by Dewey Caron
One of the ‘value-added’ products for beekeepers is Mead. Mead is an ancient drink, probably the first alcoholic beverage consumed by humans, even predating beer and wine. It is labeled the ‘nectar of the Gods’ and the ‘drink of love’. I celebrate mead, fittingly the weekend before Valentine’s day, judging the best of home made and commercial meads at the International Mead Festival in Boulder, CO. (http://www.meadfest.org/).
The IMF event is modestly proclaimed the worlds’ largest honey wine festival and competition for commercial meads’ although the American Brewers Association (http://www.beertown.org) also features a large mead competition at their annual Homebrewers Conference each year in June. The IMF 2006 show featured close to 100 commercial meads from seven different countries and for the first time a home mead competition. The non-commercial category attracted 220 entries from as far away as Alaska and Hawaii. No DE home meads were entered into competition (a MD entry of Lloyd Snyder of nearby White Hall) took a bronze in sweet mead) but there was one excellent DE commercial mead (Midas Touch Golden Elixir from Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, Milton). It did not win in its very competitive category of Braggot. In addition to medals, the winners in the several entry categories recieved a certificate for MD honey (www.beefolks.com).
For the preliminary round of judging in the Home Meadmakers Competition, experienced mead judges were paired with individuals with less experience judging. Most of the judges were from Denver/Boulder (where the IMF festival was held) area beer clubs/brewers associations. I judged with a beer maker working on his BJCP [Beer Judge Certification Program] certificate 10 cysers in the afternoon after judging 15 melomels with a novice mead judge (but experienced beer maker) in the morning. Many of the experienced judges were BJCP certified, including 2 certified at the National level. David Myers, ‘Chairman of the Mead’ at Redstone Meadery in Boulder was another of the expert and very experienced mead judges. The Redstone Meadery is a sponsor of the International Mead Festival and a consistent winner of numerous awards in commercial mead judging festivals.
IMF uses the BJCP guidelines for judging the mead entries (See the BJCP website www.BJCP.org for the categories and judging guidelines). Judges utilize a scoring sheet adapted from beer judging rather than the more involved EAS standards. Our judging standards were aroma (10 pts), appearance (5 pts), flavor (20 pts) and drinkability (15 points). There was a preliminary judging round and the top three of each category returned for a final evaluation during the actual festival (the preliminary round was 2 weeks earlier). Commercial mead judging was more intense and featured tougher decisions since every mead entered was very good to excellent. I judged traditional mead and melomels again and specialty meads, all in a single day. Three judges evaluated each entry and we reconciled differences for final scores.
The Festival, in addition to the judging of meads, was itself quite an enjoyable experience. It featured talks from experts and experienced mead makers and for a very modest fee, attendees had the chance to taste a wide variety of commercial meads. There were over 25 tasting booths. We could taste meads from Canada, Australia, South Africa and Europe as well as from several commercial meaderies throughout the U.S. If you can’t get to the festival (9n 2007 it will again be the weekend before Valentine’s Day in Denver) but want to buy commercial meads to test/compare with your favorite see the IMF website for listing of what was at the festival or check out www.Gotmead.com or www.honeywine.com for information on commercial meads; most of the producers taking out Ads on the websites had tasting booths at the festival.
I had the chance to share a room with Ken Schramm, the author of the newest and best book on mead The Compleat Meadmaker. His book is very comparable to my mead ‘bible,’ Making Mead by my beekeeping/mead mentor Roger Morse. It is available from bookstores or from the publisher (www.beertown.org). Ken also was a speaker; he talked about the importance and how selection of honey and fruit to make melomel influenced the final mead. Ken will journey to the 2007 EAS meeting at the University of Delaware to again share his mead making recipes and secrets.
If you have not made mead from your honey, I highly recommend you try it. If it didn’t come out quite as expected try again. I recommend Ken’s book or see the MAAREC web site MAAREC.cas.psu.edu for a flyer I posted on basics of making mead. You need not wait until Valentine’s Day to celebrate this most distinguished and honorable bee product.
She is also an experienced marketing coach and consultant who has recently decided to focus her marketing expertise exclusively on the craft beverage market to help meaderies, cideries, breweries and distilleries expand their business and get more customers while doing what they love.