Dec. 28—Quarter Celtic Brewpub has added meadery to its title.
The award-winning brewery is now offering a few meads that are sure to satisfy non-beer drinkers’ cravings.
“We have a couple different meads that we’ve been trying just to kind of get it down, learn how to make mead, make sure that the base mead is good,” said Brady McKeown, head brewer and co-owner of Quarter Celtic. “And then, we’ll start playing with adding fruit and other stuff.”
McKeown began working with Jeff (Giese), who is a member of the home brewing group, Dukes of Ale.
“The first full fruit mead that we did was the one with Jeff,” McKeown said. “He’s been making mead for quite some time and helping me, since there’s really not that much information out there about mead, as far as making mead. It’s been fun.”
The duo currently has a prickly pear mead in the works and has created a couple of session meads by listening to podcast content and talking to people at other taprooms. The session meads have a lower alcohol content and are a bridge between a beer and a mead.
Quarter Celtic currently has some mead options on its menu including Gaelic Gold, which is its base standard mead.
“It’s semi-sweet, not super sweet, but semi-sweet,” McKeown said. “Talking to a few people that we know in the wine industry, it seems that as far as wineries in New Mexico, the sweeter stuff sells a little better. So we thought we’d start with that, since we don’t have a ton of taps to fill up.”
Gaelic Gold is used as the base for the other mead offeings that include a blood orange and blueberry, a huckleberry mix, and a marionberry and plum session mead.
The prickly pear mead has fermented and it almost ready.
“We are now cooling it and we will be back sweetening it a little bit after we stabilize it,” McKeown said. “We’ll be adding some oak chips to it, which is kind of fun. And Jeff, he’s been brewing this at home because he has some very large prickly pear plants out on his property. So he’s been doing a lot of prickly pear mead at his house. We couldn’t get that kind of volume, so we had to get it from a supplier, but we hope it still has the same flare as his backyard.”