Electric Nectar: Lilac Futurism
How do you make wildflower mead taste even more floral? Steep it in several pounds of lilac flowers, that's how! In the early summer of 2020 I had the choice of picking a gajillion apple blossoms or a gajillion lilac flowers. The latter is much much easier to harvest, and just as bountiful throughout the Keweenaw. I grabbed ten gallons of blossoms and stems, probably the weirdest thing I've ever stuffed into a 5-gallon bucket. From that, I picked each flower off the stem to prevent getting too much woody flavor in my mead. In the end I wound up with three gallons of flowers and two very nice smelling hands.
I dumped boiling water all over the flowers and let them steep for a day or two. Not gonna lie, it smelled kinda rank. Once things cooled, I added about 2/3 of a gallon of honey. With yeast and time working their magic, I just had to wait until November 2020 to bottle it. The mead is showing great promise and I look forward to it mellowing after a bit more aging.
All of my meads are part of my Electric Nectar series. The artwork on each bottle is from Hugh Ferriss' future-predicting book, The Metropolis of Tomorrow. It's a lilac future for this one! 12% ABV, three gallons in total.
