Petition for TTB to revise "Mead" definition, from Ken Schramm

[bigirishape]

All:

Ken Schramm, author of the Compleat Meadmaker, is petitioning the Tax and Trade Bureau to redefine how they classify "mead". As it stands, the recipe formulation is off and allows for beverages that aren't even made of 50% honey to be called "mead" which favors people who make mead with a high % of fruit concentrates in their beverages. Also, they fail to realize that beverages such as melomel, pyment, cyser, metheglin as sub-categories of mead, and therefore should be allowed to be labelled as such. A Melomel should be able to be labeled a "fruit mead" rather than being forced to be labeled a "Melomel" and confuse the general public.

Come check out the American Mead Makers Association Group on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/392251727502250/)

Sign the petition! http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/revise-ttb-regulations.fb31?source=s.icn.fb&r_by=2503511

Mods, any chance of this getting stickied for a while?

 

[On-target]

I am in. I have purchased "mead" that was little more than fruit wine with honey flavoring.

 

[jonmohno]

Kinda like how they are/were allowing honey to be diluted with other sugars and still be classified as "honey"?

 

[gratus fermentatio]

Why hasn't Ken posted this here? He does have an acct.

 

[fatbloke]

Why hasn't Ken posted this here? He does have an acct.

He only posts occasionally over at Gotmead. Most of his more recent info seems to have been via facebook and his shiney new meadery/AMMA pages......

Hence maybe just an oversight.

Not that it matters to me so much, not being in the US, but it's still interesting to read and understand some of the difficulties faced by others, because of regional rules/regulation......

 

[bigirishape]

I can't say for sure why he doesn't frequent HBT more often, but I know he's hard at work making delicious mead. Last I heard from him, he had been bottling for ~2 days, and was offline for that duration.

He shared his original request on the AMMA Facebook group page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/392251727502250/) and I spoke with him about setting up an online petition for greater response, and he gave me the thumbs up to do so...hence the online petition above.

Spread the word!