It's all about da mead

Being as passionate about mead as I am about beer, I flew out to judge at the International Mead Festival Home Mead Makers Competition that was held on February 9th in Boulder Colorado. This event attracts a large number of professional judges as well as other very dedicated mead fanatics from across the entire United States and Canada.

While the purpose of the trip was mead related, I did get a chance to go to Avery Brewing Company. I wasn't able to tour the brewery, but was able to go its hospitality suite and enjoy the wonderful beers. My favorite was the "Collaboration not Litigation" ale that was "secretly" on draft, helps to be a beer geek who knows how to ask the right kind of questions. Ended up with a couple of bottles, of batch #2, which aren't officially on sale yet.

After enjoying as much beer as I liked, I was off to check into the hotel room. Where I got to meet some peers in the industry. While Moonlight Meadery is officially, I still have quite a long road ahead of me before we are in production.

Friday night was filled with various seminars, and an abundance of wonderful commercial meads. Jet lag won over and I went to bed fairly early, missed getting to hear Ken Schramm get to talk.

Saturday morning... woke up before dawn, and hit the gym, it was going to be a big day of judging, was planning on evaluating 16 meads over the course of the day... little did I know what the organizers had in mind for me.

Had a big breakfast, and was ready to start judging. I was asked to head one of the three tables of judges who were doing dry meads. One we finished our flight of eight, I was asked to sit on the mini-bos table. All the meads were very well done, the faults were little things like the mead might have been too sweet for style, etc.

Lunch was a nice collection of sandwiches and cookies. I grabbed a Fat Tire on draft.... hmm one of my favorite beers.

After lunch I was tasked with the open category of meads, again I was asked to head the judging, of a flight of 8 meads. We had a range of dry, semi-dry, and sweet meads to evaluate. Again I was asked to judge the 10 more meads in the mini-bos with other great judges like Curt Stock, Petar Bakulic, and Julia Herz.

Now I am thinking with 34 meads under my belt and a beer... the day must be done...

I was asked to be on the BOS (Best of Show) table for the entire competition, an incredible honor, and reward! As the meads at this level are the best of the best! The BOS table consisted of 5 judges, and our job was to pick the best out of the 10 meads.

So I ended up evaluating 44 meads over the course of the day, it was a ton of fun.

Here's the results:

2008 International Mead Festival Home Mead Maker Competition Results 188 Total Entries
Table 1 - 241 - Dry Mead (19 Entries)
Joshua Archer	Traditional Dry - 1		1
Joshua Archer	Traditional Dry - 2		2
Joshua Archer	Traditional Dry - 3		3
Table 2 - 242 - Semi-Sweet Mead (14 Entries)
Jonathan Jordan	Straight Nyssa	Hogtown Brewers	1
Mark Healey	Moose Pond Mead	Southern Maine Homebrewers	2
Rick Reilly, Ron Stroh		Prairie Homebrewing Companions	3
Table 3 - 243 - Sweet Mead (14 Entries)
Rick Spaziani	Liquid Gold		1
Michelle Moyer, James Moyer	Admiral's Gold		2
Edward Walkowski	2006 Orange Blossom Mead		3
Table 4 - 251 - Melomel - Cyser (11 Entries)
Christopher St. Mary	Son of Circum-Cyser	Sultans Of Swig	1
Michelle & James Moyer	Captain Pete's Farewell Kiss		2
Todd Leatherman	Super Cyser		3
Table 5 - 252 - Melomel - Pyment (15 Entries)
Kim Herald	Northern Lights	GotMead International Brewmasters	1
Steve Fletty	Chateau Fletty Gewurtztraminer	St Paul Homebrewers Club	2
Mitchell Omichinski	Valient		3
Table 6 - 253 - Melomel - Other Fruit (24 Entries)
Ron Kloth	Watermelon	Arizona Society Of Homebrewers	1
John Miller	Favored Concubine		2
Curt & Kathy Stock	Cherry Bliss	St Paul Homebrewers Club	3
Table 7 - 254 - Melomel - Berry (22 Entries)
Daniel Hempy	Strawberry Melomel	Brewcommune	1
John Charlesworth, Mark Parsch, Thad Williams			2
Rick Reilly, Ron Stroh		Prairie Homebrewing Companions	3
Table 8 - 261 - Metheglin (23 Entries)
Don Larsen, Bernie Ashe	Smoked Chili Mead		1
Mitchell Omichinski	Prairie Dew		2
Steve Fletty	El Diablo	Saint Paul Homebrewers Club	3
Table 9 - 262 - Braggot (14 Entries)
James Sites	Cerveza de los Muertes		1
Kurt Bormann	Brown Maggot Braggot		2
Sheron Rowland, Pamela McAlpin	2 Old Broads Old Ale Braggot	GotMead International Brewmasters	3
Table 10 - 263 - Open Category Mead (32 Entries)
Rick Spaziani	Agave Gold		1
Edward Silverman	Matt's Memorial Mead		2
Wayne Boncyk	Christmas Spice	GotMead International Brewmasters	3
2008 Best of Show
Don Larsen & Bernie Ashe	Smoked Chili Mead	Congratulations to Don and Bernie!
HONORABLE MENTION
Rick Spaziani	Agave Gold	Another fine Mead!
Special Awards
Best Name	Son of Circum-Cyser - Christopher St. Mary
Farthest Entry	Stepanie Krieger - Hawaii
Best Packaging	Nedra Headen - Foam wrap "Mummy" Madness

Notes from the Orval Office

Back in the day BFD had a newsletter -- which was a pain to get pubished each month, but was excellent for the people who got to read it. One of the features of the newsletter was a column from the President -- from the Orval Office. I decided it would be nice to reinstate this particular BFD tradition and plan to write an Orval Office posting on the blog each month beginning with this one.

We had an excellent meeting last night at Erin & Brian Parda's house in Concord. Lots of great food (thanks to our hosts!) and, as always, a good selection of homebrew. The business meeting took a little less than 30 minutes and then we were on to Bill Herlicka's presentation about barrel aging beers. Bill gets his barrels from Thousand Oaks Barrel Co. and he has been very pleased with the beers he has aged that way. The Imperial Stout aged in a "scotched" barrel that Bill shared with us was certainly excellent!

A few reminders from the meeting:

• The deadline for entering beers in the Boston Homebrew Competition is February 13th. The drop-off location in New Hampshire is Jasper's Homebrew Supply, 4 Temple Street, Nashua, (603) 881-3052, jaspers@boomchugalug.com. This is a BJCP sanctioned competition and will be judged in Boston on March 1, 2008.
  
• If you want to go to the AHA Conference in Cincinnati, you need to book your room and register for the conference while there are still spots available. It is filling up fast.
  
• The club will not be holding a March meeting, but will be gathering at Ebenezer's in Lovell, Maine on March 15th.
  
• Our next official meeting will be April 11 in Merrimack and Bert Bingel will be doing a presentation on Mead.