Moonlight Meadary in melb

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Highly recommended. Michael and Berneice are fantastic people and the meads we had at ANHC were mind blowing.
 
I've booked in. Perfect timing; I just bottled some mead last week and want to get some more on the go, so hoping to get some inspiration.
 
See you guys there, the Baron and I will be in attendance!
 
Be good to meet some of you folks; I'll be there with the Baron and my not-quite-Moses beard.
 
Nice event. Some if the Mead's were very tasty inc the apple pie one.
 
Probably a few at the Two Row Bar. Dunno about elsewhere.
 
Was interesting to compare their meads to my own. All the meads had a sweetness and fruitiness to them - I think they're definitely going for the Rekorderlig/alcopop type of drinker. But the smooth, mature mead taste was quite interesting too - which I guess comes from the yeast and the method of fermenting at around 16 degrees celsius. Actually I reckon the heather one was the standout for me - smooth, golden, beautiful.
 
Prince Imperial said:
Are their meads available commercially anywhere in Melbourne?
The Australian distributor, Dan from Calibre Beer was there last night. If you contact him I'm sure he'll tell you where you can find them (if whether they are available in Melbourne, he's Brissy based).

http://www.calibrebeer.com/contact-calibre.html


TimT said:
Was interesting to compare their meads to my own. All the meads had a sweetness and fruitiness to them - I think they're definitely going for the Rekorderlig/alcopop type of drinker. But the smooth, mature mead taste was quite interesting too - which I guess comes from the yeast and the method of fermenting at around 16 degrees celsius. Actually I reckon the heather one was the standout for me - smooth, golden, beautiful.

I agree, while they were all delicious and well balanced, the ones they served were all semi-sweet to sweet. I would have liked to have tried at least one of their dry meads, as that's currently what I'm aiming for at home.
 
TimT said:
Was interesting to compare their meads to my own. All the meads had a sweetness and fruitiness to them - I think they're definitely going for the Rekorderlig/alcopop type of drinker. But the smooth, mature mead taste was quite interesting too - which I guess comes from the yeast and the method of fermenting at around 16 degrees celsius. Actually I reckon the heather one was the standout for me - smooth, golden, beautiful.
That's their thing. If you check the marketing, it's definitely skewed to the sweet drink demographic.

(Also 80% of their mead sales are to females, not to gender stereotype or anything).
 
We had a little chat with Bernie at the start and she said that you don't want to make meads too dry because the honey will pretty much ferment right out. I think she's right; that's what happened with my rose hip mead - at the moment it really has very little flavour. I think it'll improve a bit with time, but at the moment it's quite disappointing. I think they must tend to load up the meads with fruit during fermentation - maybe some unfermentable plant sugars go in to the mix too. The trick is to have some flavour left over at the end without making it sickly sweet. (EDIT: they're American drinks too - those yanks do tend to love their sugar).

Maybe the take-home message is there can be so many different sorts of meads - you can give it so many twists depending on your own personality. I remember the first mead I had was nothing like those last night or any of my own I've since brewed: a pyment made by an experienced amateur wine maker. He'd managed to get just a hint of sweetness into the final flavour, to compliment the fermented grape flavours. It was a beautifully crafted drink.
 
TimT said:
We had a little chat with Bernie at the start and she said that you don't want to make meads too dry because the honey will pretty much ferment right out.
I didn't buy that 100%. The sugar portion of honey will ferment out, but there are subtle flavour compounds which won't, since they're not sugars. Within the BJCP style of 'mead' there are substyles for dry, semi-sweet, and sweet, so it must be possible to make a nice-tasting dry mead otherwise people wouldn't make them.

In fact I did try some pretty darn nice ones at a Meadery in Canada (their 'food pairings' link has better info on the meads. Inspiration is always good). Very wine-like in the mouthfeel and finish, just more floral than grapey-fruity in terms of flavour. You definitely could have slid it under most people's noses (including mine) as a wine and they wouldn't have baulked one bit. Since it had a more delicate flavour, it's probably harder to get right since there's less to hide the flaws.

He said that he gets the residual sugars by calculating the amount of sugars at the start to exceed the yeast's abv limit. 71B's limit is about 14%, which is why all his meads are around this abv—or more likely he chooses this yeast because he likes his mead around 14%. This is in contrast to some advice I've read which advocates starting with a lower amount of sugars, then feeding more honey as you go and backsweetening. The concept behind this being that the yeast isn't so shocked at the huge amount of initial sugars. Michael certainly didn't seem to have any trouble with happy fermentations though, as they were very smooth after only a year. I'd be happy to drink mine a lot rougher than that :)
 
I didn't buy that 100%. The sugar portion of honey will ferment out, but there are subtle flavour compounds which won't, since they're not sugars.

I think it might depend a lot on the honey. Honey is mostly sucrose, fructose, and glucose - (and lots of other sugars too - maltose, for instance). The yeast will chomp up most of the sugars but has problems with some. But the levels of the sugars in the honey used really varies a lot from season to season. They said most of their honey was wildflower honey, which would make the process more predictable in some ways, less predictable in others.
 
At ANHC he mentioned that the yeast was the only ingredient he has control over. I.e. honey varies with every harvest, water chemistry varies at a slower pace, but the yeast is something he can rely upon, so it dictates a lot of what is considered his meads' signature character.
 
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