The Mazer Cup International

This past Friday and Saturday the Mazer Cup International was held here in Boulder, Colorado. The MCI is one of the biggest mead competitions in the world, that it's held practically in my backyard is pretty exciting. That I was able to get Friday off from work to judge meads at the competition meant exactly one thing... it was Mead-mas!

it's hard to know exactly where to start with the Mazer Cup. I guess the question of how I came to be judging is as good a place as any. While I've been studying for the Mead judge's certification of the Beer Judging Certification Program (BJCP) and have made a point of tasting and evaluating every new mead I come across on top of my sampling of my 30+ batches of my own mead, I didn't expect to be accepted when I volunteered to judge due to the fact that I haven't yet taken the MJCP. Two things played in my favor though. The first is that scheduling an MJCP exam is apparently quite a challenge, so many judges don't have the certification. Secondly, through a combination of illness and other unfortunate circumstances the MCI was short on judges so being available locally on short notice played out in my favor.

That said, in spite of my lack of certification, I think I acquitted myself quite admirably and the conversations I had with the other judges supported that, as I was able to pick out flaws, subtle flavors and give the sort of helpful feedback that I would have expected to receive myself from the other judges for my own mead. It can be a lot harder to objectively judge something you have labored over yourself.

Friday was the commercial competition and I spent the morning judging braggots, which are a beer/mead combination. many of the beer components were barrel aged, which is popular in brewing these days. And for good reason as it adds a lot of great complexity to the flavors of both mead as well as beer. The highlight was a triple barrel aged braggot composed of a stout made with caramelized raisins aged in whiskey barrels, an American brown ale with plums aged in a French merlot barrel and a wildflower honey aged in an oak barrel. Simply put, it was spectacular. Not surprisingly, it went on to take gold.

That afternoon I moved on to tasting sack strength dessert meads. There were a lot of entries and the alcohol content was high so we took our time, but ultimately we came across a mead made with Polish buckwheat honey that was just... amazing. It was everything you could ask for in the style, sweet without being cloying, with a great alcohol/sweetness balance and wonderful complexity to the flavor of the honey.

Finally I wrapped up the evening with a set of dry traditionals which were quite good, but as I'm not much of a fan of dry meads none of them stood out so well for me as the other categories.

When day one was over though, I was left tempering the expectations for my own entries for the homebrew competition. While I really enjoyed my own meads, they didn't have the technical nuance that most of the meads I had sampled possessed.

Saturday was the homebrew portion of the competition, which is when things got more interesting. For one thing, I had to stay alert to make sure I didn't end up judging my own categories. For another, some of the homebrew submissions were... less than stellar. Usually the problem with these was that there was something wrong with the process, such as bottles that hadn't been properly rinsed before bottling (one tasted like Dawn detergent, yikes!). On the other hand, many of them were very adventurous in ways the commercial entries weren't. Some examples include meads made with peppers, and meads aged in bacteria infected barrels to produce sour flavors. Almost every entry provided lessons on things to do and things not to do.

On top of all the meads though, were the people. I don't think it would be a stretch to say that meadmakers are the nerdy oddballs of the brewing community, and that's ceainly not a knock as I'm a nerdy oddball myself. There were a lot of folks from the new England area, which was really great to see, and a lot of volunteers from the nearby area. There were entries, and entrants in attendance, from Canada, Sweden, Slovakia, Germany and Poland and I found myself with a group from Poland and Germany at the awards reception dinner. I dusted off my few remaining Polish phrases from my visit eight years ago (I can't believe it was that long ago) and generally tried to get to know them, which is tricky in such situations.

Soon enough though, it was time for the awards to be presented and for the anxiety in the room to step it up a notch...

The Name of the Metheglin

In my last post I mentioned a metheglin that was inspired by a well loved book. The book is The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. In it, the protagonist is served a mug of metheglin, which he describes thus:

I took a drink from the tall tankard to give myself a chance to clear my wits, and something wonderful happened in my mouth: cool spring honey, clove, cardamom, cinnamon, pressed grape, burnt apple, sweet pear, and clear well water. that's all I have to say of metheglin. If you haven't tried it, then I am sorry I cannot describe it properly. If you have, then you don't need me to remind you what it is like.
 

Being a bit of a crazed mazer, I immediately decided I had to try making it. I did some research into how the various spices and fruits were used in other recipes to get a grasp on what proportions to start with, since I had done very little experimentation with spices before, and settled on a recipe. I put about a week into deciding this before finally going out and buying myself myself some high quality ingredients and went to work.

Mead is a product of patience, and I am not a creature of patience, so while it's been a fairly short wait for a mead, for me, it's been torturous and I've been half-convinced it was going to be a disappointing or even disastrous batch.

Last week I finally poured off an ounce to taste it since it had finally cleared. A bad batch? I couldn't have been more wrong. It was amazing. Certainly the most delicious thing I have brewed, probably the best mead I've ever tasted and maybe even the best thing I've ever tasted. Well, perhaps not, but I can't think of anything that compares, aside from my grandmother's fudge. I nursed that one ounce of metheglin for more than half an hour (the batch being only one gallon, I wanted to savor it).

 

That said, the batch wasn't perfect, or at least, not exactly what I was planning. The clove was a little stronger than I intended (though my fellow tasters enjoyed the clove) and it was overall sweeter than I had anticipated. The pear was almost indiscernible. The apple and cinnamon were right about where I wanted them, and I'm hoping that the cardamom will be more prominent once the clove is dialed back. Also, I forgot the grape entirely.

For all my nitpicking though, it is truly delightful and if I could never improve on what it is now, I would not mind in the least.

The only thing remaining was a name. With some of my meads, I've gone the amusing route for naming. My first batch was called the Hammer (in reference to a cult neo-classic musical video blog), one of my bacon recipes is Sir Francis Bacon Mead. For others, I've opted for simple, such as Traditional Honey Wine or Apricot Mead. In this case I'm going to go slightly sentimental and name it in honor of the friend who introduced me to the book which inspired the recipe. 

The name of the metheglin is simply Meadow Wine.

Mead Update!

Since my last posting I've been a busy mazer! Let's get up to speed...

Bottled!

First was a pumpkin pie mead that I started last fall. It's a little dry for my taste, but I've got quite the sweet tooth and i think it makes a nice break from my other sweeter meads. It's got a wonderful spicy aroma and bite to it. For that batch I made pumpkin pie filling from scratch and used that in the must.

I also bottled a traditional sweet mead, basically The Hammer but less sweet and less alcoholic.

Secondary!

I haven't moved anything too exciting to secondary, though I do have a quartet of one gallon batches that are ready for bottling. These include a peppermint mead, a saffron mead, an apple cinnamon mead and a metheglin inspired by a favorite novel of mine. The first two varieties are tastily dry, while the other two have been back-sweetened to taste. The metheglin is quite exquisite if I do say so myself.

Primary!

There have been a couple exciting new experiments slipping into primary. One is a show mead, which is a mead that uses just water, honey and yeast. No nutrients, cleansers or any other additives. It's very slow in brewing, but I'm excited about how it will go.

Another batch I'm particularly excited about is a batch of hops and hibiscus inspired by Viking Blod mead, a delicious Danish mead that I've had on a couple occasions.It started off as a 2 gallon batch but I think it will have to expand to 5 gallons because the hops and hibiscus are currently quite a bit stronger than I had intended. That said, it's still pretty tasty.

Sheer Elegance in its Simplicity!

One of the things that I enjoy most about homebrewing mead is the simplicity of it. Mix some water and some honey, add yeast and presto, mead! The antibacterial nature of honey make sanitation much less of an issue than it is with beer.

The simplicity and foolproof nature of the process makes it open to endless possibilities as far as experimentation as well. Fruit meads, also known as melomels, are common, maybe even more common than traditional meads commercially. Experiments such as chocolate meads are less common because they take longer to age properly but still are popular in the homebrew set. Then you get the real weirdos who will put almost anything in their must (must: mead mixture before fermentation completes) even bacon. It's like a chemistry experiment you can drink!

Mead Madness

Not long ago I began home brewing mead. Mead, for those who don't know, is a honey wine, though considering that mead likely predates wine it might be better to say that wine is a grape mead.
The highly flexible nature of this beverage has lent itself to a lot of experimentation on my part including forays with fruits, chocolate and... bacon. So far as I can tell I'm the only person I can find who is experimenting with bacon meads, which is rather exciting.
As this is something I've become quite enthused about I've decided to do a status update here on the nine batches of mead that I've produced thus far. Each batch is numbered, followed by the type of mead, it's current phase and a few short thoughts. There are three phases in the mead making procees. Primary is where most of the fermenting happens. Secondary is for aging and settling of yeast and sediment. Bottled is for additional aging and distribution.
#1 - Traditional - Secondary - This is a strong traditional mead, lots of honey with a high alcohol content. Currently sitting in a glass carboy (big glass jug) I tried a sample the other day and found that the strong alcohol kick that had been present has lost some of its edge. It's still a bit cloudy and I'm unsure if it will ever really clear completely due to the high OG (Original Gravity - density of the mead compared to water from the addition of honey).
#2 - Maple Bacon - Secondary - This is a bacon and maple syrup mead with a taste like a christmas ham. Delicious. Like #1, it had a high OG and is not clearing as well as I would like.
#3 - Maple Bacon - Secondary - My second batch of bacon and maple syrup mead has cleared beautifully. The flavor at last tasting was more subtle and was slightly smokey as opposed to sweet. I'm looking forward to bottling this after christmas.
#4 - Apricot - Failed - The nozzle on the fermenter somehow managed to break, resulting in the whole batch dripping steadily out of the fermenter. This was a birthday apricot mead for a friend of mine, but it shall rise again.
#5 - Pumpkin Spice - Primary - I made this pumpkin spice mead from homemade pumpkin pie filling. Sampled last night, it's quite delicious and clear and should be ready for bottling after Christmas.
#6 - Bacon - Primary - Has a very subtle bacon flavor to it. In fact, I can't taste it, but knowing that I don't have the most sensitive palette I had some friends sample it and they enjoyed the subtle bacon taste.
#7 - Chocolate - Primary - Chocolate meads take at least a year to be palettable... so far I agree. Having sampled last night, it was the opposite of delicious.
#8 - Fudge - Primary - This mead is too fresh for a tasting or testing but it is by far the most active mead I've made through fermentation. It's been bubling like mad. I'm sure it will need a lot of aging like the chocolate, but I'm equally sure it will be worth it.
#9 - Apricot - Primary - Brewed last night, this is our second go at the apricot birthday mead. It should be a slightly sweet melomel (melomel: a mead made with fruit) with a distinct apricot flavor.