We welcome Michael and Alejandra from Costa Rica Meadery as our first international guests on the Meadcast to discuss their locally inspired meads. Learn about chichemel: what it is and how to make it. We also discuss their hopes to make a true coffee mead experience with all ingredients coffee derived, as well as their future Ark Herb Farm Bee-cotourism dream.
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Drinks in this Episode
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Costa Rica Meadery’s Passiflora with its 2015 Mazer Cup Silver Medal Allen: Passiflora (Costa Rica Meadery)
- Tysen: Chichemel Caribeno and Chichemel Nicoyano (Costa Rica Meadery)
- Alejandra: Flan de Cocoa (Costa Rica Meadery)
- Michael: Sour Orange Blossom (Golden Coast Mead)
The Process to make Chichemel Wort
Want to know how Costa Rica Meadery makes their chichemel? Here is the general outline as provided in the episode. We’ll leave it to you to experiment and find the best process. If you get a good one, let us know in the comments below.
- Small farmer corn (purple [in their nicoyano] and yellow [in their caribeno])
- Soak corn in water
- Drain the corn and resoak every 12 hours until the tendril has grown the same length as the corn kernel (germination is sufficient for starch to sugar conversion)
- Dry the sprouted corn
- Toast to the level needed
- Grind and brew like you would any barley malt
The Three Stages of a Truly Coffee Mead
- Varietal Coffee Honey (get it here)
- Cascara Coffee Cherry (get some cascara tea here)
- Roasted Coffee Beans
Links in this Episode
- Learn more about Costa Rica Meadery
- What is Chicha?
- Look! Even Dogfish Head made a Chicha brew at one point!
- The Africanized Killer Bee
- The Ark Herb Farm
- Rogue Farms
Other News from the Meadcast
We had a great time hanging with friends and fans of the show at the 2016 HomebrewCon last weekend (#HomebrewCon). If you made it out, we hope we found you to say hello. Although there was only one meadery at the Kickoff Party, we found many many meads during club night (check out our Instagram feed for more).
The Mead Panel, described by at least one attendee as “Mead Rushmore,” lived up to the hype, and presentations from Ricky at Groennfell Meadery and Eric at Meridian Hive Meadery were both enjoyable and informative at the same time. The Brewing with Honey presentation from Hugo Patino and Keith Seiz was also very informative for those braggot brewers out there, and just increased the intrigue for the beer style for us. Couldn’t make it out, presentations should be available shortly for AHA members.
The National Homebrew Competition put up a fight for being larger than the Mazer Cup as well, with 367 total entries in the mead categories! Congratulations to Steve Fletty from the St Paul Homebrew Club for winning MeadMaker of the Year. Check out the list of winners here.
While we may need a few nights to recover from all the festivities, we look forward to being able to hang out with everyone again at a future conference. Look for a full conference recap in the coming weeks.
And if you’re thinking of joining the #SodaMead challenge, there is still time (check out #36 for the details). Rumor has it, if we get enough entrants we’ll have our own category at Texas Mead Fest. So spin up a batch and get entered! We can’t wait to see what our listeners come up with.
Frank Golbeck from Golden Coast Mead joins us in Episode 26 to discuss sour meads. If you aren’t familiar with sours, read through the complete show notes and the and check out the Additional Reading links before diving into the episode. Frank walks us through GCM’s sour mead discovery, including the happenstance development of their first sour mead. Its results kicked off what they now consider a souring program, part of their permanent lineup into the future.