Damn, this is pretty good. Why is mead not at as common as ciders? Are they that much harder to make?

Damn, this is pretty good. Why is mead not at as common as ciders? Are they that much harder to make?

Honey's more expensive and it takes longer to ferment, I would guess

Mah nigga, my gf and I found out about Mead a month ago. It's amazing to me that it's not more popular than it is cause of how good and versatile it is. I feel like the hipsters are warming up to it so it's only a matter of time.

I'm kinda lucky it's not readily available because I might become an alcoholic from it if it was.

probably because honey is a pretty neutral flavor being basically just fructose/glucose syrup

>Are they that much harder to make?
Yes, honey is pretty much pure sugar, it's lacking nutrients the yeast needs. If you don't add nutrients + potassium it can easily take >1 year to reach peak quality. Also honey is expensive, and commercial mead is always disgustingly sweet. Only way to get good mead is to make it yourself.

Depends on the flowers the bees ate. Linden/lime/basswood flower honey has a strong flavor.

>Yes, honey is pretty much pure sugar, it's lacking nutrients the yeast needs. If you don't add nutrients + potassium it can easily take >1 year to reach peak quality.
So all this memeing about mead taking fucking ages is only because people don't put in yeast nutrient, or is there a flavour benefit for really long ferments?

Mead is the shit. Just started drinking it early last year but it's becoming my favorite type of alcohol. More alcohol content than beer and way better than wine

I've never had the patience to try traditional mead.

I'm surprised more nerds aren't into it due to its popularity in RPG's taverns.

>Why is mead not at as common as ciders?
Homosexuality. No, I'm dead fucking serious. Gay guys love their cider, and that led to cider becoming trendy. Then like a lot of trends, people started picking up on it, which led to a snowball effect.

Mead, meanwhile, just doesn't have that spark to get it going. At least not yet. Right now it's just piggybacking off of cider's rising popularity. If it really wants to come into its own, it's going to need to associate itself with someone besides Renn Faire geeks and Norse Pagans.

>I LOVE IT WAGGLE

>gays drinking anything other than hurricanes and frozen daiquiris

Nice joke.

I love it but it's hard to get here too.

It's probably because of this

I know a guy who used to sell his homebrew mead like hotcakes at medieval re-enactment events. Nerds are into it.

You don't know many gay people, do you?

I know entirely too many.
The only non-cocktail they drink is an entire bucket of tequila.

Mmm, maybe it's a regional thing. I know a lot of gay guys too, and they're cider people. Hell, my first experience with cider was at a gay sports bar where they had multiple varieties on tap, as well as a special on cider with a shot of Fireball (which they dubbed "Angry Balls.")

The fuck? My boyfriend and I hate cider. Most of the time that shit has a lot of questionable stuff in it, like angry orchard. I drink stouts and he is more of a citrus focused beer type of guy. We don't really know too many other gays so its hard to say if it really is a gay thing. Really, the only cider drinking person I could think of is my straight brother.

Good thread OP.
Mead will probably not much more than a ren-faire-lovin' niche, although as it becomes more available, the price of honey is going up that much more (google hive death).
Why do I think it'll never be a serious market even for those willing to pay a bit more for the good stuff? There's entirely too much flavor, for one, and the majority of beer sold is not flavored at all, but the lightest of pilsners. The heavy rich flavor, and cost involved compared to craft beers and wines (still mostly small batch kind of private sales...hard sell. I don't mind mead myself, but I'm rarely in the mood for something honey and herb flavored. I'd be much more likely in a similar dessert mood to want to seek out a fruit wine, such as lychee, mango, passion fruit, carambola and some other flavors. (check out Schnebly vineyards in miami). I'd also probably seek out an icewine if I was in a mood for mead and even like it more. That weird syrupy nature of icewine reminds me of honey but with more flavor, really. A fortified wine like cream sherry would also fit my mood better than mead. Honey liqueur would have better texture, and of course a lot of craft beer can have honey in it now. I guess I'm destined not to really want mead, even when I'm at a ren faire, I will probably take a pass for some other offering that is a better food pairing with my giant pub pretzel, cornish pastie or scotch egg.

>better food pairing with my giant pub pretzel, cornish pastie or scotch egg.

There's a great misconception about mead that it must be sweet because it's brewed from honey. The best meads I've brewed and tasted were dry meads where the essence of honey was present, but it had no detectable sweetness. Not all 'murricans are addicted to the flavor of HFCS, because that always made me retch.

>There's entirely too much flavor
There's not. Maye you drank a disgusting sweet mead and were tricked by the sweetness. Mead has similar flavor to wine.

Not really. In Australia, we have really pungent fragrant honeys because of the native gum trees, and they all have their own unique quality and taste. For example, mead made from yellow box honey taste totally different to other varieties of honey meads like river red gum.

>probably because honey is a pretty neutral flavor
wut

I made mead from New Zealand thyme blossom honey once, it had a good flavor.

How does Mead compare to Barley Wine?

I have some fermenting in my closet right now.

Completely different. Barley wine is just a style of strong beer. "Wine" is a misnomer. It's much heavier than real wine. Mead is lighter bodied (assuming you're not drinking disgusting sweet commercial mead), like grape wine.

>gay sports bar

that sounds fun. I want to go to a gay fucking sports bar.

So it's consistency is lighter than barley wine? How is the flavor, assuming non commercial Mead?

It's always vaguely wine-like, but the exact flavor depends largely on the original honey. You probably want to use a strong flavored honey. There is some debate over whether you should boil the honey or not. I never do and I've never lost a batch to contamination. No-boil gives stronger honey flavor and lighter body.

Those are fags. I'm talking button down, conservative gay people who have husbands and jobs that require them to wear a suit