20/10/2025
Category talk. Show meads. This is a category often referred to as traditional, with the flavour ingredients being honey yeast and water. Often showcase floral sources of honey of either a dominant floral source or a regions time stamp near the hives. Meads are judged on flavour profile where any characters from the fermentation process should complement or enhance the main show, which is the honey.
The struggle in Australia is that most varietal honey descriptions aren't of the Australian landscape and even then dont go into how the flavours might transform under fermentation and increase or decrease in aroma and flavour. This brings us to the experiment the photo above is of. A blind tast of honeys and corresponding meads where we have tried to control the other variables like fermentation conditions, water, yeast, etc, to best of the ability. These will then have flavours of both written down and compiled to start creating a catalogue. While this was planned to start before this years competition , we pushed this part back to next year as we get the system tweaked to how best to implement. This will not be done by just one person but a range of people with varying sensory backgrounds.
If you are wondering how to support this effort entering the competition, if you have meads. Otherwise, reach out after the competition in November as this is when we will continue this stage of giving back to the wider mead community.
Competition at https://meadcomp.com/ pathways for both commercial and home makers.
