Adding Spice to Metheglin
Following the previous article about Raw Chilli Cinnamon Sack Cyser there was a question raised in my email inbox yesterday asking when spices can or should be added to a mead? That’s a great question.
A mead that incorporates spices is classified as a metheglin.
There’s a general rule that I keep in mind when adding any spices into mead – add spices at primary for taste and add spices later if you’re after that spicy aroma. Or any combination of the two. And I think of this as a continuum along which my imagination looks at spice as a variant that can have dramatically different results depending on the time and volume of application.
I ask myself what the aroma should be for that mead when the bottle is cracked and what the taste should incorporate?
Aroma plus taste equals flavour.
This raw chilli cinnamon sack cyser is another beast entirely. Raw chilli into bottled mead bypasses that whole spices in fermentation chemistry. What you gain is the aroma of raw chilli and the taste of raw chilli – if you’re a raw chilli lover then this is simply infusing raw capsaicum. Nothing more, nothing less. You could as easily sanitise and drop in a vanilla bean or two.
Which raises a good point. The mead you receive in a bottle isn’t a done deal. You can change it.
The Morgan’s Barn Mead motto – There are no rules in Mead Club.
