Montgomery County Beekeepers Association (MCBA) Master Mead Maker Yancy Bodenstein again hosted MCBA members at his backyard Gaithersburg meadery to demonstrate and supervise bottling of the mead we started earlier. Yancy had hosted a hands-on beginner mead making class in March. Four of us, Mike Smith, Charles Walter, Jim Fleshman and I, gathered again in September to bottle the mead we had left fermenting in Yancy’s meadery.

We were being coached by a master, as Yancy has won four international awards for his mead in the Mazer Cup Competitions. The Mazer Cup International Mead Competition is held each March in Boulder Colorado. Most recently, in March of this year, Yancy was awarded a silver medal for his semi -sweet fruit melomel , “Hey That Is My Cherry!” Melomels are meads that have had fruit added to them.

To start us off, Yancy offered us each a chilled glass of his own delicious mead, aged with oak with a hint of bourbon flavor. In typical MCBA fashion, we initially compared beekeeping notes—with Yancy’s mead softening our mutual disappointment regarding the slim honey harvest this summer. Later, we moved on to the business at hand, and Yancy discussed tips on flavoring and aging meads and demonstrated how to properly sanitize bottles and fill them with that lovely elixir.

We students had each had made a mead, called a cyser—which is a mixture of honey and apple juice. All three bottles had finished into a beautiful, clear golden color. As we siphoned our product into liter bottles, we each shared a glass. What was surprising was the difference in taste between the three meads. Though all started with honey and apple juice, the sweetness, bouquet and flavors were very different. There was quite a range of sweetness and fruitiness. But all were delicious. Yancy talked about how meads were judged in competitions and commented that each of ours had cleared beautifully.

We later adjourned to Yancy’s basement tasting room, where he has homebrewed mead and beer on tap. Yancy had ingeniously crafted a chest freezer into a multi-tap homebrew dispenser complete with temperature and pressure controls. While admiring Yancy’s shelf of Mazur Cups, we tasted several of his meads on tap, even mixing one with his homebrewed beer to make a braggot.

All in all, what a great way for beekeepers to spend a fall afternoon—talking about bees and sipping mead. Many thanks to our gracious host and colleague for sharing his time and knowledge and homebrew.