Review of store bought mead - a solid check minus

[Srimmey]

Good evening,

I took a risk on a store bought mead for the first time in years. Honestly, still disappointed. $13’ish for a wee bottle.

Initial look - light but cloudy AF. Come on man, this is the easiest bar to hit!

Mouthfeel - coating, smooth, buttery. Definitely the best part of the experience.

Nose - not much to smell… subtle honey with a bit of heat from the alcohol

Taste - upfront, I get a little bit of apple followed by a mouthful of honey. It’s really really sweet

Finish - sickly sweet covering up lots of alcohol burn . It’s baaaad finish .

Final notes - I wish this was back sweetened a lot less and aged a lot more. It would be so much better, the honey and apple would balance out perfectly. It’s a cooking wine for me now…

 

[SimPilot]

19%? So they deluded honey in vodka with some water? Cool cool....

 

[Srimmey]

19%? So they deluded honey in vodka with some water? Cool cool....

When I saw that I thought they were going for a sack mead. They may or may not have legitimately got to that level of abv without adding spirits. If they did, they never took the time to oak it or age it like it needed.

 

[SimPilot]

There is a brand of "mead" sold in the stores I tested once with 20% abv.... disgusting medicine taste. I don't see A) a need and B) ability to do that.

The more I appreciate my brew, vs store brought. Simple 12-14% melomel are delish. Currently drinking cranberry melomel with ice cubes. so gooood.

 

[MightyMosin]

The 10% - 14% range is so nice to make and drink.
The highest I have made was just shy of 17.5% and turned out exceptional. It's a bit of a tragedy that you find examples of commercial mead like this when the know how is there at the homebrew level... granted, we don't have the cashflow issues where we need to turn product over to pay the bills... but damn I would hate to put out a product that just wasn't ready.

 

[malchizedec]

So many "commercial" meads taste terrible. I feel like there isn't a big enough knowledge base to produce quality brews as people try and work it out.

When I started making beer the amateurs I found with a depth of knowledge was huge and readily available.... with mead, almost nothing.... or wrong.... absolutely wrong.

 

[MightyMosin]

I have some sampling to do this week

 

[MightyMosin]

I really hate to be critical of someone's mead, but I couldn't find anything redeeming in these six meads pictured above.

My first issue is a pet peeve and not necessarily something that should be counted against a mead... clarity. I personally prefer a clear mead as I have direct experience where clarifying a mead has helped drop pollen and other items out of suspension and vastly increased the flavor of a mead. Outside of that, I just prefer a clear mead and consider it something to be expected in a commercial mead.

I was hoping that the Nordic Farmhouse would be a nice example of a wild fermented mead. The mead has an odd funk flavor that just overtook all the flavor of the mead. I expected an odd flavor from a wild ferment, but I didn't expect it to be so funky and so very yeasty.

Old Wayferer just tasted yeasty to me and it was like D47 was let to run rampant at too high a temperature and prevented my tasting any of the oaking that is supposed to be there. Valkyries Choice was similar to me.

I know that they are a meadery that has been in business for a while and they must be doing something right that people like... maybe it's just something too different for me. All in all, none of these were really worth cost to me. I was excited to try them out and I would likely give them another try if I'm ever in the area of their tasting room; maybe something happened in shipping, though I doubt it.