These early morning blog posts seem to have the best titles, so I will continue my series a day early and talk mead.

One of the first, if not the first, producers to sign with Monon Beverage was Moonlight Meadery from Londonderry, New Hampshire. It was an awkward call as I was still finding out how to best talk to producers about Monon and I wasn’t entirely sure who was on the phone at the time. I had to pull over and I quickly made notes on a scrap piece of paper as to who I was talking to, and then hurried the call to end it and look them up. Upon getting off the phone I thought I had messed up and would never hear from them again. Then looking them up and finding out that they have several medals from the Mazer Cup and were Meadery of the Year in 2015, I became even more nervous after finding that out but obviously everything worked out as I am still working with them! They are pretty cool people, and also the only producers I havent met face to face yet! That will change in May when Ben comes out here to hang and meet Indiana.

What is mead you may ask? Well I am fortunate that in Indy, New Day Meadery has done an awesome job of answering that question, but, a quick summary: Mead is fermented honey and water. That is the quick and dirty answer, however Moonlight proves it is much more than just a simple fermented honey and water beverage. They take it to a new level by adding fruits, spicy peppers, and even barrel aging their products!

Mead can be many things, and while it does have honey in it, not all of it is as sweet as you would think (There are semi-dry ones like Red Dress). There are even really complex meads like Smolder, which is a raspberry chipotle mead. When drinking this one, flavor comes in waves, somewhat like in Willy Wonka when the girl is chewing gum. First you get the sweetness from the honey, then the tartness from the raspberry, and finally a nice even spicy to finish. Really interesting, worth searching for, or just ask me and I can probably locate some for you.

I suppose I should mention that Moonlight also does ciders. Really awesome ciders, some aged in rye barrels reaching 13.5% ABV too!! Trust me, I know cider. I even passed the Level 1 Cider Certification Program. This is good stuff.

Need for Mead? Yup! We got you covered from canned cider, to bottled mead, and even both on draft.

SPW