We drink a lot of this stuff, but I think we only pay like 8.99 a bottle at Trader Joe's. Hmm! *checking* Yeah. It's 9.99 on BevMo, and we regularly get it on sale for less than the Woot price. I'm surprised to see an offering over the market price at Woot.

Today's my birthday!!!! My 30th, in fact. And all I wanted was my name in lights....


Chaucer's Mead Trio
Current numbers (updated each minute):
First sucker: dakillawoot
Speed to first woot: 0m 10.577s

Last wooter to woot: jasondalke

My friends call me.....the first sucker!!!!!!!!!!!!
(sigh, Im so happy!!!)

What, no olallieberry?

Sigh. This is not a bargain. Each of these is available at Beverages and More for $9.99 each, for a total of $29.97 plus tax. This week, I pass.

Can someone tell me or point me in the direction of a mead primer. I don't really know anything about it. How is it made, best way to consume, maybe even a cheap one that I can find at the speciality spirits store so I know what I'm getting into before wooting this.

thanks in advance.

I have always wanted to try mead. Have thought about making it but had wanted to try it first. This is my first wine.woot and overall my third woot total.

WOOT! 2nd correct guess in 3 weeks! (Mandolina doesn't count ... no clues and it was a woot-off).

Wooooo hooooo!

Great clues, had us thinking. But it threw me for a loop when Loweeel added his 2nd clue after my guess. I thought I wasn't right.

Yep... $10 a bottle at most places... I don't see the bargain either. I should have bumped last weeks order from 2 to 3. =(

I'm not one to get into the price bitching on wine.woot, but I really don't understand the value proposition on this one. $30 for these three at bevmo before shipping.

I guess if you can't find it local it's a fair price. Certainly not much of a deal though.

damightyanteater wrote:Can someone tell me or point me in the direction of a mead primer. I don't really know anything about it. How is it made, best way to consume, maybe even a cheap one that I can find at the speciality spirits store so I know what I'm getting into before wooting this.

thanks in advance.

Google it, but basically it is a honey wine. This is on the weaker end from what I have seen. They can get pretty strong.

I want badly, but cannot get. FREAKIN' STUPID STATE OF ALABAMA ALCOHOL LAWS. Our state's alcohol board is run by out-of-date, good-ol'-boy-system, low IQ morons.

Learned a lesson and had my order shipped to work. I'm in for one!

JOATMON wrote:Sigh. This is not a bargain. Each of these is available at Beverages and More for $9.99 each, for a total of $29.97 plus tax. This week, I pass.

Yah what gives...never seen it actually cost more on w.w...

I really enjoyed the regular meads. I really wasn't much of a fan of the rasp. mead--too much fruit distracted from a very delicate honey flavor. I can get the regular for about $14 locally, so it'd be like paying another $12 to get the raspberry, that's what's going to influence my decision.

I guess my question, these are NV--any changes since the last time they were offered? How does the year's honey crop affect the final product? And I guess as a home brewer, how long do you generally age meads before releasing them?

mdscholar wrote:WOOT! 2nd correct guess in 3 weeks!

So now you have to buy it. Or they should give you a free set hehe.

I am not keen on the mead - but the Pomegranite and Oll..Berry wines from this winery were terrific - I wish I had bought more of those.

FTA "three different types of honey: floral-smelling orange blossom honey, spicy toyon honey (toyon’s a member of the sage family), and dark, amber-hued alfalfa."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but alfalfa is not honey. A good source of protein for grazing it is, but honey, it is not.

hawk0168 wrote:FTA "three different types of honey: floral-smelling orange blossom honey, spicy toyon honey (toyon’s a member of the sage family), and dark, amber-hued alfalfa."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but alfalfa is not honey. A good source of protein for grazing it is, but honey, it is not.

All about alfalfa honey

Here are some links to Chaucer.

The Raspberry Mead.
The Mead.

Enjoy!

WRT how to drink it, we have it a few different ways. You can serve it warm, even mulled with spices, room temp, or iced. At certain times of year these bottles come with a hang tag with a little tea bag of mulling spices for free, that you can use when serving it warm.

We probably go through 15 or so bottles of this a year -- we stock up when it goes on sale for 6.99 or whatever at Safeway. How it's served really depends on the temperature -- hot in the winter, cold with a strawberry garnish in the summer.

And yeah, I like the Ollallieberry wine they make a lot, too!

I mean the stuff is good, very drinkable as a dessert option -- but unless they don't sell it anywhere near where you live, this is not a good deal.

Ok... this is $2.88 cheaper than having it shipped from BevMo... so I guess it is somewhat cheaper in that regards. But if you've got a BevMo close by (or a Trader Joes where I've seen in for $10) you could just stop by and pick it up significantly cheaper. I've never tried the stuff (not into dessert-style wines), but I may stop by Trader's this week and pick up a bottle just so I can try it if the reviews are favorable.

Looking forward to the winemaker (meadmaker?) comments this week. Should be interesting to learn more about this.

Q for the Barghetto folks:

I know these are NV, but are they the same "batch" as the last offering, or a different batch? How long will they keep?

Link to the last time it was offered (during a woot-off on the main site): http://www.woot.com/Forums/ViewPost.aspx?PostID=1310609

damightyanteater wrote:Can someone tell me or point me in the direction of a mead primer. I don't really know anything about it. How is it made, best way to consume, maybe even a cheap one that I can find at the speciality spirits store so I know what I'm getting into before wooting this.

thanks in advance.

http://www.meadmadecomplicated.org/

JOATMON wrote:Link to the last time it was offered (during a woot-off on the main site): http://www.woot.com/Forums/ViewPost.aspx?PostID=1310609

Yeah great... 22 pages of bs like wt f is this and other nonsense. At least this time we have a forum to talk about it.

trinsf wrote:We drink a lot of this stuff, but I think we only pay like 8.99 a bottle at Trader Joe's. Hmm! *checking* Yeah. It's 9.99 on BevMo, and we regularly get it on sale for less than the Woot price. I'm surprised to see an offering over the market price at Woot.

Didn't know TJ's sold mead. I guess I'll have to walk over there tomorrow and check it out. Thanks!

alien88 wrote:Didn't know TJ's sold mead. I guess I'll have to walk over there tomorrow and check it out. Thanks!

I don't think all the TJs sell it, only the ones that sell wine. In NY the TJs don't sell beer, wine or liquor. I wonder if the Union Square TJ wine store sells it.

Cesare wrote:Yeah great... 22 pages of bs like wt f is this and other nonsense. At least this time we have a forum to talk about it.

The only comments on topic were ones that we've already hashed out here: BevMo and Trader Joe's has it cheaper, and it's not great mead.

If you like sweet... I mean cloyingly sweet, then go for it. I've always been disappointed whenever I've tried this.

But then I'm spoiled... I make an effort to keep stocked with Lindisfarne (http://www.lindisfarne-mead.co.uk/) whenever I go to the UK to visit family. Now that's a good mead!

Makes a great pre-wedding gift too, given the origin of the word honeymoon.

If only Woot could figure out a way of shipping us some Lindisfarne.

Hint hint...

-- The Wren

brockb wrote:Ok... this is $2.88 cheaper than having it shipped from BevMo... so I guess it is somewhat cheaper in that regards. But if you've got a BevMo close by (or a Trader Joes where I've seen in for $10) you could just stop by and pick it up significantly cheaper. I've never tried the stuff (not into dessert-style wines), but I may stop by Trader's this week and pick up a bottle just so I can try it if the reviews are favorable.

It's cheaper on Woot if you have to ship from BevMo, but if you can pickup at BevMo, then where is the price break on Woot! ??? That is strange, as normally I thought all Woots were lower than anywhere. Or are we missing a bottle? (The Port, hint, hint)

http://www.bevmo.com/productlist.asp?Ntt=Mead&Ntk=All&D=Mead&Nty=1

TheWren wrote:If you like sweet... I mean cloyingly sweet, then go for it. I've always been disappointed whenever I've tried this.
-- The Wren

This is by no means not a dessert wine. And yes, it is certainly very sweet. However, I felt this was much less sweet than i expected for honey, and had a certain delicate flavor to it that teh sweetness was very much a part of.

Is it just me, or does that picture feel almost deliberately misleading? The raspberry bottle looks the same size as the other two, yet the description states that it's a 500 mL as opposed to the 750 mLs. I suppose it's clever, but it feels a bit disingenuous.

thatguy314 wrote:This is by no means not a dessert wine. And yes, it is certainly very sweet. However, I felt this was much less sweet than i expected for honey, and had a certain delicate flavor to it that teh sweetness was very much a part of.

How does it compare to a barleywine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barleywine
Obviously this doesn't have the grains or hops so those flavors won't be there.

alien88 wrote:Didn't know TJ's sold mead. I guess I'll have to walk over there tomorrow and check it out. Thanks!

Well, you probably won't find it this time of year. TJ's sells it seasonally. We can normally find October-December, and by this time of year, it's usually tapered off. At least, that's my memory of it. Usually when we see it in stock, we buy them out of it. Really, I'm not kidding that my sweetie is fond of it!

People’ve been mixing up mead and fruity wine for so long, there’s even a name for it: Melomel.

Mmmm. Maybe. People have mixed all sorts of things together over the years. But the homebrewers I'm familiar with who follow traditional methods add the fruit to the honey while fermenting (or spices, in the case of metheglins), not 'fortify' the mead afterwards.

That's always been one of the issues I have with commercial meads. But then I've never found one that I feel is anywhere as good as the homebrews I've tried. And Chaucer's in my experience is a pretty standard commercial mead.

Cesare wrote:How does it compare to a barleywine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barleywine
Obviously this doesn't have the grains or hops so those flavors won't be there.

Barley wine is for the most part a completely different beast. It's really just a very strong beer that uses champaign yeast to get to a higher alcohol content.

From what I know a lot of dryer meads use champaign yeast, and barleywine is achieved by taking a high gravity beer that has been partially fermented and as the beer yeast starts to die you toss in some champaign yeast which are less tolerant of starting gravity but have a higher alcohol tolerance.

I've never thought of barley wines being sweet as a rule (in fact I'd say a well balanced one often isn't particularly sweet--you balance the sugars you put in with the amount of alcohol you expect to produce), but they have a dry, sour, "grapey" flavor that I often associate with champaign often dry champaign) though many tend to have some residual sweetness. This I know is very sweet, but balanced. It's not carbonated. Mead needs to be aged for a while, BWs are (depending on the beer) one of the few beers you can age b/c of their high alcohol content. While they require more aging than most beers, they require a much more moderate aging than mead or wine.

Also beer brewing is a very different process (though it uses a lot of the same materials). Honey's already fermentable where as barley/grains are not so a lot is involved there that I don't want to get into because I don't have much experience with mashing.

I don't know if I answered your question....

Cesare wrote:How does it compare to a barleywine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barleywine
Obviously this doesn't have the grains or hops so those flavors won't be there.

It's nothing like a barleywine in flavor, as the only fermentable in here is honey...very different than barley. Not to mention, many barleywines will have a very significant addition of hops...making a more balanced flavor between bitter and sweet.