Guilty as charged.......

Why is it that a lot of newer mead makers, think that if they do this, that or the other, they're gonna discover some magic bullet of the mead making world ?

Or why is it that so many of us, can't be bothered to search for help/clues/answers etc, when there's so much guidance of this type out there ?

Now I never thought I'd find a magic bullet, but I certainly didn't look for enough info. Possibly because when I started out, I'd only hear rumour and stories/mythology of meads, and when I bought a copy of CJJJJJJJJJJJJJJ's "First Steps" book, it was one of his recipes/ideas that caught my eye, which wasn't such a good idea. Likewise, I got my supplies from the supermarket and the local HBS, which also wasn't the best of approaches.

Yes, it did make a mead, but certainly only a mediocre, medium dry mead. But nothing special.

A bit of searching would have led me to at least understand why my materials were crap. Ok, not crap, just not as good quality as I thought.

People seem to think that the higher the alcohol levels, the better the mead will be. That's not to say that there isn't any room for higher alcohol meads, just that they are of a certain type and that can, in turn, cause issues of how they're made, how long they take to make and how long they take to be drinkable etc.

Either that, or they get some strange idea about what ingredients they want to use and then think up some idiotic name "somethingomel" ? Given the minimum amount of info that's available to us about how our historic predecessors actually made their meads, with more info on ingredients and less about how they were used, it stands to reason that the majority of "weirdomels" weren't made for specific reasons. So maybe they should stick to the tried and tested recipes to start with, before increasing their knowledge and skills, and only then try ingredients that don't lend themselves to mead making naturally.....

Ergo, do a search, find a recipe/method etc, read up as much as you can about it, then copy it to make a bench mark version, then search and learn more.

Don't think that because meads are made from honey, that the result is gonna be the same as you might expect from unfermented ingredients, cos it fucking won't. Hell, even just using honey to flavour neutral spirit, is gonna taste different from a properly fermented mead or whatever type......