MEAD
Honey Wine
In the summer of 1999, Bob Criswell tasted homemade mead for the first time. It was the product of a friend-of-a-friend, and he found it delicious! Shortly thereafter, he learned the basics of home mead making, and put together his first three batches: an ordinary sweet sack mead, an apple cyser, and a sweet cranberry melomel.
Having found a good local supplier of honey, Bob got to work putting down batch after batch. In those days he was aging in empty Gallo Wine bottles, about a gallon and a half per batch. This was the case for a little over a decade. In those years, Bob was able to iron out his recipes and he learned how to make consistent meads. At one point, there were more than 20 small batches of this kind in his pantry closet!
Around 2010, after a very long weekend of bottling after multiple batches had come to fruition, Bob made the decision to switch to 5-gallon batches, and he invested in carboys for the first time.
Born with a serious sweet tooth, Bob has never made a dry mead. All his products are sweet dessert wines. His favorite flavors are strawberry, cherry, peach, raspberry, and blackberry, but he also has produced a fall spice metheglin, lemon-ginger melomel, chai spiced melomel, blueberry melomel, and most recently he’s experimented with sweet yellow mango melomel.
Today, Bob is still a home brewer, producing a little over 50 gallons of mead per year on average, and what he produces is not available for purchase. He and Cherish have dreams of eventually opening their own commercial boutique meadery in the Galena area.
Having found a good local supplier of honey, Bob got to work putting down batch after batch. In those days he was aging in empty Gallo Wine bottles, about a gallon and a half per batch. This was the case for a little over a decade. In those years, Bob was able to iron out his recipes and he learned how to make consistent meads. At one point, there were more than 20 small batches of this kind in his pantry closet!
Around 2010, after a very long weekend of bottling after multiple batches had come to fruition, Bob made the decision to switch to 5-gallon batches, and he invested in carboys for the first time.
Born with a serious sweet tooth, Bob has never made a dry mead. All his products are sweet dessert wines. His favorite flavors are strawberry, cherry, peach, raspberry, and blackberry, but he also has produced a fall spice metheglin, lemon-ginger melomel, chai spiced melomel, blueberry melomel, and most recently he’s experimented with sweet yellow mango melomel.
Today, Bob is still a home brewer, producing a little over 50 gallons of mead per year on average, and what he produces is not available for purchase. He and Cherish have dreams of eventually opening their own commercial boutique meadery in the Galena area.