See, I don’t much care for beer (apparently a flaw in my character that several friends are actively trying to remedy). In my defense, I’ve only been able to drink beer for about the last five years. Before that, even the smallest amount left me colorfully ill.  I have made a tentative friendship with a few micobrews – Hefeweisens and fruity ales (often called ‘girly beers’ by more stalwart beer drinkers.)

What does beer have to do with mead making?  A braggot is a beer-style mead, and a very difficult mead to make if one does not care much for the taste of beer.  The process is rather funny in retrospect, but I was not amused at the time.  As mentioned in previous writings, mead making for me always seems to be an…adventure…so to speak.

It was one of my brew buddies that suggested I give this a try.  There’s actually a whole flock of ‘em that have been trying to get me to brew beer for years…Scoundrels, the lot of ‘em.  The stumbling block?  See paragraph 2 above.

However, I love a challenge. What better way to test both my brewing abilities and further my tasting skills as a mead judge than to make something I’m probably not going to like the taste of? Fortunately, I had mentors that were willing to keep an eye on me and play guinea pig.

One fine chilly day in February, I load up and head over to my brew buddy’s place to learn about ‘the boil’. Its looks a lot like making any hot cereal, pouring water over the grain in a big pot and boiling it to release the fermentable sugars in the grain. There is sort of an arcane science to the process filled with strange terms and conditions that just make my head spin.  The end product was five gallons of grain induced sugar-water bittered slightly with hops.  (They really did teach me better than this, I’m just being difficult for sport.)

To make this into a mead, it must have the requisite amount of honey or it’s just another beer.  I added twelve (12) pounds (one gallon) to finish out the 6 gallon ‘must’.  Add yeast and the adventure truly begins.

I have always been led to believe that the up side of beer brewing is the turn around time. It is possible to produce a drinkable brew in just a few weeks according to some homebrewers. Yeah, well not me.  Six weeks in, my stuff is still too sweet and mostly tastes like a beer! (Go figure.) I decide to have my mentor taste it: Young, still fermenting, but has promise.

Another two or three weeks go by.  I’ve got a beer loving friend over and offered him a taste, explaining that it’s young but I’d been told it had promise…big mistake.  It was AWFUL! I was crushed! What had gone wrong? A frantic call to my mentor was made and I was advised not to panic or do anything rash. He’d give it a taste again the following week. A week and a half later?  Young, but starting to realize some of its potential… Huh, what?

Two weeks later the same series of events repeated themselves.  Now I am wicked pissed and so discouraged that I put the carboy in a time out.  I wasn’t going to talk to it for three months minimum and if I didn’t see some dramatic improvement I’d chuck the whole mess down the drain.

Well, it was more like four months before I got back around to it but there was a significant change. There were still flaws so I contacted my mentor again and told him I thought my problem was the lack of carbonation. Could sparkling this make that much of a difference?  Yes, yes it could…and it did.

Well, the story isn’t over.  I have to wait a few weeks to know how it ends.  So far, the sparkling of the mead improved it so much that I entered it in the Colorado State Fair Homebrewers Competition. I’ll have to report back on what their judges have to say.

My brew buddies like it, and so do several of my friends.  Maybe there is hope.

Cheers!

Morgan

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This was a workshop that my most awesome friend, Teresa, and I put together. She runs a blog called Sassy Beer Gypsy, (and this blog is cross-posted from there) check her out! Together we found some interesting info on top of some tasty recipes. The ancient Romans and Greeks thought it was barbaric to drink wine undiluted. I found this piece written by Eubulus in his circa 375BC play Semele or Dionysus concerning the consumption of wine:

“Three bowls do I mix for the temperate: one to health, which they empty first, the second to love and pleasure, the third to sleep. When this bowl is drunk up, wise guests go home. The fourth bowl is ours no longer, but belongs to violence; the fifth to uproar, the sixth to drunken revel, the seventh to black eyes, the eight is the policeman’s, the ninth belong to biliousness, and the tenth to madness and hurling the furniture.”

Teresa read this excerpt and it made her wheels spin with the thought of doing a workshop such as this:

WEDDING WINE

from Elizabeth Cunningham’s The Passion of Mary Magdalen

I don’t know exactly what was in the wine.
It tasted fiery and sweet.
I suspect it was red mead: Maeve Rhuad
Mead mixed with red wine.
An intimate joke, a pun made by the Bridegroom
that only the Bride would understand.
Its effect transcended any ingredient.
It was like drinking life itself:
new-turned earth, sun, wind scented with sea,
blossoms opening at first light, the ripe perfection of fruit—
the elements gathered on our tongues, lingering on our breath.
It was like drinking love itself,
the passion of the Bride and Bridegroom distilled,
shared among the guests,
flowing in all our veins, rivers from a single rise.
If we were drunk, we were divinely drunk.
We were in love. In Love. All of us.
None of us could bear to part that night.
The stars were so beautiful. We were so beautiful.
In the end, we all slept together,
no one alone, each one beloved. 

As we shared what we had learned, we passed clay cups (the Greeks used a kylix during symposiums which were “drinking parties” for general socializing) filled with the different concoctions to share with each other. We had fun exploring this alternate world of wine, so for all the peeps who attended the workshop this past week and all you on the inter-webs, here are the recipes:

The Ancient Greek/Roman Way – 3 parts water to 1 part red wine (I find a half n half mix is nice, not too diluted but helps chase off the potential headache in the morning)

Muslum – Mix honey in with red wine, to your taste.

Maeve Rhuad – 1 part red wine to 1 part mead

Mulled Wine – well, I don’t really have a recipe, but I bought the spice mix from a quaint place called Savory. Check them out at www.savoryspiceshop.com. After passing this cup around we added some water and mead to the mix and it took alot of bite off.

Turk’s Blood – 3oz champagne, 2oz red wine

French Monkey – 2/3 glass red, 1/2 glass Orangina (I used San Pellegrino Orange)

Seaside Summerbliss – 2 parts red wine, 3 parts sweet apple cider

Red Wine Cooler – 4oz red wine, 2oz lemon/lime soda, 2oz ginger ale (it was mentioned that just ginger ale was better)

If anyone has any other wine mixing recipes/traditions, old world or modern, please feel free to post them!

Cheers!

I know several individuals that compete as homebrewers with the intent to one day go commercial. That makes perfect sense to me, especially at the Mazer Cup International level. Building your reputation for fine wines/meads prior to actually going commercial has your public waiting in anticipation. I simply cannot argue that approach to marketing for the future.

The rest of us? Well, we get bragging rights, but how long can you brag before you start loosing friends? Then there are the  lovely awards that act as superb dust catchers once the blush of success wears off.

I have won First Place in two competitions: My very first and my last. There is a decade or more of years between the two, which puts my consistency in question.  Not to mention that both times I won with what I viewed as flawed wines… What’s up with that? Kind of hard to brag when you personally want to question the judges’ reasoning and sense of taste. (No offense intended. This is clearly my issue and is not intended to put anyone’s actual skills in doubt.)

I guess it is for that very reason I enter the competitions: Feedback – the more in depth and gritty as possible. Winning is a lovely side-affect, but it will not make me a better homebrewer in and of itself.  As much as I love and respect my brew buddies, they already like what I make – no need for improvement – so it is very hard to get the bitter, technical critique I need.  They are too kind to risk hurting my feelings with too much truth.

For me? I want to learn to correct the flaws in my wines and create an even better end product. I need to learn if the points I consider flaws are actually attributes I need to be cultivating. It may simply be that my palate needs educating and I am willing to learn.

Now, where did I put those entry forms for the State Fair…

Morgan

I have been entering various home brew competitions for about four years.  For three years I received a recurring commentary:  you need to brew something more ‘complex’…

Okay, fine. What exactly does that mean? A little more detail, please?

So, in lieu of proper direction, I plotted my revenge.  I would focus on handing these judges a mead they will never forget. In this frame of mind my penchant for evil knows no restraint and I felt leniency unwarranted.  My starting point? Onions…lots of ‘em…and potatoes.

I actually started with an already published and successful onion wine recipe.  I simply substituted sufficient amounts of honey to change it to a mead. Six weeks later, the Frankenmead was born.

In its infancy, the onion was so far over the top it could have easily made the Olympic Pole Vaulting team.  It didn’t help that the overall flavor was unbalanced, very much like a table having one leg too short. It was also highly (!) alcoholic which makes the flavor harsh.  So, I consulted my home brewer support team (whose place in Paradise is assured!)  for suggestions.  Their answers? Aging to mellow the alcohol levels, and for flavor? Vanilla!

Now, gentle reader, I sincerely hope you are cataloging all these flavors and mentally tasting the combination as we go along. This is half the fun!

So vanilla beans were added in and several weeks went by. Again, the onion was still overbearing (The flavor was described as “sugar cookies and old carpet”). No easy solution came to mind. Then I thought, what about lemon?

Lemon was added. Several judicious tablespoons of freshly squeezed juice as well as some of the zest.  Again the weeks of waiting and, voila! balance achieved!  Now, it was all about leaving it alone and letting it age quietly.

Fast forward about sixteen months to April 2011 and this year’s Mazer Cup International .  Although the alcohol levels were still a bit high, I submitted my monster (Now officially named “The Hair of the Dog”) for competition and waited with gleeful anticipation.

The result? The highest numerical score I have ever received (43 out of 50 points possible) and the most beautiful commentary every received by this home brewer: “Very complex”. On the humorous side, “next time, caramelize your onions first.”  Next time? They’re encouraging me to do this again? Go figure!

Despite the high scoring, my entry did not manage to place this year. However, I now have others requesting my recipe for this little horror story. The evil little project grew up to be a more than respectable mead with a rich, brandy-like flavor. Who knew?

Now, for my next diabolical creation!  Any suggestions?

Morgan Wolf

There is, however, an intrinsic truth in this statement, and it has a history.

I love being a home brewer. I love mead and I love making mead.  I created my first mead in 1991 and it quickly became a passion.  Then, slightly more than sixteen years ago, two dear friends moved into the townhome two buildings down from my own (Sean and Candice Bundy, of course!) and my passion proved contagious.  Having tasted my meads and enjoying them, they decided to try their hands at it and asked me to teach them how it was done.

So, it begins…. I handed them my love of mead and mead making and off they went.

In 2008, several years ahead of schedule, my friends find themselves the proud owners of a commercial winery and two shipments of grapes that arrived simultaneously instead of the staggered arrival they had planned. There is nothing to compare to one’s first glimpse of 3200 – 3600 pounds of grapes…

Ah, my first crush… Takes on a whole new set of meanings, doesn’t it?  It’s very similar though, this process of falling in love…

So those same dear friends return the favor from fourteen years ago and hand me their love of the grape and the art of winemaking. This too is contagious, which is why I happily schlep buckets of grapes to the crusher (for hours on end), hand pulp pears too ripe to process any other way, and log a 20 hour shift helping transport, then process, 500 pounds of peaches (again, by hand because of the stones)…all for love.

Love of the wine, love of the art in making the wine and love of the friends that allow me to participate wholeheartedly in a passion we share.

And the adventure continues…

Morgan Wolf

• 2nd Annual Taste of Pearl
  Pearl Street Mall
  Boulder, CO
  Sunday, May 1st, 2-6 pm
  www.boulderdowntown.com/events/taste-of-pearl
• Winery Open House
  Centennial, CO
  Saturday, May 14th, 12-4 pm
• 9th Annual Manitou Springs Colorado Wine Festival
  Soda Springs Park
  Manitou Springs, CO
  Saturday, June 4th, 11-6pm
  www.manitousprings.org
• 1st Annual Denver Winefest
  Northfield Mall
  Denver, CO
  Saturday, June 11th
  www.coloradowinefest.com/denver
• Colorado Wine and Cheese Tasting
  May Farms
  Byers, CO
  Saturday, June 25th, 3-6 pm
  www.mayfarms.com
• Winery Open House
  Centennial, CO
  Sunday, July 24th, 12-4 pm
• 2nd Annual Bootstraps Western Winefest
  Evergreen Rodeo Grounds
  Evergreen, CO
  Saturday, August 20th, 12-6 pm
  www.bootstrapswesternwinefest.com
• Winery Open House
  Centennial, CO
  Saturday, September 3rd, 12-4 pm
• 20th Annual Palisade Winefest
  Riverbend Park
  Palisade, CO
  Saturday, September 17th
  www.coloradowinefest.com

At the Finger Lakes competition our Apple Pie Honey Wine brought home a Silver Medal and our 2008 Syrah brought home a Bronze Medal.

At the Mazer Cup our Blackberry Honey Wine and our Blushin’ Ginger Mead both brought home Silver/2nd Place Medals. Interestingly in 2010 both of these wines brought home Bronze/3rd Place medals at the Mazer Cup in the same categories. It’s wonderful to see the incremental improvements!

We’re honored by these recognitions and hope to share these wines with you shortly.

Carbon dating on the remains of grape vines in the area showed them at around 4000 years in age, which indicates the vines lasted for some time, which isn’t very surprising. Once vines are well established in an area they will tend to remain, and it makes sense that the wine making practice likely did for some period of time as well. A shoe recovered at the site dated to 5,500 years of age.

Read in more detail:

At 6,000 years old, wine press is oldest yet found

and

Archaeologists Unearth the World’s Oldest Wine Press

Cabernet Franc 2008
Silver – Mesa County Fair 2010
Silver – American Wine Society Colo Premier Wines
Silver – Colo State Fair 2010
Bronze – Finger Lakes 2010

Bromios 2008
Silver – Mesa County Fair 2010
Bronze – Finger Lakes 2010
Bronze – American Wine Society Colo Premier Wines
Bronze – Colo State Fair 2010

Syrah 2008
Bronze – Mesa County Fair 2010
Bronze – American Wine Society Colo Premier Wines
Bronze – Colo State Fair 2010

Raspberry Honey Wine
Gold & Best of Show Mead – Colo State Fair 2010

Blackberry Honey Wine
Silver – Colo State Fair 2010
Bronze/3rd Place – International Mazer Cup 2010

Blushin’ Ginger Honey Wine
Bronze/3rd Place – International Mazer Cup 2010
Bronze – Colo State Fair 2010

Traditional Mead
Bronze/3rd Place – International Mazer Cup 2010
Bronze – Finger Lakes 2010
Bronze – Colo State Fair 2010

Blueberry Honey Wine
Bronze – Colo State Fair 2010