead would end up tasting very sweet when compared with many of the other meads of the evening.

Classic Mead, Medovina Meadery, 13% ABV

Medovina Meadery is located in Niwot, Colorado. Not only do they hand craft their meads but they own their own beeyards as well. This particular classic mead was bottled in 2008 and is labled as “off-dry”. Many of us found this mead to be white wine-like in nature; crisp and dry with a light fruitiness. The honey character that was so prevalent in the Rabbit’s Foot Dry Mead is nearly gone in this example but that’s not a bad thing. I tend to like my meads on the dry side anyway so I enjoyed this mead quite a bit.

Summer Solstice, Medovina Meadery, 12% ABV

Summer Solstice is supposed to be their version of a “lighter” mead but at 12% ABV, I guess you can call it “light” when compared to the 13% Classic Mead. This bottle is labeled as “semi-sweet” and was bottled in 2008. When compared to the Rabbit’s Foot Dry Mead, this is drier still. Even though I can’t really recall anything about this mead other than it’s mouthfeel, that should be more of an indictment of my fading memory than how bad/good the mead was. We picked up both Medovina bottles from Fort Collins, Colorado last year when we were in town for the Great American Beer Festival (GABF). Even though we’re not going to GABF this year, I’m hoping to have some bottles brought back for us.

Sweet Mead, Rabbit’s Foot Meadery, 12% ABV

It’s at this point in the tasting that I kick myself in the ass for not paying more attention to the serving order of the meads. We’ve been bouncing around from sweet to dry to off-dry to semi-sweet that all of our palettes are basically shot. If I thought Rabbit’s Foot’s Dry Mead was sweet, predictably, this is much sweeter. A big hit with the ladies and some of the fellas (I’m not judging, just making an observation).

California Orange Blossom Sparkling Mead, Heidrun Meadery, 12.5% ABV

The meads from Heidrun Meadery were the only 2 sparkling meads of the night. At first I though these meads were force carbonated but it turns out this mead was made in the traditional French Champenoise method, the very same used to make Champagne and sparkling wines. Using triage, riddling and disgorgement, Heidrum Meadery has produced a clear and effervescent mead with no sediment. Bad. Ass.

I found this mead to be very champagne-like, it was effervescent and dry yet retained enough of the orange blossom character to be noticeable. This bottle was a welcome surprise and I’ll be looking forward to trying to find more.

Oregon Meadowfoam Blossom Sparkling Mead, Heidrun Meadery, 12.5% ABV

As with the California Orange Blossom Sparking Mead above, this mead was created in the champenoise method. Since I am not familiar with Oregon Meadowfoam Blossoms, I found this mead to have a similar mouthfeel and body to sparking wine with enough residual sweetness for balance and a floral component I can only assume is meadowfoam blossom. I forgot to mention it above but Heidrum is located in Arcata, California.

Traditional Mountain Honey Wine, Redstone Meadery, 12% ABV

The very first time I ever heard about mead was from the podcast Basic Brewing Radio (BBR) where BBR’s James Spencer was interviewing Redstone Meadery’s David Myers. The interview was interesting enough to have piqued my curiosity that I started searching for mead in my area and ended up finding Rabbit’s Foot Meadery.

My biggest gripe about Redstone Meadery is their overbearing insistence to try and set themselves apart from their competition. While every company wants to stand apart from its competition, Redstone has taken it a step further by trying to reinvent the wheel and create brand-specific categories for their products. Before reading this post, how many of you were familiar with mead? How about braggots? Cysers? How about Nectars? Mountain Honey Wines? Mead has enough trouble being recognized for what it is that you don’t need to create any more confusion by renaming/rebranding things. Just call things as they are; the mead industry needs a unified front as opposed to unnecessary segmentation.

My personal feelings regarding their branding efforts aside, I really like their products. This Traditional Mountain Honey Wine, aka mead, was a nice balance between sweetness and dryness. Redstone Meadery is quite inventive when it comes to their line of products but, more often than not, their execution matches their vision. If I keep buying their products, it’s because they’re good and not because of some fancy name or blue bottle (although their blue, swing top bottles are cool).

Pinot Pyment Mountain Honey Wine, Redstone Meadery, 12% ABV

The Pinot Pyment Mountain Honey Wine is made with 77% honey and 23% grape wine. Pyment is a subset of mead; it is basically a fruit mead (melomel) brewed with either white or red grapes. It’s too bad that I’ve been taking photos with my cell phone as this pyment is a wonderfully, dark red in color. The honey character is still apparent in the mead but there is also an equally notable red wine character with light oak aromas and flavors. I thought this was a very well executed pyment and a good example of Redstone’s creativity.

Chrysanthemum Mead, BetterBeerBlog, unknown % ABV

You’d think I would’ve learned the first time around but I once again forgot to take an original gravity reading, therefore, no clue as to what the % ABV of this mead is. Compared to my sweet mead, this one is much drier and the chrysanthemum character seems to be a little more noticeable this year.

Raspberry Mead, Rabbit’s Foot Meadery, 12% ABV

Everything’s starting to get a little hazy at this point. Yet another offering from the local guys, this time, their melomel (fruit mead) featuring raspberries. Someone had commented on how this melomel was the best expression of raspberry in a beverage they’ve ever had. It was it was sweet, yet tart, and dry not from a lack of residual sugar but from the seed quality of the fruit. If there’s anything that can be considered a “fault” of this mead, it’s that there’s too much raspberry character. At least for me but many other people that night seemed to like it.

Slascha, Bacchus Meadery, 12% ABV

A quick Google search for Bacchus Meadery will show you that they have closed business. This doesn’t surprise me as this metheglin, or spiced mead, tasted like ass. Which is really too bad as the label holds so much promise:

A cocoa sweetened honey wine, named after the Goddess of Confection, Slascha is well known for her love of any sugary pleasure or dessert. This chocolate honey wine is a perfect remedy for any sweet tooth.

I was very excited when I picked this bottle up from Colorado. Mead Day couldn’t come fast enough for me to crack this bottle open and have at it. Unfortunately the label wrote check the mead just couldn’t cash. The mead had a very “barnyardy” aroma, not unlike a brettanomyces fermented beer, only not the good barnyard character. If you’ve ever driven on Highway 5 and passed by Coalinga, you know exactly what I am talking about.

Bellona, Bacchus Meadery, 12% ABV

I picked up a second bottle of Bacchus mead, once again, because of the label description. Here is the description for Bellona:

An agave sweetened mead named for the Goddess of War. Bellona was revered and honored by soldiers as she was often at their side in battle. This honey-agave wine is like the goddess herself with a distinct flavor of its own. Enjoy over ice with a squeeze of lime.

While not as bad as Slascha, Bellona only had hints of agave. If anything, I think I picked up more citrusy, lime-like character from this mead. I shall call forever refer to Bellona as the Bud Lime of mead. Too harsh?

Pulque Fino, Full Circle Brewing Company, 8% ABV

Marketed under the Los Californios label, this Pulque Fino is not a mead at all but pulque, a “wine” brewed from the sap of the maguey, or agave plant. In all honesty, this product has very little resemblance to a true pulque. That being said, this is a tasty beverage. If you like the flavors and aromas of tequila but not the alcohol burn or harshness of the distilled spirit, this is the drink for you. It’s a wonderful, easy drinking “wine” that encapsulates all that is good about tequila with none of the bad.

We usually pick up the different meads from Full Circle Brewing to include in our annual mead tastings and I cannot recall why we didn’t pick any up this time around. Full Circle is one of two breweries in Fresno and a place I make a point to visit each time I’m in Fresno. I recommend going on a Friday night to catch whatever show they have on. Last time I was there, they had a sword-swallowing giant performing.

Prickly Pear Braggot, Widmer Brothers, 10% ABV

I just so happened to be at BevMo a couple of days before our Mead Tasting when I noticed this product was available. It seemed like a serendipitous find so I picked up a bottle for the party.

Braggots meads brewed with malted barley; put another way, they’re beers brewed with honey. Any type of beer can be the base beer for a braggot and Widmer chose to use a strong ale as the base of this beer. Even more interesting is their use of prickly pear juice. Also known as “tuna”, this is a common food source in many cultures, notably Mexico. Having never tasted prickly pear before, I can’t say what character it adds to the braggot. As a beer, I found it interesting but not really something I’d be interested in picking up another bottle of.

Diabhal, Rabbit’s Foot Meadery, 12% ABV

Named after the devil, Diabhal is Rabbit’s Foot Meadery’s example of a braggot. The base beer is a Belgian-style ale, a dubbel, I believe. If you’re a big fan of Belgian dubbels, you may find yourself disappointed with this beer but keep in mind, it’s really a braggot and should be enjoyed/evaluated as such.

Chocolate Raspberry Love, Rabbit’s Foot Meadery, 18% ABV

Chocolate Raspberry Love, at 18% ABV, is a big mead. It is analogous to a port or dessert wine, really, which is why I saved it for last (probably the only thing I got correct in terms of serving order). Served in a thin, 375 mL bottle, the label is fun, colorful and overly indicative of the 60s vibe and mentality.

Chocolate Raspberry Love proved to be divisive amongst the group. Half of the remaining people like it, they appreciate the chocolate and raspberry fruit character of the mead as well as it’s intensity. The other half likened it to cough syrup. I fell on the “like” part of the equation but just barely so. Despite being chilled in an ice bath for a number of hours, the alcohol was readily apparent in nearly all aspects of the mead from aroma, to flavor to mouthfeel. It was almost “hot” and I think that’s this mead’s biggest distraction. If we had some bittersweet or nearly pure chocolate to accompany this mead, it might’ve been a little more enjoyable.

Lessons Learned

With each year, I learn more and more about mead and all the varieties of mead out there. I believe mead has it’s rightful place in the pantheon of alcoholic beverages, which is why I hold these tastings to begin with. That being said, there are a few things I’ve learned and will try to apply for next year.

First, tasting order is important. While it’s cool to be able to taste all the meads from a single meadery, I need to do a better job setting up the tasting order. Thinking out loud, braggots should go first, followed by dry meads, sweet meads, and then all the other subsets of meads grouped accordingly. Doing this can save all of our palettes and provide a base from which to compare apples-to-apples.

Second, I totally forgot to take photos of all the good food we had. While it wasn’t quite the production as last year’s Mead Tasting was, the food was definitely good. In fact, we kinda fell behind in our tastings because we were grubbing. In hindsight, this was more of a necessity than a problem as many of the meads we had were in the 12% ABV range.

Third, I might consider limiting the number of meads we would be tasting. We tried 17 different meads, braggot and pulque this year, an increase of 7 bottles from the year before. That was a lot of mead. A lot. At this point, a year might be just enough time to develop a taste for mead again.

Lastly, I gotta get off my ass to bottle my third mead and brew my fourth. Right now, the third mead is basically a straight mead, nothing added but that could change by this weekend.

I’d like to thank everyone who was able to come by. It was a blast and I’m looking forward to next year already.

This weekend is shaping up to be epic with regards to craft beer and mead. Here’s a brief list of things happening this weekend:

Friday

First Fridays at Drakes Brewing Company

Drakes Brewing Company has reintroduced First Fridays. Here are the details:

Who: Drakes Brewing Company
What: First Friday Tastings
Where: 1933 Davis Street, Building 177, San Leandro, CA 94577 (their tucked away behind Walmart) map
When: Friday, August 6, 2010 @ 4pm - 8pm
Cost:

• $5 per person voluntary donation, to the non-profit organization we are supporting, at the gate. (Children with their parents free)
• $15 for a Drake’s tasting glass and 3 tokens for 3 full pours. Additional tokens can be purchased separately ($3.50 each, with net proceeds going to the non-profit)
• Great food available for purchase

Notes: Drakes will be pouring their Aroma Prieta IPA, Bass Akwards IPA & Hopocalypse IPA.

Growler Fills at Devils Canyon Brewing

Not really a special event, per se, but another option for craft beer starved people

Who: Devil’s Canyon Brewing
What: Growler Fills
Where: 111 Industrial Way, Belmont, CA 94002 map
When: Friday, August 6, 2010 @ 4pm - 6pm
Cost: No cost to go, just pay for the beer you want.

Firkin Fridays at Tied House Brewing Company

Tied House has been tapping firkins on Fridays for several months now.

Who: Tied House Brewing Company
What: Firkin Fridays
Where: 954 Villa Street, Mountain View, CA 94041 map
When: Friday, August 6, 2010 @ 5pm
Cost: No cost to go, just pay for the beer you want.

Notes: These firkins are usually tapped by a special guest. Sometimes they get it right in one shot, sometimes they don’t. Fun either way.

Saturday

The Bistro 13th Annual IPA Festival

I wrote a post about this event a little earlier in the week. You can view full details here.

Speakeasy Ales & Lagers Anniversary Party

Speakeasy Ales & Lagers is having their 13th Anniversary party at their brewery this weekend as well.

Who: Speakeasy Ales & Lagers
What: 13th Anniversary Celebration
Where: 1195 Evans Avenue San Francisco, CA 94124 map
When: Saturday, August 7, 2010 @ 2pm - 7pm
Cost: No admission but I think you’ll have to pay for drink tokens.

Notes: They will be releasing their special Anniversary beer, Midnight Run India Black Ale (IBA).

Mead-making Demonstration with Micah Dubinko

Saturday is also Mead Day. Mead Day was started in 2002 and is a way to foster community, camaraderie between mead-makers while growing awareness for mead. What is mead? Well go to this event and find out!

Who: More Beer! (Flavor) homebrew shop
What: Mead-making Demonstration & Tasting featuring Micah Dubinko
Where: 991 N. San Antonio Road, Los Altos, CA 94022 map
When: Saturday, August 7, 2010 @ 2pm - 4pm
Cost: $10 donation to cover the costs of honey, yeast and light snacks. Seating is limited so please RSVP to this event by sending an email to Micah Dubinko at mdubinko@yahoo.com.

Sunday

As if there wasn’t enough beer and mead going around on Friday and Saturday, I will be hosting a Sunday Beer School, featuring American Craft Beer, at Wine Affairs. Details below:

Who: Wine Affairs
What: Sunday Beer School - A hosted tasting of 6 American Craft Beers
Where: 1435 The Alameda, San Jose, CA 95126 map
When: Sunday, August 8, 2010 @5pm - 6pm
Cost: $20/pp, call 408-977-0111 to make your reservation today! Walk-ins also welcome.

In case I forgot to mention any other events, feel free to add the details in the comments section. I hope to see some of you at a few of these events. Have fun!

Mead is arguably the oldest, fermented beverage in the world. What isn’t debatable is most people don’t know what mead is. In a very small nutshell it is an alcoholic beverage made from honey. It’s not a wine (although many people market it as such), it’s not a beer (though it’s made like one) and it most definitely isn’t a distilled spirit. Mead is its own thing and should be treated as such.

To help promote the beverage and the people who make them, the American Homebrewers Association has designated August 1^st of every year as Mead Day. Meadmakers and homebrewers are encouraged to come together in appreciation of the beverage and maybe brew up a mead as well. I decided to do my part last year by holding a Beer, Food and Mead pairing event. In addition to providing the food, beers and mead, I did a mead making demo to show how easy it is to make mead.

This year was a little different. Having cut our Beer & Food pairing activities to a bare minimum, my wife and I decided this year instead to have a Mead Tasting event. We asked our guests to provide an appetizer-style dish to contribute while we provided the mead. Unfortunately we were a little last minute about the whole thing. As a result, we had a party of about a dozen people. This worked out in our favor though as in most cases we only had a single bottle of mead to share. Unlike the previous year, we held this dinner in our garden area. It was a little tight but the intimate setting proved to be well protected from the night’s occasional cool breezes.

For the most part, I was very impressed with the spread of food people brought. Even though these were just appetizer-style dishes, no one left hungry. We had bacon-wrapped dates and prunes, salad, stuffed mushrooms, salmon bruschetta, homemade meatballs, chicken wings and even country fried steak. There was even a Vietnamese appetizer that consisted of thin, disks of rice that had a firm, yet chewy homemade noodle-like consistency that was topped with shredded shrimp and mung beans and a fish-sauce based dipping sauce.

All in all, we had 10 bottles of mead for the tasting. With a few exceptions, we only had single bottles of mead to share. Everyone was given a few ounces to taste and while that may not seem to be very much, many of the meads we tried that night were hovering in the 12% ABV range. Here is the list of meads we tried plus a few of my own personal notes:

• Traditional Sweet Mead, BetterBeerBlog – This was a bottle of the very first mead I made. Meaded (or is it brewed?) in 2007, these bottle have a disturbing amount of yeast settled at the bottom of the bottle which changes the flavor of the mead when agitated. This is a wild flower mead with a pleasant, floral quality in the nose and noticeable honey character in both the aroma and flavor. Despite it’s yeasty appearance, people seemed to like this mead.
• Sweet Mead, Rabbits Foot Meadery, 12% ABV – As explained by Mike Faul, owner/meadmaster of Rabbits Foot Meadery, this is what most people think of when they think of mead. It’s what they serve at Renaissance Fairs, it’s what is referenced in those epic, Scandinavian poems of heros long lost and what is served at Hogworts. I could be mistaken, wouldn’t be the first time, but I believe the honey used to make this mead is clover honey (named from the clover flowers the beers gathered it from). This has a floral character as well but was very sweet when compared to my own. This mead would prove to be the sweetest of the night.
• Traditional Mead, Full Circle Brewing, 12.5% ABV – This mead was also on the sweet side and had a wonderful floral and honey aroma. While most professional meads tend to be clear, Full Circle’s mead was chock full of yeast floaties in gravity defying suspension. To the uninitiated this could seem like a grievous error. But for those in the know, those floaties added a little more complexity to the mead’s flavor.
• Honeymoon Nectar (Sweet Honeywine), Mountain Meadows Meadery, 12% ABV - This is a sweet, traditional mead made from wildflowers. I just happened to find this bottle while trolling around Bottle Barn in Santa Rosa. I’m glad I picked this one up as people felt it was the best out of the sweet/traditional meads we’ve tried so far. It had a very pleasant floral aroma with lots of honey character in both the aroma and flavor. This mead was sweet but not as cloying as the Rabbits Foot and more refined than the Full Circle. I’ll have to pay them a visit if I’m ever in their area.
• Black Raspberry Nectar, Redstone Meadery, 8% ABV - I first learned about mead by listening to a podcast featuring this meadery. Located in Boulder, Colorado, it’s difficult to miss this meadery’s product in their deep blue bottles. This mead is different from the sweet/traditional meads in the addition of fruit. Meads with fruit added are called melomels. With a lighter honey character than the previous meads, the berry character came through more. In addition, this mead was lightly carbonated for a spritzy mouthfeel and refreshing experience. People really liked this one.
• Orange Blossom Special, Full Circle Brewing, 12.5% ABV - Most meaders will add fruit to their meads in either the primary or secondary. This imparts the character of the fruit without being overbearing. In this case, 100% orange blossom honey was blended with 100% orange juice to make this mead. I’m not sure if it was how I stored this but the orange character played a minor part in this meads flavor profile. There was a lot of port and sherry character; almonds notes and a slight sweetness characteristice of oxidation. Not surprisingly, the least favorite of the evening. This was another example of a melomel.
• Pomegranite Mead, Full Circle Brewing, 12.5% ABV - This mead was made from a blend of 17% unnamed honey and 83% pomegranite juice. This was another polarizing mead in which people either loved it or non-loved it (hate is much to strong of a word). Some folks had trouble finding the pomegranite while Sammy was able to pick it up right away. I expected this mead to receive a fairly good reception but lukewarm was the best it got. This mead is also a melomel.
• Raspberry Mead, Rabbits Foot Meadery, 12% ABV - As the name would strongly suggest, this mead is another melomel using raspberries. This mead was very well received; people enjoyed the obvious fruit characteristics as well as the balance provided by the mead itself. I was a little worried about Rabbits Foot as their flagship mead wasn’t very well received but they rebounded quite nicely with this product.
• Nectar of the Hops, Redstone Meadery, 8% ABV - Having had this mead last year when I attended GABF, I thought this would be an interesting mead to share. Unlike the prior meads that have had fruit added to them at one point or another, this mead is brewed with hops. Technically this mead can be viewed as a metheglin, or mead brewed with, but not limited to, spices.  The hops impart only a hint of bitterness and slight hop aroma. Like the other Redstone Mead before it, Nectar of the Hops is a carbonated mead. People enjoyed this as well.
• Chrysanthemum Mead, BetterBeerBlog - I started with my own mead and I’m ending with my own mead. Like the traditional mead I served earlier, this mead is made from wildflowers locally sourced from members of the Santa Clara Valley Beekeepers Guild. Unlike the first mead, this mead is a metheglin; this mead’s must was created with 3 parts water, 1 part chrysanthemum flowers tea and 1 part wildflower honey. After primary fermentation, I added about 5 ounces of chrysanthemum flowers to secondary and let this puppy sit for about 10.5 months in a carboy. The result was a much more clearer mead with chrysanthemum aromas both medicinal and herbal in nature. In addition to being spiced with chrysanthemum, this mead finished very dry. I never took the original gravity (o.g.) so I have no idea how much alcohol is in this thing.

So there you go, the 2nd Annual Mead Day Mead Tasting at BetterBeerBlog. As much fun as this event was to host, we are now all out of mead! I really enjoyed the format of this event and I think next year’s Mead Day tasting event will be similar. For those who were able to attend, I thank you for coming and celebrating with us. See you next year!

For those who may not be aware, in addition to brewing my own beer, I also brew my own mead. Despite the fact that mead is probably the oldest alcohol beverage known to man, it is the least known. You may recognize the term “mead” as “that drink at all the Renaissance Fairs” or “the stuff they drank at Hogworts”. Yes and yes. But what is mead really? Simplistically put, it is an alcoholic beverage made from honey. Some people call it a honey wine but I think the term is inaccurate. Honey:mead as grapes:wine, as malted barley:beer. It really is a beverage all on its own.

A good friend of mine recently took up beekeeping. He literally pulled this hobby right out of a tree on his yard. Somewhere in his neighborhood a colony of bees swarmed onto his property not once, but twice. Displaying indecision the first time, the first swarm flew away. With only a little hesitation the second time and a lot of prodding by yours truly, he was able to capture a smaller secondary swarm. Since that day, he’s been a beekeeper.

To help the guy out, I bought him some beekeeping equipment. There’s the safari-type hat, mesh screen, long gloves, smoker and pry bars. While Jason (that’s my buddy’s name) laughed at me initially for picking up the equipment, it has already come in handy. We did pretty much no research whatsoever with regards to beekeeping and jumped into this impulsively. After a few mishaps, Jason and I decided to read up on beekeeping. If we were to commit to this, we might as well as learn the proper way to do so.

When the time came to look for a beekeeping mentor, I immediately thought of two people: Tina and Thomas. Tina and Thomas are a couple I met a few years ago. I forget where I found their contact information but they are where I buy my honey from. I purchase about 12-13 gallons of honey at at time (approximately one gallon) because that’s how much I need to make my own meads (yes, in addition to beer, I also make mead). The last time I visited them they had about 5 hives in their backyard. While this year has been a bad year for honey, last year they ended up harvesting over 120 gallons of it which they ended up selling at local farmers markets and festivals.

Tina and Thomas are part of the Santa Clara Valley Beekeepers Guild, the local chapter of amateur beer keepers. Before I go on, I must tell you that should you run across a swarm of bees in your house or whatever, I highly recommend you call a SCVBG member. They can safely and humanely extract the swarm from your property. Chances are good that they’ll just end up keeping them for themselves but at least you’re rid of the bees. It’s a win-win for everyone and is much better than killing them or calling out pest control. The honeybee population has been decimated over the last couple of years and we could use all the bees we can find.

Purely by coincidence the SCVBG were having their July meeting at Rabbits Foot. The natural progression from beekeeper to meadmaker is a natural one and I can’t think of a better place to learn about mead than at Rabbits Foot.

Rabbits Foot Meadery, 1246 Birchwood Drive, Sunnyvale, CA 94089 map

We were treated with a tour of the facilities. I had already done the tour some time back but it was good to go again and see the changes. The most notable change is the lack of space at the meadery. This is a good thing as it tells me they are busy. A thorough look at their taplist shows an increase in their product offerings. Once the tour was complete, the tastings began.

I didn’t take too many notes during the tasting portion but we tried their dry mead, sweet mead, raspberry mead as well as their hard lemonade and peach ciders. We also sampled their Chocolate Raspberry Love which is a fortified port. This is the only product in their porfolio that doesn’t have honey in it. I also got a chance to try their Honey Stout, which is an example of a dry stout brewed with honey. This puppy weighs in at 7.2% ABV but hides it very, very well. It is smooth, light on the palette and dry with a deep roasted malt character. It’s pretty good and a departure from some of their other beers.

The real treat of the night was when we were able to try some Melia right out of a keg. Mike pulled out a wine theif and doled out tasting samples to everyone. If I remember correctly, Melia is the only mead served at the award-winning, 3 Michelin star rated, The French Laundry. It is made from a single variety orange blossom honey and, as you can imagine, has a great orange blossom aroma. It is pretty sweet as it was made to be a dessert mead. Even though they’re out at the meadery, you can still pick up a couple of bottles from your local BevMo.

I spent the rest of the evening hanging around the bar while Jason was talking to Tina about beekeeping. In the end, everyone was happy. If you want to learn more about mead as well as taste some of it first hand, I fully endorse going down to Rabbits Foot for a tasting. I must warn you that the locals have discovered this place and their tasting room can get quite packed in the late afternoon/early evening. Your best bet would be to go in the early afternoon on a weekday. I’d recommend calling ahead of time as their tasting room schedules fluctuate.

Almost the entire time Sammy and I were in Fort Collins, Mike and Bonnie kept saying how we could just pick this up and that up at Wilbur’s. By the way they spoke of the place, you’d think that Wilbur’s is just another corner liquor store in a small college town. You’d have thunk wrong.

Wilbur’s Total Beverage is probably the best bottle shop I have ever seen. They are huge, easily surpassing BevMo in terms of square footage as well as selection. In the better BevMo’s, you will find maybe 4 aisles of beer with most of those beers on shelves. At Wilbur’s they have one aisle; one, very, long aisle. An aisle as long as the the store is as deep. And it’s refridgerated. Refridgerated! They also have another “standard” (standard as is relative to aisles in their store) that has some imported beers from Belgium and England as well as Belgian-style beers from American craft breweries.

In my awe, I forgot to take a picture. I was like a kid in a toy store; eyes big as platters with a grin to match. I couldn’t believe such a place existed. Great beer selection? Check! Great beer selection refridgerated? Check! Man, I could’ve easily spent hours and hundreds of dollars in there.

In the end, Sammy, Bonnie, Mike and I created a “mixed six-pack” to drink back at the house. Here are my reviews for the beers we drank. Keep in mind that we didn’t go through all six but here are the ones we did go through:

• Wilburfest, Ft. Collins Brewery - This beer was specifically brewed for Wilbur’s Total Beverage by Fort Collins Brewery. A märzen/oktoberfest style beer, Wilburfest pours beautifully clear, caramel in color with an off-white head. European hop character, slightly earthy with a toasty malt aroma. Slightly sweet with a toasty malt character, this beer has medium-low/medium hop bitterness. Very clean, low esters.
• Major Tom’s Pomegranate Wheat, Ft. Collins Brewery - Ft. Collins Brewery was the one brewery we didn’t make it to while in Ft. Collins. We just ran out of time. Brewed with pomegranate concentrate and lightly filtered. Major Tom’s pours out blonde/straw color. Light malt aroma - light sweet taste, medium-low hops. (Reviewed by Sammy).
• Wet Mountain IPA, Il Vicino Brewing Company - Sweet malt aroma and flavor characteristics with a citrus and floral hop aroma and flavor. The bitterness is medium-high/high but not long lasting. While I thought this beer was fairly good, this beer reminded me of those perfume knockoffs that get sold to tourists. They smell just like the brands they’re supposed to be but don’t last nearly as long. Same with this beer. It has all the right notes but they just don’t play the song for very long. Il Vicino is a wood over pizza joint with mulitple locations but it seems that all their beer is made at a single location that gets distributed to their other locations.
• Rocky Mountain IPA, Ft. Collins Brewery - Strong floral hop characteristics with sweet malt underneath. Sweet malt flavors give way to floral hop flaovrs and a high hop bitterness. Medium-high body and high carbonation.
• Nectar of the Hops, Redstone Meadery - Bonnie has been asking us about the bottle we brought over for some time now and this was as good as a time as any to crack this baby open. This sparkling mead was sweet smelling with slight hop aromas. The flavor is crisp, clean, sweet with hop undertones and a slight caress of hop bitterness. Not big fans of mead, Mike and Bonnie took a liking to this mead mainly because of it’s sparkling nature.

Yes, I do realize the irony of my review. I talk up on how awesome and diverse Wilbur’s is and then all I do is pick up Ft. Collins Brewery beers. I didn’t really realize it until I wrote the post. What can I say? We missed visiting Ft. Collins Brewery and picked up some of their beers instead. I just wish we picked up more of their beers. In any event, if you are ever at Ft. Collins, Colorado, give Wilbur’s a try. Let me know if you walk away just as impressed.

As expected, a lot happened in our time here in Colorado. I will do my best to retell the tale in as much detail as necessary but there’s a lot to go through. I only hope my notes were adequate and the photos enough.

Day one of the GABF trip started off very early in the morning. Sammy and I had a 7:30am flight directly to Denver and with the current level of airport security, that means we had to be there at least an hour early. Having gone to bed around 3am the same morning, I already knew we would be tired but that’s why you sleep on the plane.

The last time Sammy and I traveled on airplanes, it was for our honeymoon to Hawaii. I don’t remember having to pay any fees for checking in our luggage but United Airlines makes you pay. $15 for the first parcel and $25 for each additional piece. We ended up checking in two pieces and paid an additional $40. Sonofabitch. Vacations, no matter how well you plan them, will always be a drain on your resources and I felt this was just the beginning of being nickel-and-dimed the whole trip.

While mostly uneventful (all flights should be really), we ran into some turbulence during our decent. Normally I wouldn’t even bat an eyelash towards turbulence. It’s just a little bit of pepper on a bland flight but during our approach run, it’s slightly disconcerting. As you can obviously tell, we landed just fine.

On our way to the rental car shuttle, we happened to run into Steve Donahue, brewmaster for Firehouse Brewery and Grill located in Sunnyvale. We just happened to look up and saw each other. Usually we’d be shooting the breeze talking about beer, beer-related things and the upcoming GABF but he had his entire family with him. It’s one thing to talk to someone when they’re by themselves and quite another when they’re keeping track of their children. Unfortunately, that would be the last time I would see him. We stopped by the Firehouse booth a couple of times during the Saturday afternoon GABF session but he wasn’t there.

For those who are interested in knowing, Sammy and I booked Advantage Rent-a-Car. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate our experiences with them as 7 out of 10. The check-in process took forever. Due to their “low” rates, there was a huge line. Luckily we were on an early shuttle so we managed to get to the front part of the line but all the paperwork was quite a hassel. The guy who helped Sammy out was nice enough to upgrade out vehicle for free because we would’ve had to wait another 20 minutes for our car to be ready. Instead of a Neon, we were upgraded to a Hyundai Santa Fe. This ended up being a very solid vehicle with pretty decent fuel economy. I also didn’t appreciate having to leave a $300 deposit because we were using our debit cards. These things work exactly like credit cards so I don’t really understand it. The good side it that we saved $300 by not having access to it. Lastly, the rental agreement we had forced us to return the car with a full tank. I’m sure we could’ve gotten the other option to return it empty but it was a numbers game. It’s still a pain in the ass to feel nickel-and-dimed with fees, insurance and deposits only to get kicked in balls one last time by having to fill the damn thing up for the company.

In order to maximize our trip, I decided to group the breweries we toured by geography. Knowing ahead of time that we’d be in Boulder for the Gold Medal Dinner at the Kitchen, I planned to visit Redstone Meadery, Avery Brewing Company and Twisted Pine Brewing Company before heading over to the Kitchen.

So we were finally on our way to Boulder. Our bags were stowed and the car was running smoothly. We unpacked our Garmin GPS to get our bearings and directions to Redstone. Having arrived in time, I felt pretty good about getting to Redstone in time to go on their tour. It’s always nice to see how the pros go about doing things when compared to my own homebrewing processes. Please take note because no one told us the following two points:

First, if you are going to be recharging any sort of electronice equipment via cigarette adapter, rent a “smoking” car. In a non-smoking car, the cigarette lighters are disabled. With a dying GPS unit in our hands, this came to bite us in the ass a couple of times.

Second, make sure you carry some cash when driving in Colorado. Programmed to take the fastest route possible, our GPS unit directed us on one of the most immaculate and well-kept freeways I have ever been on. What we didn’t know was this freeway was immaculate and well-kept because it was a toll-enabled freeway. Altogether we had to pay a little less than $8 worth of tolls but had we blown our small wad of cash on breakfast, the trip would’ve been a little more stressful having to look for an ATM.

Redstone Meadery

As with many other breweries and meaderies I’ve been to, Redstone Meadery is located in an industrial building it shares with a few other businesses. When you first walk in, you will be in their tasting room area. Their taps are to the right while their seating is to the left. We walked through a door that led to the guts of the meadery where their production line is. Sammy and I were a few minutes late and we joined the tour that was already in progress. Joe was our tour guide and quickly led us through the meadery. When I say quickly, I mean very quickly. He seemed a knowledgeable guy but somewhat ill suited for the tour. He didn’t project very well and had a tendency to focus on individuals during the tour. It’s not that he was playing favorites, he would just focus on one person and run with it.

Redstone has a variety of products that they sell. It seems they market their meads as “Mountain Wines” or “nectars“. They also have a “Reserve” line for aged products. I really wish they would just call them what they are but I can completely understand why they market their products under various names. Despite being the oldest fermented beverage known to man, mead is the most unknown. Having to educate each and every person you meet on what a mead is can be tedious at best so it’s better to just call your product something that people are already familiar with. That being said, Joe ran us through quite a number of their offerings. Here are my quick notes on their products:

• Traditional Mead - Sweet.
• Juniper - Infused with juniper. Little bit of spice on the nose, some wood in the flavor. Used oak cubes in the fermenter.
• Pyment - Mead made with grapes. Slightly sweet, some green grape notes.
• Pinot Pyment - Caramel color, red wine notes, dry finish.
• Blueberry - “Blush” in color, sweet, slight blueberry flavors.
• Plum - Pale peach color. Sweet, slight tannic character. Plum flavors are subtle.
• Solstice - As the name would suggest, brewed seasonally. Very perfumy, various spice character, made with vanilla beans and cinnamon sticks.
• Necter of the Hops - We ended up buying a bottle of this to share with our hosts Mike and Bonnie. Earthy sweetness in the aroma. Sparkling, slightly sweet, slight hop flavor in the finish. Uses Amarillo and Centennial hops.

Joe really rushed us through the tastings. It was bam, bam, bam; one right after the other in quick succession. I felt like I was being rushed through my tasting notes. Not sure what that was all about though. It was as if he had much better things to do than cater to the few questions of some potential customers. Even though we ended up purchasing a box of their mead-filled chocolates and a bottle of Nectar of the Hops, I was looking to spend more. I had originally heard of Redstone from Basic Brewing Radio beer podcast and thought that if I ever made it to Colorado, I would make it a point to visit them. I have to say it was a disappointment. It really makes me appreciate the quality of service I get from Rabbit’s Foot Meadery in Sunnyvale.

Overall, I have to say that I have mixed feelings about Redstone Meadery. I believe that they make pretty good meads and that with the breadth of their products, they have something for everyone. That being said, their people have to work harder at selling a little known and misunderstood product. I am a big fan of mead but I didn’t feel as if I learned anything new or if they even wanted to teach me. I’m not sure if I’ll be visiting them again. Chances are I probably will but only reluctantly. If you’ve been to Redstone before, I’d love to hear from you and get your take on the place.

While there, Sammy and I made some friends with a couple from Minnesota. Dwayne is a fellow home brewer and mead maker. While we didn’t see them on the Saturday GABF session, we did run into them at Avery Brewing Company right after visiting Redstone Meadery. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t get a chance to write down Angela’s pancake recipe using spent grains. If they’re reading this, send me and email!

Avery Brewing Company

Avery Brewing Company is located a few miles away from Redstone and is tucked away in another industrial park. A huge amount of people were already there by the time we arrived. They were part of a GABF tour that took them to Avery and Oskar Blues amoungst other places. The tasting room was packed and almost standing room only. They had quite a few beers on the board but since we weren’t part of the tour, we were limited to just 5 tastings that were doled out when we exchanged Avery bottle caps for a tasting.

Based upon their website the next brewery tour would be at 4pm. Having finished up at Redstone much earlier than expected, Sammy and I figured that we would have a few hours to kill before then. Luckily for us, the tour worked in our favor as Avery broke their schedule and gave a couple of tours early. While the tasting room was where most of the people were, the actual brewery spanned a few buildings not even connected to the tasting room. Unless you were really paying attention, you might have picked that out. Avery is a 40 BBL system. Our tour guide C.V. explained to us that they’re not nearly operating at full capacity. The current brew team works a 5 day work week from 5am until 1am in a couple of shifts. For them to feel they were running at full bore, they’d have to be working literally 24/7. I would suppose having room to grow is a good position to be in.

Here are my tasting notes from the few beers I did have. What I would later find out is that Avery produces some of the biggest beers throughout Colorado. Running through their entire line would render me drunk. With the Gold Medal Dinner hours away, I thought I should pace myself.

• Uberschweign, 9% - “Super Pig” is their double dry-hopped version of their Hog Heaven barly wine. Since I haven’t had Hog’s Heaven before, I can’t compare the two. Uberschweign’s aroma was reminiscent of how the Instant Ramen Noodle “Oriental” flavor packet smells like. Weird, I know. Besides that, there’s a resinous hop character. Sweet malt flavor balanced by a spicy and earthy hop flavor.
• Volgebekdierden, 10.5%- “Platypus”. Blend of three different small-batch  projects aged in five different oak barrels. Sour notes and dank fruit in the aroma. Sour and tart flavors dominate the taste with some brett (brettanomyces) funk in the finish with moderately-high hop bitterness.
• IPA, 6.5% - Cleaner hop aroma. Citrus hop notes in both the flavor and the aroma. High hop bitterness. What else would you expect from an IPA?
• White Rascal, 5.6%  - Pale straw in color with a white head. Phenolic Belgian yeast notes with hints of vanilla and spices. Slight wheat maltiness and white pepper in the flavor. Light and refreshing.
• Oude Deux, 8.0% - Mohagany in color with amber highlights and beige head. Clean, roasty malt flavors with slight spicy yeast notes. It’s like a Belgian-style stout/porter. This is a one-off small batch of a dark, roasty Belgian Ale; only 2 kegs.

After the GABF tour had left, the Avery tasting room had calmed down quite a bit. Brewmaster and namesake of the place Adam Avery was a few paces from where I was sitting. I wanted to chat him up before the Gold Medal Dinner but didn’t have the opportunity to introduce myself. A caterer showed up with a tray full of BBQ ribs. For a few moments, everyone just stood around looking at the tray wondering if we could get some. I prodded Sammy into getting the first plate and she opened up the flood doors then with everyone else following suit. After all, who’s going to be the jerk to tell the girl she can’t have any ribs?

Overall, I felt that Avery Brewing Company was one of the better breweries I had visited both in the quality of their beers, their people and their establishment. It will be on my “go to” list of breweries next time I am in Colorado.

Twisted Pine Brewing Company

Twisted Pine Brewing Company is located in an industrial park in Boulder, Colorado (Starting to see a pattern, hmm?). Being a production brewery, they have limited hours and open their doors to the public at 3pm. When we arrived, there seemed to be an event going as as there were caterers manning a BBQ grill as well as benches and tables set up near and on the parking lot by Twisted Pine.

Inside Twisted Pine you’ll see a small bar like set-up for their tasting room. Going with the the whole “tree” motif, all their taps have been installed on a log. Behind the bar, you can see the brewery through a glass window.

Having reacquainted myself with my inner hop head, I order the Hoppy Boy IPA. It is caramel color with amber highlights and an off-white head. This beer is aggressively hoppy with an earthy hop aroma and flavor. The hop bitterness lingers long into the finish overshadowing the malt side of the beer. It takes me some time to polish off the pint. By the time I am finished, it’s time to head over to the Gold Medal Dinner.

Sammy ordered their Raspberry Wheat. This beer is gold in color, clear with a white head. The aroma and flavor are of raspberries. Hop flavor and bitterness are low to none with a medium-low level or carbonation.

Honestly, I didn’t give this place a fair enough chance. We just happened to have a few minutes to spare before dinner and I wanted to drop by to at least say I had one of their beers. I should’ve ordered a sampler instead of a full pint. Twisted Branch Brewing Company did win Silver for their Big Shot Espresso Stout at GABF this year and I didn’t get a chance to try some. If there’s one thing I’m learning from my beer adventures, it’s that you can’t judge a beer by it’s label. Case in point, Twisted Pine may not look like much from the outside but they are award-winning brewers.

I’ll cover the Gold Medal Dinner in another post mainly because I think this post is long enough. Also, the Gold Medal Dinner was such a fantastic event that it deserves its own post.

A few weeks ago when I realized we were putting together A Mid-Summer’s Day Beer and Food Event, I realized that I needed to replenish the beers in my kegerator. Since we would be celebrating Mead Day, I wanted to brew a beer that incorporated honey. I already had a sessionable, summer pale ale ready but I needed something that would be done fairly quick, a beer that could be consumed young and hazy… a hefeweizen.

Hefeweizens are great beers to brew when you’re in a bit of a rush. They’ll ferment in about a week and because haziness is part of the style, you don’t have to go through a secondary clarification period to allow the remaining yeasts to settle out. I originally wanted to re-brew my raspberry wheat ale but the homebrew shop was out of the raspberry puree I like to use. Fresh raspberries were out of the question from a pure financial standpoint. Them dang things are expensive.

In wanting to incorporate honey into this beer, I consulted Rich over at Beer and Winemakers of America. According to Rich, whenever honey is used in beer as a fermentable, it leaves an off flavor. What makes honey a desirable ingredient in most foods is it’s aroma and sweetness. The sweetness is gone when the honey ferments out and so does the aroma. Rich also mentioned the use of a honey malt that has as much of a honey aroma as honey does. In the end, I decided to go with another route completely to infuse honey into this hefeweizen: blending.

About a year and a half ago, I made a wildflower mead from some honey I picked up locally. I don’t remember where exactly I found their contact information but Tina and Thomas live in Campbell and are beekeepers with several hives in their backyard. They collect the honey their hives produce and sell them through various channels.

So, in order for me to get the honey aroma and flavor that I was looking for, I blended my 1.5 year old mead with my 1 week old hefeweizen. Here is my simple recipe:

Malt:

• 6 lbs - Dried Wheat Extract

Hops:

• ~ 1.3 oz - Tettnang hops (4.0)

Yeast:

• White Labs Hefeweizen IV (WLP380)

Extras:

• 1 tablet servomyces
• ~ 8 cups wildflower mead

Original Gravity: 1.050 (within the style)

Final Gravity: 1.016 (too high for the style)

ABV: 4.4625%

Tasting Notes (wort): Dull gold in color with tiny, white bubbles. Grainy, cereal, sweet malt flavor. Smells kind of like soggy Wheaties with a touch of Honeycomb. Hop aroma is low. Flavor is sweet, like Wheaties and Honeycomb. Hop flavor is low, hop bitterness is low. Flat but medium bodied.

Post Primary Tasting Notes: Hazy, dull gold with tiny, white bubbles. Prominent ripe banana esters, slight clove phenolics. Sweet malt aroma, some wheat, grainy flavors. Low, almost no hop bitterness. This beer didn’t fully attenuate and it is noticeable in it’s taste. The wort flavors are still present, just less. Much sweeter than expected and there was a little grainy bitterness as well.

Final Tasting Notes: This beer is a very hazy, nearly opaque honey yellow in color with a white head that dissipated quickly. Banana fruit esters dominate the aroma with honey notes in the background. Banana and wheat malt are the initial flavors to hit my tongue with slight honey notes in the background. With medium carbonation, this beer is spritzy and slightly creamy. The body is medium low and I attribute that to the addition of the mead.

Brewing Notes: I was disappointed with how the initial beer turned out. It didn’t fully attenuate and it was noticeable. I then started blending in my mead one cup at a time until I felt I could perceive honey notes in both the aroma and the flavor. In the end, it took me approximately 8 cups.

The first Saturday of August has been designated by the American Homebrewers Association as Mead Day. It is a day set aside to help draw attention to mead and mead-makers. To help celebrate the day, we at BetterBeerBlog put together “A Mid-Summer’s Day Beer and Food Event” the Sunday afterwards. It was a 5-course pairing event of food and beer with the last course being a mead and food pairing. You can view the event page here.

By all accounts, this was a successful event. Judging by the feedback we received, the food was delicious, as always, and most of the pairings were successful. Here’s a course-by-course breakdown:

Course 1
Beer: Alaskan Brewing Company Summer Ale
Culinary Pairing: Belgian Endives stuffed with shrimp, capers, and dill aioli

This was the course I was worried about. The Summer Ale, an excellent example of a kolsch-style beer, is light, full-flavored yet subtle and refreshing. I was worried about the contrasts between the creamy shrimp, capers and dill aioli stuffing but the empty plates told me we did right by this one.

Course 2
Beer: Hoegaarden Witbier
Culinary Pairing: Bulgar wheat salad with bell pepper, dried cranberry, parsely, green and red onions with a citrus vinaigrette

Out of all the pairings, this was the least favorite. Some people just don’t like hoegaarden, other people didn’t like the salad. I thought this was a good pairing as your putting together wheat-on-wheat and mirroring the tartness of the cranberries with the slight tartness of the beer. In the end, I don’t think people were used to the idea that you could use grain for a salad instead of just fruits and vegetables.

Course 3
Beer: Samuel Adams Black Lager
Culinary Pairing: Thinly sliced beef with caramelized onions with plantains

This course, if I remember correctly, received the most “favorite” votes. The simply seasoned and grilled beef flavors mixed well with the roasty notes of the beer while the sweetness of both the caramelized onions and plantains worked as a counterpoint to the beer.

Course 4
Beer: Speakeasy Untouchable Pale Ale
Culinary Pairing: Vienna Lager steamed turkey and shiitake dumplings with homebrewed pale ale sweet and sour dipping sauce

We modified this recipe from the book The Best of American Beer and Food: Pairing & Cooking with Craft Beer by Lucy Sanders. This was a great recipe and I was excited that we used some of my newly tapped Summer Pale Ale in preparing this dish. These didn’t last very long either.

Course 5
Mead: Rabbit’s Foot Meadery Sweet Mead
Culinary Pairing: Oven-roasted pear with marscarpone drizzled with wildflower honey

This last dish was inspired by my trip to Flavor Bistro in Santa Rosa. I was impressed with the way they poached their fruits in wine so I suggested this dish to be paired with the sweet mead from Rabbit’s Foot. We oven roasted our pears with brown sugar and drizzled the finished product with honey. In addition to the Rabbit’s Foot mead, I brought out a couple of bottles of my own mead to compare with. A lot of the ladies really enjoyed the Rabbit’s Foot mead but a lot of the guys enjoyed my mead more because it wasn’t as sweet. Time goes by quickly as the mead I made has been aging for about 1.5 years.

At the very beginning of the event, I even did a small mead making demo. Making mead is pretty simple and I wanted to show our guests that they too can be mead makers. I will post up the mead recipe I used soon. I invited everyone back in a year so to crack open the mead I made at this event.

In addition to my Summer Pale Ale, I also brewed up a Honey Hefeweizen. I’ll post up the recipe I used to make this beer in a couple of days or so. It took me a week to brew this beer up and, yes, I did incorporate honey into this beer. It’s an interesting method that I’ll get into later.

In any event, I’d like to thank the two girls, Judy and Joanna for all the hard work they put into making this event happen. Their food keeps getting better and better every time. I’d like to thank our guests for coming. We had guests representing El Cerrito, San Francisco, Fremont, and Hayward. I’m sure there’s a variety of things they could’ve done on such a pleasant and warm Sunday afternoon but they chose to spend it with us and I am grateful.

Our next beer and food event is slated happen on Sunday, August 24th. We’re definitely going to be breaking new ground with this next event and we hope it’ll be as big a hit as our past events have been. I’ll post more as things solidify.

Lastly, if you’re interested in attending one of our Beer and Food events, please let me know by leaving a comment to this post and I will gladly add you to our invite list. These events have limited space and are by invite only.

Mead Day? What’s Mead Day? First of all, what the hell is Mead?

According to www.beertown.org, home of the Brewer’s Association, this is what mead is:

To put it simply, mead is a fermented beverage made from honey which is sometimes referred to as “honey wine.”

Plausibly humankind’s first fermented beverage, mead has evolved and expanded its range through the millennia to include other fermentables such as fruit and malt as well as various flavorings such as herbs and spices.

Taking things a step further, honey is to mead, what grapes are to wine, what rice is to sake and malted barley is to beer. Confused yet? I hope not!

Mead Day was introduced by the Brewer’s Association as a way to increase camaraderie between homebrewers, meadmakers as well as to (re)introduce the meadmaking hobby to people who don’t know about it. It is usually held on the first Saturday in August and this year, it will fall on August 2, 2008.

BetterBeerBlog is doing its part to help spread the word about mead by hosting a Mid-Summer’s Day Beer and Food Event. I will be posting more information about this event but tentatively, it will be 5 courses with the last course being a mead and food pairing.

In addition, I will also be giving a mead making demo sometime during the event. So keep an eye out for that post. If you are on our email subscriber list, keep an eye out for that Evite.

Here are some additional August Events in honor of Mead Day:

• Brian Cooper & Cheryl Murphy will be doing a mead demo at the Hoptech in Dublin contact Brian at brewerbrian@sbcglobal.net
• 2-4PM Mead brewing and appreciation class by Micah Dubinko at MoreFlavor, 991 N. San Antonio Road, Los Altos, CA 94022. Food and drink are included in the class materials fee of $10. Seating is limited. Email Micah at mdubinko@yahoo.com. (I’ve actually been to this. I know how to make mead but this guy is THE MAN when it comes to mead. He will show you the possibilities and flexibility of the beverage.)
• Mead Tour & tasting at Rabbit’s Foot Meadery
  August 15th 7pm-9pm
  1246 Birchwood Dr., Sunnyvale,CA 94089
  With only only 8 spots left, please RSVP to Roger St. Denis if you want to join them.