If your idea of Irish mead is that rich and smooth, but tooth-crackingly sweet Bunratty stuff, you could be in for not one but two pleasant surprises. The first, Kinsale Atlantic Dry, is a light, crisp and flavoursome honey-wine – dry, yet still a little soft on the palate.The second, Wild Red Mead, is a gorgeous red Melomel (fruited mead) which while still distinctly honey-toned, also carries the berry notes of rich red wines. When we met at last month's Irish drinks event at the London embassy, its creator Denis Dempsey (left) explained that where the Dry is fermented with 300kg of honey per batch, the Red replaces just 40kg of the honey with an astonishing 400kg of Irish blackcurrants and cherries – hence those lovely fruity Cabernet notes.
"Even sweet blackcurrants are only 14% sugar," he said, as we compared notes on mead-making. With my own redcurrant Melomel, I found that the dryness from swapping half a pound of honey for a pound of fruit (so 2:1 rather than 10:1, on my far smaller batches) accentuated the tangy currant flavours, but he's aiming for a richer, rounder result – and he hits that target most excellently.
Although his meads are made in Kinsale in West Cork – "an amazing foodie place," as Denis put it – and the fruit is Irish, the honey is Spanish because Ireland simply doesn't produce enough to be cost-effective. The mead retails at €22 (around £20) a bottle as it is.
The amazing thing, given how very good the meads are, is that he and his wife Kate only set up Kinsale Mead Co last year. Denis said their research included visiting a number of meaderies in the US – there are dozens of them there, making a huge variety of drinks. They also did test brews and tried different yeasts (they mostly use a white wine yeast now) before launching in Ireland last September.
We talked a little more about mead-making techniques, before Denis added a piece of advice for mead consumption: "It works well in cocktails, too," he said. Now there's an intriguing thought!
How long does the fermentation take? It was very slow when I had a go at making mead.
ReplyDeleteHow long does the fermentation take? It was very slow when I had a go at making mead.
ReplyDeleteOne way I found to get it started faster was to kick it off with only about half the planned honey load, it was almost as if the full amount was too much for the yeast to get going. Then once it was fermenting OK, I added the rest of the honey.
DeleteFermentation of our honey only mead takes about 28 days. The melomel mead ferments much faster with the addition of fruit, about 8-9 days.
ReplyDeleteDenis (Kinsale Mead Co)
That's really interesting, I wonder if it's down to the different types of sugars involved?
DeleteIf you are using dried yeast, rehydrate it with something like Go-Ferm and use yeast nutrients such as Fermaid O as there aren't enough nutrients for the yeast in pure honey.
ReplyDelete