Tonight I cracked open a bottle of mead I've had for a while. It comes from Arktos Meadery in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I visited their tasting room with my brother a few years back and came away with this beauty.
The label looks like it was designed by a death metal band, which is just fine by me. It does make some sense. Mead has a strong tradition in Norse cultures, and lots of metal bands play up their Viking/Scandinavian roots. There's definitely overlap in the two subcultures.
This bottle is their Queen Bee variety, which is a traditional style mead. It's just fermented honey, with no extra flavors or additions. After opening the wax and popping the cork, the aroma of honey was immediately apparent.
After decanting, the honey notes were even stronger, and you could really see the amber color. The taste did not disappoint. Very strong honey flavor, but not astringent at all. And the honey is becoming more pronounced as the mead warms up.
It would be very easy to drink a lot of this, but at 15.5% abv, some restraint is called for. So here I sit, on this Sunday evening, with my glass of mead, watching Home Alone 2, preparing for the work week.
this sounds great right about now :)
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That looks great @methus! In the 90s I used to brew my own beer and I once brewed a 5 gallon batch of mead. It was, as you said, just honey, water, and yeast and it was glorious.
Glas to hear the death metal mead was a winner, sounds like you have reason to visit that tasting room again soon.
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