Help! I Think I Ruin Mead's Only Chance

Sooooooo
I have never brewed a Mead before, and after some reading it started to intrigue me. So before I purchase ingredients to brew a Mead I decided to head over to my LHBS and picked up a Chaucer's Mead (Only one they carried). This Mead came with spices to warm your mead up with, I found it even more intriguing. So tonight I did so..... and HOLY S&*$ IT WAS AWFUL!

First the spices almost took my breath away they were so strong, then the Mead was sooo sweet I almost got gut rot. it was 2 extremes that didn't please my pallet AT ALL!

I'm very upset, because I wanted to like Mead's sooooo bad. Even though I don't enjoy wine, I thought different about Mead.

So my question is.... Was this a bad first impression?
Is a Chaucer's Mead a Sweet Mead?
How will a Dry Mead taste?
How will a Sparkling Mead taste?

don't let chaucer's discourage you from trying more meads. think of it as the budweiser of meads. check the thread "commercial meads" should be on the first page of threads. there are a lot of good suggestions on better meads to try. a nice dry sparkling melomel is imho where its at.

Ya, Chaucer's blows. You can make better at home, I do. Just use quality ingredients & start off small; 1 gallon batches are really the way to go as they're more affordable & allow you to make a wider variety with less risk of discovering you don't like it or made a mistake somewhere along the way. Regards, GF.

Actually Chaucer's makes a pretty good sweet mead. In mead competitions it has won awards when tasted blind. It is dessert sweet, but the honey aroma and flavor are quite clear and nice. It is not my favorite mead because it is too sweet for my palate, but my Little Wifey likes it very much. If you don't like very sweet wines, you probably won't like it.

A dry mead tastes very different. The honey aroma will be there, but the dry flavor will taste quite different (and will vary depending on which honey is used). Personally I like many melomels dry, but with traditional meads, I usually find I like them best semi-dry; a bit of residual sugars gives them more flavor for me.

I would definitely try some other versions.

Medsen

i like how my girlfriend describes mead (at least the ones i have made/purchased) - "i keep expecting the tangy acidity of wine, but it never comes" which i think is her way of saying its wine but not and that confuses her tongue.

I too think the Chaucer's Mead that comes with the mulling spices is god aweful stuff, and I've made a couple crappy meads to compare it to!

I tried with the spices...overpowering!
I tried without...the mead smells medicinal...phenolic...plasticy...all around very unimpressive.

Hell the first mead I made with a gallon of apple juice, 3 lbs of Sue Bee honey and a pack of bread yeast was better, and it was never racked, aged...just drank from the primary like moonshine because we were a bunch of idiot kids (I was 17 when I started brewing...my senior year...gotta love the SCA)

I want to give Mead another shot because, like I said earlier, it intrigues me.

Anyone know of a website that sells Meads I can order from?

You might try some of these:
http://www.gotmead.com/index.php?option=com_sobi&catid=91&Itemid=34
Regards, GF.

My beloved MIL to-be gave me a bottle... drinking some now. It REEKS of capers. and I like capers. but not in mead. Oooooof!!!

Here is a meadery just off of the Blue Ridge Parkway. It might be near you.
http://www.blacksnakemead.com/

b nektar out of michigan makes a ton of great stuff that you can order from their website
http://www.bnektar.com/

I found this forum looking for info on wine making only three weeks ago, this is when I first heard of mead, I ran out to my local liquor store only to find chaucer's mead. I didn't like it but I could tell I would like a good mead. I then spent hundreds of dollars on more carboys, honey and other ingredients to start my own. Then a buddy of mine found a different type (medieval mead) forget the brand but we loved it!
I guess maybe its because I have been drinking wine for years that I could tell that chaucer's wasn't awesome, but mead could be. If any of mine turns out half as good as the second bottle, I'll be very happy. And I really hope so because I have three batches totally 12.25 gallons going now and I.'m sure I will start more before any of these are done!

My favorite so far is Sky River's Semi-Sweet Mead. It's still, and tastes like a good Riesling or white dessert wine. Tastes like honey, but in no way over-powering. Goes very well with seafood and spicy foods.

Check these out, may be some help for ya
http://winemakermag.com/stories/article/indices/27-meadmaking/497-mead-from-nectar-to-nirvana