trainhound

Recipes 

Hi, I'm very new to Mead and bee keeping. I just happened to read about Mead in a beekeeping publication and never knew it ever existed, so I ordered a bottle of Carroll's Mead and fell in love with it! Since then I just bought a bottle of Chaucer's traditional mead and thought that was great too. So my question is would these be considered sweet Meads or dry Meads? Also, what recipe would be the closest to them? BTW my palate is in no way refined, I really didn't care for Rabbit's Foot sweet Mead but I think it has spices in the recipe.

Ed

wayneb

Recipes 

Yes, Chaucer's and Carroll's meads are both sweet meads. They are both examples of "traditional" meads, made with nothing but honey, water, yeast and yeast nutrients. They finish at a final specific gravity of around 1.015 to 1.020, if memory serves. If you want to re-create something similar, take any of the traditional sweet mead recipes that you'll find from searching the forum, and you should be good to go. Don't do metheglins (which have spices added) or melomels (having fruit added), if you are after the traditional mead flavor profile. Also, make sure that you use the best quality (raw - unfiltered and unheated, if possible) honey that you can afford - it really will pay off in the flavor and aroma of your finished mead. If you can use honey from your own hives, so much the better, since it will be freshly extracted.