Braggot is the mead style I find most interesting as a brewer because it genuinely sits at the overlap of beer and mead — you’re making decisions about malts, hops, and honey simultaneously, and the balance between these three character …
Bochet was the mead style that genuinely surprised me — I expected caramelised honey to produce a sticky, overly sweet result, but the controlled burning of honey before fermentation creates Maillard and caramelisation compounds that give bochet a ro
Pyment appealed to me as a brewer because it sits at the exact intersection of winemaking and meadmaking — you’re working with grape must and honey simultaneously, and the complexity that results from combining two of the world’s oldest fermented …
Cyser was a natural extension of mead for me once I started thinking seriously about Indian fruit fermentations — the combination of honey and apple produces a drink that sits between cider and mead in a way that’s more complex …
Metheglin was the mead style that most directly mirrored my spiced beer brewing instincts — the same logic of building a spice bill that complements rather than competes with the base character applies whether the base is a Witbier or …
Melomel was my second mead project, and what drew me to fruit mead was the same instinct that drives hop selection in brewing — fruit variety shapes the character as decisively as any ingredient decision in fermentation.
My first mead was a revelatory experience as a homebrewer — the same fermentation knowledge I’d built brewing beer transferred almost directly, but honey’s unique chemistry, its natural antimicrobials, and its extended aging requirements taught me th
Breweriana collecting started for me as an extension of homebrewing interest — I picked up a few vintage tap handles and coasters at a flea market and found that the physical objects of brewing history told stories about regional beer …
Beer label collecting is a hobby I stumbled into as a side effect of homebrewing — once I started designing labels for my own bottles, I became genuinely interested in the history and artistry of commercial beer label design, and …
Learning to judge beer using BJCP guidelines transformed my homebrewing because it gave me a precise vocabulary and systematic framework for identifying what was wrong and why — moving from “this doesn’t taste right” to “this has diacetyl from insuff