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Yet more meady goodness

PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2012 1:39 am
by Oddwookiee
So with berry season off to a fantastic start and fruit not far behind here in Oregon, I've been spending a lot of my spare time at U-pick farms harvesting an assortment of berries, cherries and such. In addition to a whole pantry full of jams & preserves, I have a strawberry mead and a blueberry mead working, with a raspberry being started this week and blackberry, tayberry, sylvan, marionberry and salmonberry to follow as they come ripe. Yay living in farmland and loving to go fruit picking.

I find myself with about 12lb of ripe, dark Bing cherries surplus after the canning, so I'm going to start a batch to add them to (of course). However, since I already have a straight cherry mead sitting (and what a glorious color it is!) I want to make a spiced cherry mead. Vanilla has been done to death with cherry, so I'm looking for something else. I'm thinking maybe grains of paradise for a bit of peppery contrast, but I'm open to suggestions. I found a spice shop in a little hole in the wall in Portland that has everything I can think of spice-wise, and a lot I never have, but I haven't talked to the owner yet as I loathe going into that much civilization.

I figure if I'm going to solicit advice, I might as well go to a community of people who are intimately familiar with spices. Brewing I can get at gotmead (i'm asking there too) but I'm more interested in a flavor contrast between the heavyness of the honey, and the thick sweetness of cherries. Something a bit 'pokey' without being hot (jalapeno peppers are my upper limit), or kind of astringent, to cut the thickness of the honey & cherry combination.

PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2012 2:36 am
by salumi512
Sounds like you're going to have fun. I am not a berry picker. I lived in Alaska and picked wild blueberries a few times. It's a tremendous effort for quantity, not to mention you are next to all the bears that want the same blueberries.

Looking forward to what you come up with though.

PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2012 2:44 am
by Dogfish
Chokecherry? Huckleberry? I've had chokecherry that fermented really dry and nice.