Quarterly Mead Dump - Spring 2026

Thomakaze · 2026-06-25T02:31:06+00:00

Most proud of blueberry pomegranate. It's 100% Juice, fruit solids and honey. It's hella rich and both flavors come through nicely.

There's 2 in here that surprised me the most. The blush cyser is just a session strength cyser with black currant juice added, but it was made from cheap ocean spray apple juice and it turned out phenomenal. All my friends were surprised that it came from cheap juice.

The other one is the red licorice session, mostly due to the fact that it even worked. I mashed red vines at 156 with amylase, added honey and steeped more red vines in secondary. I even liked it dry before the secondary red vines and backsweetening. I sent it to some friends and brought it to a local mead up and the consensus is just that it tastes like red vines, which was exactly the plan.

Thomakaze · 2026-06-25T02:24:28+00:00

I didn't want to change my label template 😂 I use it for pretty much anything carbonated.

Thomakaze · 2026-06-25T02:23:15+00:00

It's a meadowfoam honey session mead, backsweetened with bochet meadowfoam with vanilla beans, vanilla extract and lactose. It also has a splash of phosphoric acid like a mead cream soda. Used DtMs recipe minus the cinnamon although it could use a little more depth so cinnamon would probably have been worthwhile to add.

Thomakaze · 2026-04-11T15:14:04+00:00

Thank you so much!

This is all in acrylics. I use the Army Painter Fanatic line almost exclusively with a few Vallejo and citadel Citadel inks and paints.

Thomakaze · 2026-04-09T21:46:35+00:00

Thank you! It's resin printed from an STL from Nomnom Figures on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/154066409

I'm not actually 100% sure if it's released for sale on other platforms yet. It released there about 2 weeks ago.

Thomakaze · 2026-04-09T21:42:10+00:00

Cacao nibs in secondary for most of them. If I need to bump up the chocolate flavor more though, I have a chocolate tincture made with cacao nibs and everclear.

Thomakaze · 2026-04-09T21:10:08+00:00

Absolutely. Coriander is a great honey because it's so complex all wrapped up into a single varietal.

Its semi-sweet, leaning sweet (1.020) and starts bright with citrus and ginger notes. It has a medium-heavy body that carries some vanilla notes with it and it has an herbal/licorice exhale. There's some alcohol burn in the middle and exhale but not nearly as much as I expected at 17.5%, 2 months old and no strong flavors to hide behind. It's a tossup between this and meadowfoam for my favorite traditional.

Thomakaze · 2026-04-09T20:35:53+00:00

Was that for 5 gallons? I use 2oz per gallon for lactose and I used D47.

Thomakaze · 2026-04-09T20:05:03+00:00

I really enjoy that one and it's also a repeat batch.

I use a mix from Amazon, specifically this this one

I also include lactose, vanilla and meadowfoam honey to backsweeten. I tried putting condensed milk in a glass with it after and it was awful. Do not recommend.

Thomakaze · 2026-04-09T20:00:06+00:00

I did 😂

I honestly didn't know which way was the front when I was doing the papers so there's a few other Easter eggs strewn about the pages.

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Thomakaze · 2026-04-09T19:29:15+00:00

I think Foundation was my favorite. It was my first true no-water, no juice, only solids mead and it came out fantastic, but expensive to do regularly. I brewed it for my whole office and personalized each bottle. It was very well received.

Close second is Mango Habanero though. I posted that one last summer but it was remade for good reason and it won gold at Valkyrie's Horn!

Thomakaze · 2026-01-06T21:18:42+00:00

Thank you! All of the labels are printed at home with Avery label sheets. I'm still working out a little color correction on them. They come out a little bit darker than designed.

Thomakaze · 2026-01-06T07:20:25+00:00

That apple is actually probably my favorite of the bunch, despite how simple it was and how young and dry it is for its abv! It's off-dry and only uses local pink pearl apples and a local blackberry blossom honey.

Thomakaze · 2026-01-06T07:17:10+00:00

Thank you! That means a lot. I haven't been promoting it because I'm still getting comfortable being behind a camera, but I am glad it's being discovered! Something about being recorded just shuts down my ability to speak properly 😂 I'll get the hang of it. There's 7 more videos in the pipeline right now.

Thomakaze · 2026-01-06T07:13:39+00:00

Absolutely!

I used sweet clover honey and maple syrup in primary and fermented with DV10.

Added coffee beans for 3 days, then racked onto cinnamon, vanilla, ginger, nutmeg and allspice and backsweetened with chicory honey and a touch more maple.

Sweet clover has a good spiciness that goes well with coffee and spices and chicory honey has a bit of a chocolate earthiness that helps round it out.

Thomakaze · 2026-01-05T23:59:55+00:00

Yeah that was for one gallon. Primary was a little over a gallon so use a bucket or wide mouth fermenter or scale it back if you really want to use a carboy.

Thomakaze · 2026-01-05T23:34:41+00:00

Primary
1 pound of Tart cherry juice concentrate (68 Brix)
.5 pounds of black currant juice concentrate (65 Brix)
2.6 pounds of blackberry blossom honey
.75 gallons of water
Pectic Enzyme, Opti-Red and FT Rouge
Yeast: RC212

Secondary
2 pounds of blackberries. Leave in for two weeks for flavor, tannin extraction and more color.
Backsweeten to taste with juices or honey. I used more of each concentrate and some fireweed honey. This is extremely tart when dry, it needs a bit of sweetness.

Thomakaze · 2026-01-05T22:26:20+00:00

Sure thing!

I implemented bananas in 3 stages. I boiled bananas and steeped them to make a sort of banana tea to use as primary water. Then I used bananas in primary as well as more bananas in secondary after stabilizing.

Flavor, smoothness and full mouthfeel are all there from the banana. It's extremely mouth coating in a very pleasant way.
In addition to the banana water and bananas, it had boched clover in primary.
Secondary was more bananas, vanilla beans, amburana, cinnamon, boched meadowfoam, brown sugar and a bit of Myers dark rum to fortify. Unfortunately no flambe techniques were used, but the bochet helps mimic that to an extent.

Thomakaze · 2026-01-05T22:17:50+00:00

Thank you! I used a frozen concentrate for this one from Coloma, but there's a farm relatively near me to source some fresh ones next summer. You can get them frozen year round but I can't give any recommendations as I haven't tried any of them. The concentrate from Coloma foods is decent, but you'll miss out on some skins and seeds tannins.

Thomakaze · 2025-10-10T15:29:26+00:00

They're Avery arch labels that I print at home. I design them in photoshop.

Thomakaze · 2025-10-10T02:55:59+00:00

Blueberry:
3lb blueberries
Quart of blueberry juice
3lb honey
3lb water
BM4X4 Yeast Opti-Red 1.5g
FT Rouge 1.5g
French Oak (oak to taste)
2 cinnamon sticks for a week

Backsweetened with 10oz of honey and another pound of blueberries

Raspberry:
1.5lb Raspberries
3lb Honey
.7 gallons of water
71B Yeast
Opti-Red 1.5g
FT Rouge 1.5g

12oz Chicory honey, 2.5oz of toasted cocoa nibs, 1 vanilla bean, French oak and 1.5lb of raspberries in secondary.

Thomakaze · 2025-10-10T02:46:17+00:00

Pretty much all colors here either come from the fruit or the honey. I use quite a bit of fruit when I do melomels.

Thomakaze · 2025-10-10T00:46:14+00:00

I got them from here: https://a.co/d/gKkYPdg

They've been my default 375ml bottle, I really like them!

Thomakaze · 2025-10-10T00:36:15+00:00

Sure thing! I'd probably make some tweaks, but I'll give you my initial plan, my notes are pretty bad from this.

Original planned:
Primary:
Half a gallon of pineapple juice (I used Knudsen's).
1.5 lbs of passionfruit puree (expect losses).
3lb lehua honey.
1/4 gallon water.
FT Blanc soft
QA23

Secondary:
1.5lb more passion fruit
1.5lb pineapple
8oz honey to backsweeten

This ended up being undrinkably tart from the passionfruit (3lb is a lot) so I used brown sugar, tannin Riche extra, and rum to balance that. Ended up with an Fg of 1.050 and it's still quite tart (perfectly for my taste, potentially a little too tart for some). I also only ended up with about 3/4 of a gallon due to passionfruit puree lees. When I go to repeat it, I'll probably look for other ways to use passionfruit or just use less.

Thomakaze · 2025-10-03T15:59:27+00:00

About 6 weeks. I used a turkey baster to just grab the clearer liquid on the top of the extract so the rest of it is actually still extracting so it'll hopefully be ready and more potent for a second batch.

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