Feature
I’ll Drink To That, Honey!
Feature
Below: Golden Coast Mead’s
Frank Golbeck
I’ll Drink I
To That,
Honey!
f you use honey only to sweeten hot
tea or drizzle over sopapillas at the
Mexican restaurant, you’re missing
out one of its original uses: Mead.
An alcoholic beverage, mead is enjoying
a resurgence thanks to its simple recipe,
variety of tastes, and the popularity of
Renaissance fairs, Hobbit movies, and
television’s Game Of Thrones.
An ancient
beverage is back
on the scene
By Jonathan Reed
AcreageLife.com
Likely the oldest fermented beverage,
mead is astonishingly simple to make. Take
water, honey, and yeast, mix together, let
ferment, and after a while you get mead.
If you are thinking this sounds similar to
making wine and beer—to say nothing of doit-yourself “hooch”—you’re right.
Making mead successfully at home
depends on cleanliness, the weeks or even
months of time needed, and the right
ingredients. The same honey found on
grocery store shelves and at country farmers
markets can be used along with clean, pure
water. With practice you can add fruits,
spices, and other yeasts to create entirely new
flavor profiles. At-home, DIY types often find
themselves hooked after the first batch.
May 2015
AcreageLife
49
Feature
A rich tradition
Mead-makers today likely learned how
to craft the brew at home from parents,
grandparents, and uncles (most likely, the
same sort of uncle who gave you fireworks for
your ninth birthday).
Frank Golbeck operates a start-up meadery
in a busy office park in Oceanside, Calif. Don’t
let the production location fool you: Frank
was introduced to mead in the country. “My
grandfather was a mead-maker before me in
Yucaipa, in San Bernardino (County). Our
family had an apple ranch for about a hundred
years” Frank says. This is where they produced
fruit wine and mead.
Later, Frank began creating mead at home,
five gallons at a time, something that made
him popular in college. Every time he’d serve
it, friends and relatives would tell him that he
ought to bottle and sell it. Fast-forward past
a stint in the Navy and other jobs, and Frank
eventually partnered with two friends to form
Golden Coast Mead (www.goldencoastmead.
com) which has been in production for about
four years now.
Mead, the
Roman way
“Take rainwater
kept for several
years, and mix a
sextarius of this
water with a pound
of honey … The
whole is exposed
to the sun for 40
days, and then left
on a shelf near the
fire. If you have no
rain water, then
boil spring water.”
– Columella, about
60 BC
A blooming industry
As president of the Mazer Cup International
Competition, an annual mead judging competition,
Peter Bakulic has seen this pattern play out many times.
“They make mead in their garage, and people say they
like it and want to buy it. So they go through the rigorous
process of getting formula approval from the TTB (Trade
and Tax Bureau) and getting approved and spinning up
a business.”
His own mead exposure is remarkably similar. “My
family is from Croatia and has been making wine since
the 1500s. I started making wine when I was about
eight, learning from my dad and my uncles,” Peter tells
us. “Being familiar with fermentation and everything, I
started making beer in high school. Right about the end
of high school, I started making mead.”
Being a young beer and mead-maker has definite
benefits. “I got invited to a lot of parties,” Peter says.
Peter believes there now more than 300
meaderies across the country today, with wineries
and craft beer makers hopping on board. “It’s really
catching fire,” he states.
The biggest change he’s seen over the years?
In both amateur and professional categories, the
quality of meads submitted for judging has improved
year-over-year, and so has the quantity. This year’s
Mazer Cup International competition saw 330
commercially-produced entries, and 370 homebrewed amateur entries.
www.earthway.com
Reader Service No. 1089
50
AcreageLife
May 2015
AcreageLife.com
Feature
I’ll Drink To That, Honey!
A mazer is a drinking vessel, a bowl to
drink from. Although an ancient term, even
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams drank
their mead from mazers.
The spice of life
Like craft beers, mead can take on
many entirely different characteristics:
Sweet and cloying or dry and bracing;
flavored with fruit or au naturel; and
still or dancing with effervescence. The
Mazer Cup International’s Best of Show
this year sounds like an expensive, fine
wine, as Peter describes it.
“The winning mead was a strawberry
sparkling mead that was on the semisweet side. It was a lovely mead…
perfectly done, light on the tongue with
a nice pétillant sparkling characteristic
to it. It had a little kiss of sugar, but
not over the top, making it light and
refreshing.”
Golden Coast Mead, for example,
has four meads for sale, and each has
a distinct, unique character. Their fullbodied Savage Bois is wildly different
from their zesty California Oak mead,
and the Creamsicle-reminiscent Orange
Blossom bears little resemblance to
Reader Service No.177
AcreageLife.com
May 2015
AcreageLife
51
Feature
their yeasty Sour Mead. For Mazer cup
competitors, the only limit to mead
is what you can come up with, Peter
says. One year his Best of Show was a
chocolate chipotle mead.
Although it takes time to create,
develop, and refine a recipe—often
involving making hundreds of batches,
varying everything from type of honey
to extra flavors to fermenting time—
meaderies can be downright creative.
Bruce Leslie operates Griffin
Meadery (www.griffinmeadery.com)
just outside of Houston, Texas in the
small town of Willis. His meads range
from a cinnamon-and-vanilla combo
that tastes like Christmas all year long
to black currant, chocolate, and even a
triple-hopped IPA-style mead.
But if you really want to stretch
your taste buds, try some of his Fuego.
Before reaching out to down a shot,
Griffin Meadery offers clues about
what’s in store: They are Texans and
the mead is called Fuego, Spanish for
“fire.” Yes, it is a jalapeño-flavored
mead, with enough Texas kick to set
your biscuits a-burnin’. Don’t say you
weren’t warned.
Honey-hole secret recipes
Part of mead’s mystique is due to
its home-brew origin, with recipes
resembling “a pinch here” and “a dash
there.” When pushed, mead-makers
guard their recipes as closely as morel
mushroom hunters guard their secret
honey hole.
Frank Golbeck had to devise his own
recipes for Golden Coast Mead, but he
always wondered about the recipe for
his grandfather’s delicious beverage.
“Supposedly my uncle found the recipe.
I said, ‘Great I’ll come up and get it!’
But my uncle was like, ‘Uh … Aunt
Tammy—where is that recipe again?
We’ll let you know, Frank.’”
Medicine
Mead Easy
There are many different
types of mead, each with
its own name.
Melomel: Mead made with
fruit added
Braggot (or Bracket): Mead
made with malted grain,
usually barley
Pyment: This is mead made
with grape or grape juice
added
Cyser : A mead made with
apples or apple juice
Metheglin: A mead made
with added spices - often
considered to have
medicinal traits (Our word
“medicine” originates from
this term)
Source: stormthecastle.com
GET YOUR FARMSITE ON TRACK
RUBBER TRACK CONVERSIONS
OVER 100 MODELS UP TO 80,000 LBS. GVW
CUSTOM APPLICATIONS
AVAILABLE
Rejuvenate your driveway, and areas around
your feed bunks and grain bins. Use a four
wheeler to maintain your property when it
needs it, instead of dodging potholes or mud
every day. Two rows of rigid spikes loosen
the gravel, and smooth the surface quickly.
218.683.9800 / 877.436.7800
DIRECT
TOLL-FREE US & CANADA
Reader Service No. 2831
52
AcreageLife
www.hoelscherinc.com
Reader Service No. 1649
May 2015
AcreageLife.com
Feature
I’ll Drink To That, Honey!
Mead tasting
on CBS News
Turning
honey
into mead
You get out what you put in
As bees visit plants in search of nectar,
what they bring back to the hive
influences the color and taste of the
resulting honey. There are more than
300 varieties of honey available in the
US, each coming from a different flower
source. Here are some of the most
common.
Alfalfa – Often white or very light in
color, fine flavor; perfect for table honey.
Avocado – California avocado honey is
dark with a rich, buttery taste.
Buckwheat – Strong and dark brown,
found in cool, moist climates.
Clover – This “typical” honey can vary in
color from nearly white to amber; flavorwise, it has a mild flavor.
Orange blossom – As bees visit orange
and citrus trees for nectar, this produces
a delightful, aromatic honey.
Tupelo honey – The Southeast’s tupelo
trees yield a nectar that produces a
mildly-flavored honey with a unique
property: It does not granulate.
gqfinfo.com
Source: The National Honey Board
AcreageLife.com
May 2015
AcreageLife
53