Natural Products Expo West 2006 - Mead, She Wrote
by Michael Graham Richard, Gatineau, Canada on 04. 6.06
[This is part 4 of a series of guest posts by Siel from Green LA Girl. For more, see part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 & part 5. -Ed.] A question keeping drinkers up at night: What's the difference between mead and melomel?
We found out at a wine and beer tasting at the Natural Products Expo West. Both are yummy and sweet -- and less heavy than either beer or wine. But unbeknownst to most, melomel is not mead, exactly. According to HoneyRun Winery, "Mead is wine made from honey alone." Melomels, on the other hand, usually also contain fruit or berry juice.
If you're a mead purist, you probably know about Redstone Meadery. This place makes mead -- wine fermented from honey -- without sulfites. Redstone Meadery also sponsors the International Mead Festival.
You can get sulfite-free mead at HoneyRun Winery too -- but most of HoneyRun's yummies are not mead. Try their fruit honeywines -- technically melomels -- made from berry juice and honey.
Don't like the sweet stuff? Then check out the growing options for organic beer -- which has clearly hit the main stream, because Anhauser-Busch now has two of them. Wild Hop Lager Beer (site currently down) and Stone Mill Pale Ale were representin' at the expo. The non-mega-corp option at the Expo was the Cali-based Butte Creek Brewing Company, which offers 4 different organic beers.
And never underestimate the power of beer. If you're a treehugging beer drinker, check out Fermenting Revolution, the Beer Activist Guide to Saving the World. Chris O'Brien publishes this online brewsletter and ferments a revolution over his frosted beer mug -- Go and drink likewise!
[A big "thanks" to Siel from Green LA Girl! We hope all that writing about alcohol didn't give her a hangover! -Ed.]
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Thank you so much for this post! My husband and I just started brewing beer and mead is next on the list.
I've been brewing mead for several years now, and it's funny that I just picked up a bottle of this stuff this weekend (first time I'd seen it, and I always like to sample the few meads that are on the commercial market).
For clarificaion, "mead" refers to any fermented beverage made with honey as the primary flavor/sweetener. Melomels are a type of mead, as are pyments, metheglins and other (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mead for more detailed information). Having not yet sampled this variety, I have to say that my favorite commercially produced variety is from Sky River Meadery -- it's the closest I've tasted to homemade, and is the only brand that I buy on a repeat basis (when my own stock runs low).