Mead, Earl Grey, One Year Tasting

Mead. Earl Grey. One year old. Room temperature. How is it? I've been saving that one up for a long time. This is 1.034 final gravity and 13.5 percent. It's a beautiful goldenrod. It has a very mild haze. Now, okay, don't take it too hard if we say mild haze. You have haze? I have, yeah, that's, that's haze. It's not crystal clear. It's ever so slightly hazy. See? It doesn't matter all that much. It's just not that big of a deal. You can see through it, but it's not absolutely crystal clear. We're putting way too fine of a point on this now. This is what I didn't want to do. Well, you're the one doing it. I'm looking at you like you got three heads. Anyway. It's like a 9.5 out of 10 for haziness. It's beautiful. On the smell, it's actually... Oh, doggy. I'm getting some honey. I'm getting that bergamot. Yeah, honey, citrus, a little bit of lemon, orangey even, which is the bergamot. So far, I'm impressed. I remember, I might be wrong, but I was not a super big fan. I have a vague recollection of being disappointed, because I love me some earl grey tea. I wanted this to be amazing, and I'm not sure that it hit the mark when we first made it. But aroma-wise... Now, this is from the before times, when we didn't do adjustments and stuff, you'll just have to bear with us. What was our final? 1.034. So this should be sweet. I'm tasting it. Oh, okay. I'm going in. Definitely tastes of earl grey, and I'm shocked that's 1.034. It seems lower. I'm not saying it's not good. It doesn't taste that sweet. I get honey notes up and down the spectrum. There's a difference between honey notes and sweetness. Okay, so you're not reading the sweetness. I'm not getting the sweetness. It's not cloying. It's not overbearing. I am definitely getting honey character coming through, and I'm definitely getting the tea flavor. Like, we made the tea wine, and that came out kind of citrusy. I'm getting that from this, with a little extra pronounced from the bergamot. It's actually quite nice. I'm getting lingering... Like, the finish is long for me. I'm even getting some of the little sparkly puppy on my tongue from the tannins that was from the tea. Yeah, a little bit of tannin. Not as much as I might like. I feel like this is something I wouldn't want to drink copious amounts of. I feel like this is something that I would want to drink cold rather than room temperature. Possibly. You can even go the opposite end of the spectrum and warm it up. You can mull anything and add a bunch of fruit to it, and it's going to taste good. I mean, you know, that's the thing. Once you mull it and you add a bunch of stuff into it, is it really the same thing anymore? Yeah, it's not. I was just thinking about just warming it. Sure. I do get a little bit of the bitterness of the tea coming through, which is not unpleasant. It's just that's part of the flavor profile. Sure. And normally with fermented honey, there's a slight bitter afternoon. Yeah, I'm getting that too. And this seems to be reading more of the tea because you know what it is rather than the honey. Though it's probably a combination of both. But my opinion is this is slightly out of balance. There's more bitterness than there should be for the tannic quality, acidity, and sweetness that we have. It still reads a little too bitter. And I think that's the tea. It's not tannic, though. That's not what I'm getting. It's actually like a bitter that runs through the roof of my mouth as I taste it. I get all the other flavors. I'm getting the aromatics. I'm getting the citrus notes, the floral notes from the tea. I'm getting the honey. I'm getting all that. But there's that bitter plank running down the back of my mouth. That kind of, unfortunately, ruins it for me. I'm not saying this is horrible because I still think this is pretty decent. I would drink it if somebody handed me a glass of it. But I don't love it. Being ultra critical. So don't be too hard on me. I would put this in an experience category for me. I don't think I'd want to pair this with food because I think it would get in the way of appreciating the food and the food would get in the way of appreciating it. And it would just... Yeah, this is a standalone. This is just a sip and think about it for a while kind of thing. Or chug and don't think about it. I see bad things happening trying to chug this. I mean, it's only 13.5, but it's feeling heavier in my stomach right now. And that might just be me, which it probably is just me. I have to admit, this isn't really my favorite thing. I really enjoyed it when I first took a sip. And now that I'm thinking about it more... The more I'm drinking of it, the less I like it. It's just not... First, I like Earl Grey tea, but it's not like the tea I reach for. Okay. Now, this was... Was this the double bergamot? Probably. I'm going to have to go back into time. Getting retarded. More than likely, it was a double bergamot. And maybe that was the wrong call. Maybe the bergamot is too pronounced. But we also didn't make adjustments at the end. Some of the adjustments I would have made, I would have added a lot more brightness, a lot more acid to this. Acid. To bring this up. It needs that so bad. Do you want to do a test? By the glass? No, it's too hard. It's too hard. Yeah, we did it once before. We could possibly revisit this. Because a lot of people have told me that they made an Earl Grey mead and they loved it. Okay. So I'm not against trying this again someday. Earl Grey mead 2.0. You know, that works for me. But as this stands, I'm not loving it. Let's put it this way. It's not of a number that I would dump it out. No. It's not that at all. No. It's just not of a number that I would necessarily reach for willingly. But I don't hate it. So I'm slightly torn on it as well. Because it does have very interesting qualities. Things that... let's put it this way. If I told someone this is Earl Grey mead tea. Or Earl Grey tea mead. Yeah, that's what I meant to say. And they taste it. They'd go, Really? You would not expect the flavors that are coming. All the citrus notes. All the extra floral notes and things like that. It's much, much, much more complex than the original tea is. I think it still reads as an Earl Grey mead, though. I'm definitely getting the flavor profile of Earl Grey tea. And I'm definitely getting the flavor profile of honey. Okay. Earl Grey tea with honey added tastes a certain way. This has a lot more complexity and flavors than that does. That's what I'm trying to say. And I don't think it's just ethanol added to it. Because pour some vodka into that, it's not going to taste like this. There's so much more that happens when you ferment tea that it changes it completely. And that's why I think this is a great mead. Yeah. I think when you ferment tea, more of the botanical aspect of the tea gets pronounced. And when you ferment honey, the same thing happens. And so combining the two, we just got a full bouquet of herbs, and citrus, and flowers, and all sorts of good stuff in here. Smell alone, I'd be pretty high for a score. Yeah, yeah. If I could just stop my experience on the aroma and the very first part of the sip, this would be astronomical. You are right. That sip I just took, the first third, the first half, is fantastic. And then that's when that bitter aspect starts to come in, and it feels very unbalanced. Now, in the comments, I know some people have said, oh, the bittering, you need to do this. What was the this that they were... Sweeten it? It doesn't need any more sweetening, to me. I don't feel like sweetening is the answer. No, no, it's really not. In this case, I think... I'm agreeing with you that I think the acid... We may have over-steeped the tea. That's my thought, because when you over-steep black tea, which Earl Grey is a black tea, it starts to pull out substances that don't taste good. So we may have over-steeped the tea. Maybe that's the secret. Don't steep it so long. Keep the fresher flavors of the tea. That might be the answer. But I do think acidity would help this one. But I think if we ever decide to do this again, we'll steep it less and definitely add some acidity. I think that's the way to go. So anyway, I am getting a floral honey note with a little bit of orange coming through, and that's the bergamot. Yeah. But then the end, it's like creamy. Yeah, yeah. I've never felt that in a mead before. This tastes like we oaked it, or we... It tastes like we added milk to it. Or, yeah. One, two, three, seven. 8.5. So this is our preference. How we feel about it. What it's doing to us personally. So this is completely biased. This is completely on our perception of our experience and this moment in time. Right. So don't read back on the initial taste in this one and say, oh, you went up by 0.5. That means it's a lot better. Or you went down. No. I might have had tacos then, and I added salad today. And our tastes change, too. And our tastes grow. So you can't go by that too much. But you can kind of just use it as a guide. OK? If we come back with twos right now, you know it sucks. If we come back with tens, you know it's amazing. And then everything is just a range in the middle. So I have a number. Are you ready? One, two, three. Six. Yep. It's not horrible. It's not great. It's just OK. It's like on the cusp of something... Yeah. I think with a little tweaking, this could actually be really, really amazing. That's my take on it. And that's why I hated to score it so harsh. I was thinking 5.5. I was even at 5 for a couple minutes there. But I didn't want to go below 5, because it's totally drinkable. It's totally drinkable. It's just, you want to take your time with it and let it do its thing. But then when you do that, then you find the parts that you don't like. You start to see the flaws even more. Yeah. You find all those chinks in that. But anyway, we may revisit this one in the meantime. As always, guys, thank you so much for watching and have a great day. Bye-bye.