Listen to This: The MeadMakr Podcast

What a great time to be a mead lover! We’ve got up and coming craft meaderies up the wazoo, awesome products out of which to drink them (*AHEM*) and now, we’ve got the MeadMakr Podcast too. Thanks Santa, we must have been really good this year.

Allen and Tysen of the Meadmakr Podcast do a wonderful job each week of putting together an entertaining and informative mead podcast that’s refreshingly accessible to those just entering into the meading world while still being an authoritative source of information about making and enjoying our favorite drink.

The most recent episode as of this writing was “Merry Meadmas,” aka Meadmust. The podcast covers mead making as well as commercially available mead for the rest of us to enjoy, but also has a lot of fun covering mead culture. This particular episode kicks off with mentions of Yuletide and the winter solstice, which of course go hand in hand with mead imbibing.

People Who Know Their Mead

The podcast also includes an impressive array of expert interviews, including Ricky the Meadmaker of Groenfell and Ken Schramm, who literally wrote the book on American meadmaking (and is potentially the biggest name out there when it comes to pioneers and advocates of the mead industry.)

I’m getting ready to brew my very first batch of mead, so I’m pretty excited about the tools these guys have developed for their listeners, including the handy-dandy Meadmaker’s Toolbox. Listening to the podcast really makes you realize exactly how expansive the mead world is, from mead hall tasting rooms to slushie meads to tea in meadmaking – and that’s all just in this one episode. Obviously, you need to subscribe to these guys.

During the episode, Tysen drinks an iced drink out of his new AleHorn, called an “Even Bigger Southern Hunter.” I thought it might be fun to go and hunt down the recipe – here it is! Thanks for the new drink idea, guys.

Recipe: Big Southern Hunter

This recipe calls for Orchid Cellar Hunter Mead, which is a capsicumel – a mead made with peppers, sometimes known as “fire mead.” Yum. Can’t get a capiscumel at the liqueur store? It may be time to start brewing your own. (Original recipe via Meadist)

Tysen has adapted Meadist’s “Old Southern Hunter” recipe to become the “Big Southern Hunter” by adding an additional .5 ounce of both the rye and the mead.

Maybe taking the “one ice cube” part of the instructions a little too far, Tysen!

Ingredients

• 1.5 oz Rye Whiskey
• 1.5 oz Orchid Cellar Hunter Mead (or other capsicumel)
• 2 dashes of Orange Bitters
• Honey

Instructions

Add one ice cube to your AleHorn. Pour the mead and whiskey over it, and add 2 dashes of orange bitters. Add a small dollup of honey (about 1/4 tsp – not much!) on a spoon, and stir the drink with it. It’ll warm you up and cool you off simultaneously – which would have been the perfect thing on this oddly warm Christmas!

 

Read more about Allen, Tysen, and all things mead over at meadmakr.com.