Tasting My First 8 Meads (4 1/ 2 Years Later)
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- Опубліковано 27 лип 2024
- Today I'm taste testing my first 8 meads that I made over 4 1/2 years ago! I've been holding onto these bottles to let them age for awhile and I wanted to finally sit down and try them! I'm excited to share these meads with you and I hope you enjoy this video!
How to balance mead: • How to make GREAT mead...
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You should have chugged that stainless steel cup full of rejected mead for the grand finale!
My first mead was a cinnamon cyser. Luckily, not knowing it, apple must has already sourness, tannins and a hint of bitterness. I didn't use nutrients (I didn't know!) and it went from 1.140 to 1.030. It was glorious. That kept me going!
"Make more mead." Great advice! I think I'll take that.
If I wanted disappointment after 8 years and countless dollars, I’d go to a California University
lol
I love how brutally honest u are,
Awsome video.thanku
Fun tasting and great bit of perspective from almost half a decade into your journey! I appreciate the reality checks about what weirdness could happen in too long aging, and getting to see what could have been focused on sooner.
lmao " I don't know about this one , there is some weird funk in this one". lol
I appreciate this review. I'm a year into mead and wine making, and my goal this year is to improve balance.
I am almost at the 6 month mark and that's my goal as well, that and mastering waterless lol
Me too 🙂
Can you add the link to the video you have on balancing meads in the description? Loved the video!
Of course! It’s in the description and it’s also here! ua-cam.com/video/dPrm35afIOI/v-deo.html
Aha 4:55, I’m dead on his impersonation of us viewers. 😂😂😂🤣🤣 Love the video!
I literally just started my first primary fermentation a week ago now (a traditional mead). I'm so glad I got to watch this because I'm definitely going to backsweeten on the secondary to balance it out and help it age + plus I prefer my drinks with a slight sweetness not completely dry.
Very interesting, very cool. Thanks, man!
The dry face when you said needs backsweetening is something i can definitely relate to
Great video. I did this with mine that I started a 8 months ago and they all need work lol. Watching your videos for ideas on how balance them and back sweeten them as well.
All my early meads struggle from that lack of balance too. I had the fermentation process down fairly well, but my brew finishing game was weak. Lots "ok but missing something", usually a post ferment modification. Getting more comfortable with adding tannins, acids and backsweetening has definitely helped, but there's a lot to learn there.
Balance is so important!
Lol, so funny... Mmmm hmmm, uhh a smidge of acetone 🤣👌
I also started brewing around 4 - 5 years ago. I don’t have any of my original brews but I started saving a few bottles from each batch about 3.5 years ago so I’ve got some saved up. After watching this I think I might not try saving them too long. I am drinking a spruce tip mead tonight 13.8%abv that is from spring 2020 and I gotta say 2 years is the sweet spot for aging most mead
the celery flavor definitely comes from the lees. when i first started brewing i didn't know to rack the mead off and aged it in the carboy with the lees and after two years it tasted more like a celery mead than a traditional.
The "pure imagination" jazz music is so calming
That’s my friend Evan and his music: evandrumm.bandcamp.com/album/upside-downways
Now this is what I call Happy Hour 🍻
So apparently the best two out of the bunch are the ones that had the more acidic additions to the brew (apple and lemon/lime). That's really interesting, as from your tasting notes, they also seem to be more in balance, taste-wise.
I subscribed again for the glass! Who dat baby! 😜
You sir are braver then I am, i would never try my first brew.
Stuff was straight fire water with hints of old smokers breath
4.5 years already??? I remember your channel from when it first started.
killer video braj!
Thank you!!
started working with argon when i backsweeten, literally 0 extra oxydation in secondary blend 2/2
Well I’m off to learn how to better balance my meads. Thanks for the video.
It will change your mead making world!
@@ManMadeMead I don’t doubt that at all. I’m at a point where my meads taste good but always feel like they’re lacking something.
One of the fundamental tenets of being a youtuber is that you get to remake every single video you've ever made. Every topic, every single video is a chance to make ANOTHER video. Every one of those meads you tasted today is the potential subject of ANOTHER video. This is a choice however right? Some creators don't like doing that, or feel like they aren't making "new" content. Well this is a mistaken perception. Today you talked about 7 meads, and every one of those meads has the potential to be new content. Now, if that isn't fun for you, if remaking your content to do it better the second...third...fourth time feels repetitive and you don't find any joy in that well then there you go. But the tenet remains the same. The audience wants to see that repetition (to a point). This is TV market research type stuff. You will do you as you should do, but I hope you don't feel like revisiting and recreating old meads with new techniques is somehow repetitive or would be unwelcome by your audience. I think the opposite is true. You rock man!!!
It's the difference between someone who is more preoccupied by their media career vs someone who is preoccupied with furthering a craft and passing along wisdom.
Personally I would rather have more of the latter and less of the former. I think MMM shows a lot of integrity by not wasting our time.
That tv market research nonsense has made our society worse. I like to see how opinions evolve but doing it for the reasons you said is disgusting.
Awesome video.
Dang I need to check out my first brew - it has like 4-5years now. ^^
You definitely should!
I tasted the last bottle of my first dry red Pyment in December, it was 4years old, And I can say that this mead peaked
about 1year and half to 2 years old in bottle
no off flavours, but fruit complexity and a bit of the Color was gone.
Not stabilised but purged with co2 by bottling from a keg
Before watching, I am making these predictions. All of the meads probably are probably very smooth, and taste great because of the 4+ years of aging, but I bet the citrus mead tasted best when it was about 2 years old.
Update:
I am surprised by these results. Almost all of my meads peak around 5 years of age, with the exception of citrus meads which seem to be best at 2 years for me. One thing I will note is the amount of sediment left in those bottles is a LOT, and I think that's what destroyed the meads. The bready/celery flavor is caused by the proteins of the yeast sediment breaking down into nitrogen which finally resulted in nitrates (which tastes great in soups and meats). I recommend you add filtering into your regime if you really want to see what a great and aged mead can taste like, additionally having the right balance of acids is important to the preservation process. It's not just for taste, but to assure that certain types of rot do not occur.
How do you filter meads?
@@raducirstoiu2253 the same way you filter wine. Lots of choices from gravity filters, to forced pump membrane filters.
That was so spectacular and so intriguing :) I loved it so much! :)
I very much enjoyed this video! A little tip: if you want to properly clean your palette, have a little of coffee beans there too. Water will clean your mouth but smelling coffee beans resets your nose.
That's great to know for the future!
Basically, if you want it to age well, get a ton of tannin. That’s why red wines age well. An aged red payment would be great. You can add tannin with tea
Very true!
My oldest mead is 12 years old and I don't think that it has peaked yet.
4:48 from biscuits to celery.... what is this mead!? lol
I whole heartedly believe your bottles affected your flavors. Corks allow for a small amount of gas exchange, which is what is responsible for developing flavors in wines over time. You had metal caps on your bottles, so all the flavors could really do were mellow and meld a bit. From my research, I read that apparently naked corks is the only way to really get that proper aging. Even wax dipping, plastic cap corks, or shrink wrapping can hold flavor development back.
Honey with a high glucose content will ferment much of the honey character away. Honeys that ferment well, seem to carry a lot of the source flora aromatics. Once the sweetness has been removed due to fermentation and conversion to alcohol ,all you have left are the aromatics and non-fermentable sugars which will give it some body.
Could the bottles have played a factor? Meaning, might some of them have had a better shelf life if placed in a dark bottle?
I don't think it should matter if they aren't kept in the light which they shouldn't be anyway but I know nothing
From our meads that have won at nationals it seems that year 3-4 ended up really bringing out the honey varietals. Then they start to drop off during the following year, so drink quick at that point
That makes sense!
What a day to see this video... the day my 11lbs of honey arrives so I can try my hand at 3gallons of dry traditional... wish me luck LOL. Thank you for your time and dedication!
Blending is key, very few honeys can stand on their own.
Good luck! Let me know how it turns out!
The oldest mead i ever had stored away was ten years, a strawberry melomel, had twenty bottles of it, with synthetic corks and waxseals put in a cool dark cellar.
Great climate for some experimentation :)
i think it might have been my second or even third mead ever.
The young mead was god-awful, lighter-fluid crossed with cheap white wine (no cellar funk though) almost threw it out, but decided to age it.
First 2 years it was okay-ish just still a bit hot barely any fruit aroma or taste , but interesting stuff really started happening later.
year4 the strawberry started to really stand out, all the fire was gone and a more smooth mouthfeel had appeared, slightly silky.
year 6 the strawberry had dulled down a fair bit, become "creamy" almost a soft taffy flavour.
year 8 .. it still surprised me after all this time, it had changed again.. The friends i shared the bottle with told me it reminded them of a bottle of aged xanté (pear cognac) but strawberry.
The strawberry had receded and become a sort of buttery and smooth flavour that's hard to describe.
Year Ten and the final bottle..
it had gotten ever so slightly better, it showed age and maturity, comparing it to any other mead would be like comparing a bag-in box red to a finely aged ruby port.
I've never tasted it's like since, probably never will again.
It Was very interesting to see how it changed over time from something mediocre and watery to something very nice.
but i won't be doing it again.
Recipe you ask?
7kg forest-honey
20 liters of water.
Domesticated wild yeast.
2 kg of frozen strawberries. (secondary)
no nutrients, no extras, nada.. just time.
On the plus side at least you didn't break any
I found a watermelon mead I made 10 years ago, and it was not good.. it wasn't sour, it wasn't sulfate like, it was just ODD. There was a reason I forgot about it. lol
Great video! Do you think you have any ideas on where each one may have peaked at? Is there a difference in say, when a pear mead vs a traditional mead can peak? I’m considering doing a test myself but would love to hear your thoughts!
My money is on the idea that the lees in the bottle ALSO contained dead yeast cells and dead yeast cells over time will burst open and the yeast will literally spill their guts. In other words, I would argue that the mead in those bottles may not ever have reached a good peak on any bell curve. Those yeast guts contain all kinds of chemicals and compounds that you really do not want in your mead or wine - which is why you rack your mead numerous times before bottling. Here, you compound the problem because the volume of these bottles is small and so the volume of the lees is relatively speaking large. And sure, after 20 years you might find sediment in a bottle but that sediment is likely to be tannins and the like and should not be yeast.
I think they would have been best at 2 - 3 years! I honestly don't know the differences between the two when it comes to aging!
@@kb2vca That makes sense!
My first mead has gotten a bit worse with age (although I haven't tasted in a while). Not sure why, I don't think it's oxidised
That’s how I feel about most of my brews. I’ve basically quit. There are 2 brews I really enjoy & I’ll continue to make them, but I’d rather buy a product that I can enjoy than deal with the disappointment of failure & loss of money.
Don't quit! Keep brewing!
Can you do more on balance. Im for sure dangling beneath the tight rope.
I for sure can!
What if you took those bum bottles, poured them together, and added something like beet lemon ginger ( v8). Wouldnt than add flavor to make it better?
Possibly!
Balancing tannins and acid video! When!
I'll need to make one!
Love your videos. Heard you talk about pasteurizing in the oven. Do you have a specific video on how you do it?
I don't currently have a video on it! I will make one eventually though!
So what do you think is the shelf life for these? At what point do you think you should have enjoyed them?
I think that the way they were - they would have been best at like 2 years.
So you didn't add sulfites or pasteurize/condition those and they are 4.5 years I am surprised most were Ok, How did they not go bad after that long?
I think some things can age without the sulfites... but these would have definitely been better had they been sulfited
I'm gonna wait for one year and drink off the last bottle of each brew...
The(storing wine bottle on side myth) has been debunked.. several articles out there supporting upright storage. The internal humidity in a wine bottle stays constant. keeps cork saturated from inside.
Are you a Saints fan?
What happens if you pasteurized your mead before aging for so long?
Its no longer Mead. You kill off and destroy the pollens and other stuff in brew. Basically becomes sweet water or flavored water on a legal sense of Mead. Plus it can affect development of flavor over time. Specifically if you make a dry Mead. Let it age about two years. You’ll get notes of sweetness and some honey will seem to sweet.
I think a key take away is some sweet may age better as it’ll have untapped honey to work with and apparently mask issues. I have 2 year old bottles that are incredible and were dry Meads. I think another issue is the cork choice. There is no breathing that typically occurs with synthetic. So your trapping potentially bad agents that may typically breath off or absorb into cork.
You normally just kill off the yeast! It's another way to stabilize the brew before you want to backsweeten or add any fermentable sugars!
would you use dried mangos?
You could!
@@ManMadeMead since i have your attention, I forgot to add sultanas as my yeast nutrient in my second batch 4 days ago, would it be too late if I add it in now?
did you use so2 in these?
Nope!
@@ManMadeMead and I'm guessing storage temp was a little high too. Im sure they would have all lasted and not gone funky at 45f and with so2 added before bottling
why dont you put out a video about balancing a brew....
I will at some point! My buddy Doin the Most has a great one though!
@@ManMadeMead it was just funny because you literally put out videos and are like “I really wish I knew how to do this when I first started brewing, watch a video, but not one by me” and I’m just sitting here like “isn’t that your job!” Hahah btw I’m beek and got like 200 lbs of goldenrod I unfortunately let a beetle get to sooooo I got some stock for brewing! And I would love to hook you up some lbs of it! It 100% must be brewed with.
Thousands of dollars spent on equipment and ingredients but you don’t have enough glasses for each tasting? Would have looked impressive to have the glasses all lined up in front of each bottle, would look pro, swirling a glass of water into a glass might seem appropriate bc of wine tasting but that’s bc at wine tastings it’s not logistically sound to do so. Make the table look as good as your bubbler backdrop. Nice vids overall but people will gravitate to pro presentation. Good vids overall.
The(storing wine bottle on side myth) has been debunked.. several articles out there supporting upright storage. The internal humidity in a wine bottle stays constant. keeps cork saturated from inside.