Modern Mead
By Tony Forder
I knew that cider is popular in Quebec, having attended this year's Soif du Cidre (Thirst for Cider) festival in Montreal. I have discovered that mead is quite popular also.
At the recent OKTO fest in Repentigny (30 mins north of Montreal), I spent some time sampling at the Miel Nature booth. All kinds of sweet, strong liqeur-ish meads, definitely high end.
Monsieur Ali Agougou with a selection of Miel Nature's specialty meads.
The ancient beverage of mead is called nature's oldest beverage because the fermentation of honey can occur naturally with wild, ambient yeasts. The Vikings were mead lovers as were medieval Britons and Gauls. I'm in my 4th year of Mazing (a mead maker is called a Mazer), and while I have made a couple of strong meads (14-15%), my main focus is the new wave of meads at lower alcohol strengths of 6-7%. These are often called Craft Meads because they sort of fit in the category of Craft Beers and Ciders. I liken the mead making process to cider making – mead is fermented honey, cider is fermented apple juice – because there is no cooking as in beer where barley malt is heated to a certain temperature in order to extract the sugars. Honey is heated slightly just to melt and mix with water.
Most of my meads are technically Melomels or fruited meads. I use fruit grown on our farm, the Oasis@Warwick, NY. We have a very productive berry garden that yields black, red and pink champagne currants; raspberries, gooseberries and blackberries; and goji and goumi berries (superfoods) to name a few. We also have elder bushes producing flowers and berries, and a variety of plum, apple pear, peach and apricot trees, not to mention all the foraging opportunities on the farm – honeysuckle, wineberries, mulberries. I haven't used black walnuts yet but I intend to. Hopped mead with 5 different varieties of hops in our hopfield is also on the agenda.
I recently made a batch of what we call Gitchi Goumi Goji Goose Juice. It has Goumi, Goji and Gooseberries – The Gitchi Goumi named is derive from the Gordon Lightfoot song, the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, about the ship that went down in Lake Superior, "the lake they call Gitchi Goumi."
I offered Miel Nature's patron, Ali Agougou, a sample of the Gitchi Goumi to which he responded enthusiastically. In fact he wanted to buy a bottle. But I only had the one, plus a 1-year-old bottle of my Amburana wood chip aged mead which he also liked. Mazers have to follow different rules in Quebec. They are required to produce their own honey, which means they have to keep bees. Ali told me Miel Nature has about 1000 beehives, which means millions of bees buzzing around.
Usually I buy from a beekeeper whose hives are stationed at an apple orchard a quarter mile from our farm, so it's quite likely some of this honey comes from pollen on our farm. After all, the apple trees only blossom in the spring. Most of the honey I buy from him is wildflower honey although he recently gave me a jar which he said was from flowers of the invasive Japanese knotweed plant. It's strikingly red and quite tasty – could yield some interesting mead.
We have a half dozen beehives at the farm and I'm looking forward to tasting my first batch made with Oasis honey, a 4.5% session mead.
OKTO Fest
The OKTO fest has about a 17-year history, well organized, family oriented with lots of activities for kids, a big stage for music, about 40 breweries represented and a slew of food trucks. Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate. Friday was ok and well attended; Saturday it started raining in the afternoon and got progressively worse, causing the organizers to raise the white flag at 9 pm instead of 11; Sunday was just cloudy but wicked windy cold, temperature in the 50's with a real feel in the 40s. Most people are still in summer mode, not ready for that!
Beer goggles were de rigeur at the wet OKTO fest. An impressive collab between Quebec's Sir John and Brazil's Dilema. Ferme Berthiaume's colorful label lineup.
I was with the Mondial de la Biere crew which was going Nomad with Belgian, Brazilian, French and Canadian beers. I saw quite a few volunteers who worked at the Mondial – Stephanie pouring beers for Dieu du Ciel, jovial Frederic bouncing between us and others, Annie Caya also helping us. These are serial volunteers who make most of the big fests in Quebec. I guess I'm a bit of a serial volunteer myself although I only work with Mondial. It was nice to relive the camaraderie and fest atmosphere that characterized our summers in the bygone days of Ale Street News.
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