Hello! This is Yazawa, the brewer at ANTELOPE!
Have you ever tried an alcoholic beverage called mead? Many of you have likely never even heard of it, let alone tasted it. Today, I’m bringing you the second installment of our "Mead 101" series for those who are new to it.

Our second topic is "What is craft mead?" Just as beer is categorized into "beer" and "craft beer," we believe that mead can also be categorized into "mead" and "craft mead." So, today I’ll be talking about what we consider "craft mead" to be.

A Challenge to "Traditional Mead"

To put it simply, we believe that craft mead is:

"A challenging type of mead that explores a wide range of flavors by adding various fruits, spices, and more, beyond just honey, water, and yeast."

Mead is an alcoholic beverage made by mixing honey, water, and yeast (as we introduced in Vol. 1).

Often called the oldest alcoholic beverage in the world, mead has a long history and has been loved by many people throughout time. For that reason, mead made only with honey, water, and yeast is called "traditional mead."

While flavors and aromas of traditional mead vary depending on the type of honey and the activity of the yeast, it is a drink where you can enjoy the pure taste of honey. We are taking on various challenges to create unprecedented flavors by mixing this traditional mead with various secondary ingredients such as fruits, spices, botanicals, or grains.

And that is exactly what we consider to be craft mead.

Styles of Craft Mead

There are many styles in the world of craft mead. A "style" is a way of grouping brands based on brewing methods, ingredients used, or alcohol content.

For example, with beer, "Super Dry" and "Ichiban Shibori" are different brands but both fall under the Pilsner style; "Suiyoubi no Neko" and "Blue Moon" are made in different countries (Japan and the US), but both fall under the Belgian Wit style. So today, I’d like to introduce some styles of craft mead!

Here are three representative types!

Melomel: Mead made with honey and fruit

Melomel is a style of mead made using honey and fruit. You are free to use any fruit you like, and you can blend as many types as you want. Just as there is a wide variety of fruit juice flavors, the taste of melomel changes significantly depending on the types, amounts, or methods of using the fruit. There is definitely one out there that suits your taste, and the fun of searching for it is a major appeal of melomel.

Some melomels have specific style names. For example, mead made with grapes is called Pyment, and mead made with apples is called Cyser. So, what happens if you use both grapes and apples? There is no specific name for that combination, so it is classified as melomel. There are other styles named after specific fruits, which I hope to introduce another time!

Metheglin: Mead made with honey and spices

While melomel is made with honey and fruit, Metheglin is the style name for mead made with honey and spices. Like melomel, you are free to use any spices you like. The exotic aromas that can only be brewed from spices, and the spicy kick some provide, are part of the charm of Metheglin. Mead using sweet-smelling cinnamon or cloves is quite popular, but surprisingly, chili peppers are also a hit. Mead made with chili peppers is called Capsicomel.

Braggot: Mead made with honey and malt

Finally, let's introduce mead that uses malt, a raw ingredient for beer. Malt is grain that has been sprouted and then dried, and it is an essential ingredient for brewing beer. Braggot is a mead style made by mixing that malt with honey. Generally, it’s often used in a ratio of about 2/3 honey to 1/3 malt, but nothing is set in stone.
If you use more malt, you get a Braggot with a robust, malt-driven flavor; if you use less, it tends to be lighter. Some also add hops or herbs, which makes the taste shift even closer to beer.

There are still many more craft mead styles out there! However, while craft beer has very clear standards for alcohol content, color, and flavor for each style, the history of craft mead is still relatively short, and strict criteria for each style have not yet been established. But that actually leads to a great degree of freedom in flavor, which is why I believe new craft mead flavors will keep being born!

We also intend to keep challenging ourselves to create new craft mead flavors, so we would be thrilled if you could wait for our new products with excitement!

That's it for now! Some of this may have been a bit technical, but I hope you were able to feel the potential and fun of craft mead. Next time, we'll introduce "How to enjoy craft mead"!

Bonus

I introduced some representative craft mead styles, but here is a little bonus with some others! There are other styles besides these, but that will be for another time...!

・Bilbemel: Mead using honey and blueberries

・Rhodomel: Mead using honey and roses (rose hips)

・Bochet: Mead made with caramelized honey

・Acerglyn: Mead fermented with some or all maple syrup

・Sack: High-alcohol mead (14% ABV or higher)

・Hydromel: Low-alcohol mead / session mead (7.5% ABV or lower)

・Sparkling Mead: Carbonated mead

Styles can be categorized not just by ingredients, but also by alcohol content! Mead is usually still, so those with carbonation are called sparkling mead!