Commercial Dry Mead

Joeywhat · 01-05-2010, 09:56 PM

Can anyone recommend a good dry mead that is commercially available? I'm in MI so a Michigan meadery works too...I just want something that is GOOD, and available at your typical fine beer/wine/liquor store.

Seems I can only find the sweet stuff.

LightningInABottle · 01-06-2010, 01:02 AM

The Winebarrel in livonia has Redstone. All of the sparkling ones are very dry. They were interesting but the fore and middle taste was lacking, I did like the aftertaste.
http://www.redstonemeadery.com/
The Juniper Mountain Honey Wine looks interesting and will be the next one I try.

B Nektar is too sweet for me.

Kuhnhenn's in warren has some slightly sweet meads. I have tried the raspberry a while back but it was on the sweet side. http://www.kbrewery.com/beer/beer.html Pick up some Fourth Dementia Ale while you are there if you visit

Joeywhat · 01-06-2010, 10:49 PM

I'll give those a try.

I got a good laugh with B. Nektar's 'sweetness scale'. They're actually the one I just tried (I think it was wildflower). Every single bottle I saw had the little bee way at the sweet end of the scale. Don't even know why they bothered, seemed they didn't even offer a dry variant.

Oh well, it was still good.

Emerald · 01-07-2010, 02:14 AM

The B. Nekter's site said that they will have a dry mead out soon called "The D's Bees" supposed to be made from honey from the Detroit area. Keep your eyes open!

LightningInABottle · 01-07-2010, 03:53 PM

Thanks for the heads up Emerald. I look forward to tasting their dry mead. Personally I like mine around 1.012 +/- .002 I wish there were more commercial meads in this range. I let my SWMBO taste one of mine that was @ 1.014 and she thought it was a wine that I had opened from the store.

The next bottle of B Nektar I open I plan to test with a hydrometer to see what it is at, same with Chaucers and the Redstone sweeter meads.

bnektar · 01-07-2010, 04:38 PM

Don't worry Joey and Lightning. The dry meads are coming very soon. We created the Bee Meter because we always intended to release dry meads. Last year we released a very dry Black Raspberry Melomel and Cherry Riesling Pyment. These were Xtra Limited Releases that were only available at the tastings at the meadery.

The D's Bees is a dry wildflower mead made with honey collected from hives in the city of Detroit.

Our Dry Tupelo mead was recently bottled and is fantastic. We only made about 200 bottles, but a few will probably make it to the stores.

Also, this month's Xtra Limited Release is a dry Shiraz Pyment. Very deep fruit flavor with subtle honey. Oaked. Good for long aging.

All of these meads finished between 0.998 and 1.005.

Thanks to everyone that's tried our meads. For those that think they're too sweet, please watch for our newer releases. Our meads are gradually becoming less sweet, even our standard sweet mead line-up has dropped in average final gravity from 1.030 to about 1.020-1.025.

Cheers!

LightningInABottle · 01-07-2010, 05:23 PM

Sweet! I mean UNSWEET!

bnektar: On new years I drank a bottle of the sweet tupelo and it was good. I like the wildberry pyment sweet. The vanilla cinnamon was too sweet, I ended up warming it up and using it as a topper for vanilla ice cream apple pie on thanksgiving. My problem is I shop mainly at Hillers so I drink what they have. I can't wait for the D's bees, that sounds good. I will have to make it to a testing soon. You had one this summer at the co-op market in AA that I had planned on going to but missed.

I'm actually using the hydrometer on all the wines I find I like just to see what they are finished at.

Joeywhat · 01-07-2010, 06:10 PM

Very cool, I look forward to trying them!

corexcore · 01-08-2010, 02:41 PM

Chaucers.

...okay, or not.

bnektar · 04-10-2010, 12:22 PM

UPDATE: The Dry Tupelo is now in stores.

Also, our Black Raspberry Melomel won a silver medal in the 2010 International Mazer Cup. This was a dry mead made with black raspberry juice, black currants, honey, and aged on Hungarian oak. It was released as an Xtra Limited last spring. I think we only made 5 gallons. We should make more, I think.