Superstition - Amante

Amante by Superstition Meadery is their mead Safeword aged on coffee, cocoa nibs, cinnamon and chiles.  It is a yearly release available online and in their tap room for $48 for a 750mL bottle.  It is 13% Alcohol by volume.  

Amante is a Gold Medal winner at the 2016 Mazer Cup International.

For background, the base mead is Safeword, Safeword is Superstition's bourbon barrel aged mead with Belgian Dark Candi syrup.  So Amante cranks Safeword up to eleven by adding coffee, cocoa, cinnamon, and chile to the mix.

The easiest way to describe this mead to anyone familiar with craft beer is: Hunahpu.  This is the mead version of Cigar City Brewing's beautiful cinnamon, cocoa, and chile imperial stout, Hunahpu.  

This mead pours a very rich, dark ruby. It's dark and near opaque but still has beautiful clarity.  
The nose is this bouquet of aromas.  You get hit with honey sweetness, candy, coffee, cinnamon, bakers chocolate, rum soak dates.  It's just this explosion of richness to it.  Just on the nose and appearance you know this will be a decadant drink,

The taste is wow.  Much like the Coffee Marion, Amante takes a tasty base mead and elevates it to another level.  All the flavors are there, the coffee, the honey, the bourbon, the chile, the cinnamon. 
 However it is so well balances that none of the flavors overpower.  They all are beautifully balanced to create this extremely rich, dark, flavorful drink.  It's damn near like drinking a bourbon barrel aged imperial stout.  So if you're a fan of that style, this is the mead for you.  
This is a very lovely mead and worth seeking out if you are a fan of the flavors described above

Superstition - Coffee Marion

Coffee Marion is, as you might have guessed, Superstition’s Marion aged on coffee.  

The base mead: Marion is a blueberry, blackberry, and raspberry melomel available as a yearly release.  This base mead has won numerous awards including a gold medal at the 2016 Mazer Cup International.

Coffee Marion is currently a tap room only offering in Prescott, AZ. 

First I will start off by saying the base mead: Marion, is a lovely mead by itself.  It’s dry, tannic, a bit tart, yet still has a nice fruitiness to is and ample honey sweetness.  However the addition of coffee raises this mead to another level.

Coffee Marion

The color of Coffee Marion is a muddled dark ruby, almost brownish.  It’s not the most pleasing color.

The nose is straight coffee. No prominent berries notes from the aroma, however you do get that slight ripe berry nose that some coffee roasts like an Ethiopian bean can provide. 

The taste is what really grabs me and elevates this mead.  There is a perfect balance of berry and coffee in this mead.  Neither is overpowering, perfectly restrained yet each very prominent.  The acidity is perfectly balanced with the sweetness, neither coffee nor berry, nor honey is overpowering.  What I also loved is how the coffee smoothed out some of the dry, tannic characters of the base mead.  

It’s hard to find a flaw in Coffee Marion, and believe me I tried.  It’s about as perfect as a mead as I’ve tasted.  So if you ever get the chance to visit Prescott Arizona, do yourself a favor and not only visit Superstition, but order this mead.  As wonderful as their tasting menu is, which include meads like the Berry White series, Coffee Marion would be at the top of my list to try.

Misbeehavin' - Sycophant

Sycophant is a fig mead made with star thistle honey and orange zest by Misbeehavin' Meads.  This mead was available as a free bottle to members of Misbeehavin's mead society. It was a 1 bottle per member allotment, came in a 375mL bottle and was released in early June 2016.

This mead pours a bourbon brown with nice alcohol legs but zero carb.  The aroma is sticky sweet fig, a bit of earth, like mushrooms, and citrus.  The taste follows closely with the nose.  At first this honey drenched fig hits you, then it opens up to a refreshing citrus zest that leaves a clean refreshing taste.  Almost like a boozy fruit salad of oranges, strawberries, and green apples.

This mead is very complex.  There's these layers of flavor that, at first, I didn't think would work; but taste so right together.  The honey is in perfect balance with the orange zest, the citrus bursts onto the back end while the fig gives you almost a nuttier version of a cross between an apple and a strawberry.  There's also a booziness to the mead that reminds me of a tamer version of Pirate Love, the rum barrel aged date mead by Misbeehavin.  Although Sycophant is much smoother.  It's dangerously drinkable. I finished the 375mL in less than an hour with very little effort.  

All in all I loved this mead.  It was so unique and unlike any other mead I've ever tasted.  It is bursting with nuance and extremely drinkable.  This might be my favorite mead that Misbeehavin' has done thus far.  A superior mead from a meadery that isn't even a year old (*Opened April 2016).  I'm extremely sad I only had a singular bottle of this, I really hope they make this mead again.  Clint, if you are readying this - produce this mead again, please and thank you!

RELEASE: Schramm's Amelia 1st Birthday

On Saturday, March 18th, 2017 Schramm's is releasing Amelia 1st Birthday at their tasting room.  

From Schramms: "Amelia is made with whole loganberries from the Pacific Northwest and Orange Blossom honey. As with all of our meads, we do not strive for consistency - we strive for improvement. These particular loganberries were sourced and packed differently from our last batch, noticeably improving the balance and flavor of Amelia 1st Birthday."

Bottle Cost: $38
Bottle Limit: 2 Per Person, Per Day


Because of its limited nature, Amelia 1st Birthday will only be released in the tasting room and will not see any retail distribution. 



Note: this mead was first released for the birth of Alyson and James' daughter, Amelia, in 2016.  Just like with Madelinfe, the second iteration takes on a new name, with what is assumed a similar recipe but different characteristics due to the fruit sources and possibly different production methods.  Therefor is unique from the original batch.

Moonlight Meadery - Stock Up

Stock up is a small batch mead  by Moonlight Meadery in New Hampshire released in the Fall of 2016 and was available in 187mL nip bottles.  This is a blueberry, raspberry, and blackberry mead that clocks in at 10.35% ABV.

The color is a dull ruby color, almost a burnt orange hue.  The clarity is very clear, although there is some sediment on the bottom.

The bottle opened with a faint hiss.  There was light carbonation on the mead.

The aroma first was a wave of fresh blueberries, then tart raspberries with some muddled astringent alcohol vapors.  At first it was bursting with fresh fruit aromas, but the more I let the mead sit and open up the more muted fruit I received.  As odd as it sounds, almost as if the fruit ripened then turned in my glass.  An aromatic microcosm of the ripening and decay of an orchard.

The taste was a prickly fruit, from the carbonation.  I don't believe Stock Up was intended to be a sparkling mead, and I believe it would have worked better without the bubbles.  The fruit was nice, a light tartness, almost all raspberry and blackberry.  I didn't pick up blueberries.  But given that there didn't appear to be a ton of fruit per/gal the fruit never overwhelmed the mead.  There was still honey in there, in fact I could see what I believe to be residual sugar clinging to the glass.  Although it could have been fruit particles as well.  This mead also has some of astringency to it from the alcohol heat that sometimes can be amplified by raspberries.  

Overall this was a nice mead.  If it was a home brewed mead I'd say it would have been well done, but as an offering from a reputable commercial meadery it left a bit to be desired.  However I respect the small batch experimentation, and the fruit flavor profile is in line with other Moonlight offerings.  This was a fun little mead to try.