My friend and I have brewed up a cherry mead. It is currently fermenting and we will be bottling it in a couple of weeks. We’re having a hard time coming up with a name. Normally, we have no problem naming the beers we brew, (they just seem to come naturally) but this is the first time either of us have made a mead and neither of us can come up with anything that sounds good. So I thought to myself; “self, whenever you need an answer for something, where do you go?”. To the Teeming Millions[sup]®[/sup] of course! So I put it to you… What shall we call our mead?
hmmm… I wonder if naming before fermentation is complete may jinx the process… ? I assume early indicators are good… I mean, I’d hate to come up with a really good name and have the mead suck.
I dunno… just the vulgar bastard in me… but the first the that came to mind for a Cherry Mead was…
Well, let’s see…
My name is John and my buddy’s name is Ron. My wife’s name is Beth and his is Vanessa. We live in FL in the Tampa area. We brewed an english ale a couple of years ago, while being threatened by a hurricane, that we named after the hurricane. We called it Georges’ (zhorge) Hurricane ale. Our most recent ones have been a christmas beer that we named Santa’s Select and an oatmeal porter that we named The Portly Quaker.
If it hadn’t already been used by Ben & Jerry, I’d call it Cherry Garcia… that one popped into my head on the way to the Dylan/Dead show on Wednesday. I’ve been trying to come up with a variation of that, but I can’t think of any famous Jerrys that would fit. Cherry Van Dyke? Cherry Seinfeld? Naaahhhh.
As for a sample or two for the winner, I’m down with that… the only catch is, you’ve got to let it age for a while (like at least a year) before it really gets good.
Well, it certainly does look like Verbenabeast is in the lead with that one. But I think it’s too early to declare a winner. It’s definitely on the short list though.
BTW, I wouldn’t consider it a jinx to name it prior to fermentation completes, all of our beers have been named either during the brewing process or during fermentation, and most brewers that I know generally name theirs at the same time. YMMV
I think the beast has nailed it (if you’ll pardon the expression), but you should have plenty of time to consider it before the mead is ready.
If you should decide on labelling some of it for polite company, I suggest calling it Cherryoscuro. It’s a play on “chiaroscuro” [kee-ahr’oh-scyoo"roh], an artistic term referring to using contrasting light and dark elements to create an illusion of depth.
I don’t always trouble to name my mead, but some notable batches have been dubbed:
Millenial Mead (The first bottle was opened on New Year’s Eve, 1999),
Santa’s Sex Life (A Yuletide metheglin. Christmas comes but once a year…), and
Darkshade Death Mead (A bitter, nearly black mead made from dark honey and shattered dreams, which probably deserves a mention in the Geneva Conventions).
