Meadmaking and Mead Tasting

Doug Remington, manager of Main Street Homebrew Supply Store in Hillsboro, Oregon, is consulting meadmaker at Kookoolan World Meadery, currently authoring a new book on meadmaking that will be released in about a year, and is a fifteen-years-plus friend of Farmer Chrissie.

Mead has historically been made by just about every culture on earth: a common, joyous, ancient thread shared by all cultures and societies all over the earth, each with our own spin on wines made from honey. Mead is just a genre, as beer or wine are genres: mead is any alcohol produced from honey as the primary source of fermentable sugar. Mead can be sweet or dry, sparkling or still, weak or strong in terms of alcohol content, and flavored with hundreds of fruit, herb or spice adjuncts. Grape juice mixed with honey, called pyment, is a time-honored tradition in many countries, and here in Oregon's wine country you can count on pinot noir pyments coming from Kookoolan. A "melomel" is mead made with any combination of honey and any kind of fruit juice, where the fruit juice is not just a flavoring after the fact but is part of the fermentable must; apples, cherries, and apricots are three of the most popular blends. Nobody knows the archaic words "sack" mead or "sack" wine anymore (meaning strong alcohol and sugar): these are sherry-style, or liqueur-style, or dessert-wine styles which are closest to my favorite meads. The best European meads are aged for five years or more in oak barrels, and Kookoolan World Meadery will definitely be producing a straight-up, oak-aged mead. The Picts, a particular tribe in Scotland, made a mead with heather blossoms; heather bitters the nectar much as hops do for beer, but in addition a wild fungus grows on the heather blossoms that produces a slightly psychotropic effect on the drinker. Queen Elizabeth's favorite mead used bay leaves, thyme, rose petals, and lemon balm.

In our class Doug will turn a bucket of honey into fermenting mead right before your eyes! This class includes detailed handouts enabling you to make mead at home, plus Doug will walk you through a generous tasting of a half dozen or so commercial and homebrew meads, including a barrel tasting of Kookoolan World Meadery's soon-to-be-released port-strength mead. $70/person includes mead tasting with food pairings (you can consider this to be a light meal), and a $10 coupon good toward the purchase of anything from Kookoolan Farms. SPACE AVAILABLE, MUST BE 21.

Your class fee also includes a $10 coupon good toward the purchase of anything we sell; Kookoolan Farms carries the Northwest's largest and most complete selection of supplies, ingredients and equipment for the home cheesemaker, plus Vin de Noix Green Walnut Dessert Wine, alcoholic Kombucha, eggs, honey, meats and more. Our classes have received national press recognition from Food and Wine Magazine, USA Today, Sunset Magazine, and Culture Magazine, plus recognition from Portland Monthly, edible Portland, the Oregonian's FoodDay, and Willamette Week, among others.

Fee: $70 per person