Honey Sun Iqhilika (Mead) - Chili

Brewed by Makana Meadery
Style: Mead
Grahamstown, South Africa

750 mL bottle, courtesy of mj. Thanks, Mike! (sort of) Pours a clear, golden-honey color; decent legs. Smells like the chemical character of a public restroom: floral, strange, no show of chilis. Very hot mouthfeel: intense chilis, burning peppers and light honey; still tastes like its smells, which isn’t good; floral and friggin’ weird; hot, with minimal mead presence; lengthy, burning and soapy finish. No good.

DO NOT WANT! Hibiscus flowers and fuesal chile aroma, with a good dose of porta-john chemical cleaner. Hits the tongue and burns, tingles and stuns the palate. Just below hot, it sits on the tongue and fizzles and frys and tastes like pepper-ladel gasoline. Clark is right, the base mead for this thing is hideous. I need to figure out what to do with the rest of this bottle.

Poured from a large bottle. Aroma distinctly of toxic urinal cake and Everclear. Repulsive and chemical. Pours an even deep gold. Flavor starts as bristling toilet chemicals, as though I’m standing in the Porta-John. This fades into some hexanes and then develops actual pepper flavor. Not particularly good pepper flavor, but that distinct rubbery old chili resin. Then heat starts in, but fizzles out. After spitting it out, a burning of more chemical aftertaste and some honeyed fusels. Who thought this would make money?

The second mead in our flight at Indra’s Mead, Cider and Sake Tasting on 8/31/07. This one was definitely polarizing, but no one thought it was boring. It pours a deep, flat gold. The nose is quite herbal and floral with pepper and plastic notes thrown into the mix. It takes a few drags to get your head around the aroma on this one. Complex? Sure. Pleasant? Not particularly. Medium-bodied, incredibly hot/spicy on the tongue and quite dry. Bleh. The dry finish was surprising for a mead. The flavor was interesting. Hot and peppery with an odd herbal/sweet backing. I like hot food (Thai, Indian, etc), but this one was so jumbled and in your face with heat, it was difficult to pull out individual flavors because I didn’t enjoy having it linger on my tongue. A couple guys, at the tasting, had minor seizures (for lack of a better word) when this concoction first hit their tongue. It was quite amusing, resembling Bugs Bunny when he drinks the Mr. Hyde potion in that classic cartoon. After trying this mead, I felt like I had a bleeding ulcer, and now I can say that I’ve tried it, but never again...

bottle shared by thedm and hotstuff - The nose of this mead is mild and mostly honey, so it in no way prepared me for the flavor. It’s all chili peppers. Oh, I guess there’s some honey flavor in the background, but the peppers, which seem mild when it first hits the tongue, tend to drown everything else out as one continues drinking it. The peppers are way too overdone to be good in a mead. I see even the commercial description here says it’s "amusing" to pass the bottle around later when "guests become competitive". Umm... yeah. That reminds me of guys at a bar trying to get their friends to drink a shot that’s really heavy on tabasco sauce. It’s not done for enjoyment. On the plus side I’ll certainly remember this one.

Fourth Mead (and final tasting) of the night at the Indra - Cider, Sake and Mead tasting 8/31/07. Pour is golden and still. Aroma is big floral bouquet, honey and in the very back muted chili spice. Taste is shockingly spicy. Based on the aroma, I thought the chili would be muted, or at least somewhat blended, but this really hit my in the face with its heat. It did not send my body into convulsions or anything, but it was surprising. Its not necessarily HOT pepper, just more of a spicy saffron. After it settled down a bit (or my mouth numbed) there was a nice honey body. Definitely some residual spicinesses in the after taste. Weird stuff, really needs to be tasted to understand.

Glass at Sunset Grill on 8/13/07
Clear, chardonnay-colored mead, with feeble legs.
Is this a novelty mead? The commercial description, which I assume is from the brewery, certainly makes it sound like one.
And tasting it, I would wholeheartedly agree. I barely even remember the aroma. The chilis make little impression in the nose, just like in a chili beer, while there is some mineral and phenolic activity, more akin to white wine and white pepper. Dry in the nose, and with mostly well-concealed alcohol.
Then the flavor. First of all, there are few bigger fans of chili beverages out there than myself, so that’s not the problem. No, I think the problem stems more from the fact that the mead in here tastes like it’s actually cheap, boxed blush wine. Chablis, anyone?

Wow did this catch me off guard. Thanks to thedm and hotstuff for sharing this one. Sweet floral honey nose that had a nice warming sensation and then.........POW! Some hot-ass chile infused honey that seared my esophageal lining. This was followed by a resounding Whooooooh! around the table. Interesting and glad I had the opportunity to try it, but I’m not sure if I could take much more of it.