Welcome Fall! We love when the cooler weather shows up because that means it’s Spiced Apple Season! Spiced Apple is our bestselling mead year-round, but so many people say it reminds them of fall or the holidays that we have to make double batches of it just to keep up.
Do you know the story of this favorite beverage?
Spice Apple was created by Ben, kind of by accident, at home back in the fall of 2005. He was left unattended and mixed together apple juice, spices, and honey. The result was amazing! He only made a one-gallon batch (5 bottles), but it was so good, we decided to enter it in our first ever competition in early 2006. Much to our surprise, we won the gold medal in its category at the International Mead Making Competition and then went on to win Best in Show – the best mead out of 212 entries! Needless to say, we were shocked and delighted!
As a special reward, we were asked to be the official mead recipe for Mead Day the next year in Zymurgy Magazine (the magazine for the American Homebrewers Association). Unfortunately, because it was a thrown together batch, there weren’t any directions/amounts/ingredients listed in our home brew notebook. We had to scramble to put together a recipe in time to have it published!
Spiced Apple is made a little differently now that we are making it in 200-gallon batches, but the love of this mead still lingers.
Caramel Apple Sangria (see recipe below)
Try buying 2 bottles this year – drink one now and save the other! This mead only gets better with age. We opened a 7-year-old bottle to toast breaking ground on the new building in 2017 and it was amazing!
We always get asked how to heat up your Spiced Apple to enjoy warm and enhance the spices. It’s easy! (Just remember the key is to not heat it too much – alcohol boils at 173 degrees and water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit. If you heat up your mead too hot, you’ll just end up with expensive juice!) Here are a few ways to get the job done:
Warm it up in a pot – heat mead gently on the stove until just warm
Warm it up in the microwave – if your microwave has a “Beverage” button, you may be able to use that. Heat gently for a short time and check the temperature. A whole bottle, emptied into a microwave safe container, takes about a minute or so.
Warm it up in a crockpot – if you are going to share with friends, a crockpot is the easiest way to heat a larger amount. Use “warm” if you have that choice! If you are using “low” watch it carefully. Serve with a ladle and mugs.
Here are some great recipes we’ve created using the Spiced Apple – Strawberry Apple Mead Sangria and Spiced Apple Mead Three Ways.