George Gales Mead

Another new experience and perhaps an intriguing beginning.

The mead itself was from Gales country wine range, and wasn’t anything special. It looks like they're produced/distributed by Fullers and I’d seen a bottle in the brewery shop next to Harveys brewery on the way to the Mead (and cider) Mecca that is middle farm. I’d been in enough of a hurry not to bother going in.

What was interesting was that it was on sale in a pub, which is something I’d been looking out for as I have an idea of a direction this rambling quest for mead could go.

The taste of the mead was an uninspiring sweet honey like drink. An ordinary mead, by anyone’s standard, that would have pleased me 6 months ago but now is nothing to my jaded taste buds. The usual bitter after taste was in evidence, perhaps more sweet than most and all together not a bad drink.

The landlady suggested she quite liked a tipple, every once in a while, but I wonder if Mead could be popular in pubs if it wasn’t quite so sweet. It’s hard to imagine people drinking it by the pint, whereas in days long gone that must have been exactly what happened.

Given the massive revival of cider that has followed in the wake of Bulmers producing Magners and then Bulmers to be served over ice, I wonder if something similar could plausibly happen with Mead.

And/or as a sister organisation to CAMRA, APPLE exists for the promotion of real cider drinking. Is there scope for a subset of CAMRA devoted to the drinking of Mead? Am I alone in this madness or could I persuade others to join me? Could we start with an annual Mead award, and then move onto the promotion of Mead drinking in pubs?

A wee while ago I joined CAMRA and they have some sort of internal forums, so perhaps when this blog has matured more I’ll open the subject on one of those forums and see where the conversation leads.

Mead over Ice

At some point on my travels I stumbled upon the following tip for the serving of Mead:

Serve hot in winter time or ice cold in summer

Which for me conjures up images of sticking a red hot poker into a sizzling goblet of Mead on a winters evening. I’m not sure I can wait to winter to try this, but in between the drinking of Mead with Ice is an easier achievement.

It’s also quite pleasant, and the chill emphasizes the bitter flavors which is good when the Mead is good (like Lurgashall) but less good when the Mead is poor.

Magners reinvented cider by advertising the idea of serving over ice. Their cider may be bland, sweet and dull, adding ice to cider is a perversity, but it did do wonders for the industry, so perhaps one could do the same for the drinking of Mead.

In this post Magners world every supermarket now stocks a solid half dozen good ciders, perhaps one day they’ll do the same with Mead.