Blue Dog Mead

Brewed by Blue Dog Mead Company
Style: Mead
The Dalles, Oregon USA

From the bottle as part of a mead flight at Sunset Grill on 11/17/07
Deep bronze-yellow color with a flash of white bubbles on top. Medium-low leg density, still and clear.
I get medicinal, almost smokey phenols in the nose that arrive in stride with a brandy-like tartness. Smells like someone through a little grape juice in here, though it comes through rather harshly and aided by the medicinal phenols, it’s rather overpowering and brash. Dry wood and rather dry caramel notes top off the sweet honey, with a dull plastic note on the very end. Medium strength of aroma, fair amount of alcohol, some obvious fermentation flaws.
It starts out with a fairly respectable honey-meets-brandy flavor but grows alcoholic quickly, on the end. Slightly waxy/plasticy and with enough chewy honey texture, though the sweetness is sapped by the phenols and dry alcohol heat. Nothing particular fresh, elegant, rich or complex here.

Lots of body, but not very sweet at all. Band-aid flavor. Rather sourish and pretty thick. Ugh.

Bottle. No head (still). Body is medium to dark yellow. Aroma is notes of honey, insecticide, caramel, flowers, hint of wood. Flavor is heavily sweet, lightly acidic. Finish is moderately sweet, lightly acidic, slightly unclean. Medium body, watery/syrupy/oily texture, flat carbonation. If not for the bug-spray-like higher alcohols, this would be ok...although the aftertaste and slick/oily mouthfeel hurts the score a bit too. The first step to a good mead is clean fermentation, and this sample suggests they haven’t gotten past that one yet. I can’t say I expected much from the goofy label, but you never know.

I’ve got way to many brews in this style sitting around the house half full,but oh well.Nice golden/amber color,no head to speak of and the aroma was honey sweet with maybe some hints at fruit in there.The flavor was medium sweet with a mild hint of some kind of fruit which is hard to say and a bit of a woody side that is fairly noticeable.It goes down fairly nicely and the alcohol never really makes a strong appearance.Over all not bad and decent enough to set on the table for Christmas.

Bottle. Pours a still, light amber to blond color. Aroma is woody, tannic, bits of honey. Medium bodied for a mead. Flavor is light honey, dry, lots of white wine characteristics, slight saltiness?? Perhaps they are using new oak?? Very dry and winelike compared to other meads I have tried. Interesting.