1-14-25 Tonight at 9PM ET, we're talking with Kyle Ducharme and Bill Boyer Bill is in the Minnesota Mead Mafia, and if you've competed, you know he makes good mead. Kyle is from Vermont and has been tearing up the mead world as well. We're going to be exploring what they've done with their meads, and how they put their recipes together. We'll also be talking about chocolate meads!
Kyle Ducharme from Northern Vermont and is a home mead maker that has experience with quality assurance positions in the food and beverage industries. He has been making mead since the fall of 2019, really diving deep during the pandemic. He originally learned from podcasts/youtubers such as Gotmead, The Mead House, Doin the Most, and Man Made Mead. He later joined his homebrew club where he discovered some other mead makers, but mainly beer brewers and judges. He was motivated by the online community to enter competitions and after winning some medals, he entered more competitions to get feedback and improve his skills. That was a valuable step, but becoming a beer and mead judge was really what made him grow exponentially in his mead making. By traveling to learn from others and to judge meads, he could bring that knowledge to others in his homebrew club and online communities. Outside of competing and judging comps, he has started a mead class and small Iron Bee style mead competition to share knowledge/feedback with others. His major goal is to create another major mead competition in New England and to bring up the homebrew mead scene in the area. He is passionate about using foraged ingredients and fruit from local farmers and utilizing honey from all over the world. His parents own a small hop yard and that is what got him initially interested in fermentation.
Back in 2010, Bill started brewing with a Mr. Beer Kit and rapidly upgraded to doing all grain brewing. Knowing his wife was not a fan of hops but loved sweet ciders, he started exploring meads & ciders. In 2020, he started expanding his meads & ciders, not only because the shelf life was longer but also because no one was around to drink his beer (Damn COVID). With an abundance of mead & ciders cluttering up his basement, he’s branched out from the local homebrew competitions and started submitting to nationwide ones, having won more than 500+ awards since 2021.
Bill is an active member of the North Georgia Malt Monkeys, Marietta Association of Schoolhouse Homebrewers (MASH) and runs the Mead & Cider Makers & Tasters group in the Atlanta Area. He is also the competition organizer of the North Georgia Homebrew Competition.
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Look no further than Honnibrook Craft Meadery in Castle Rock, Colorado, for your go-to destination for wonderful, light, and refreshing mead! We have 20 meads on tap and four seasonal mead slushees.
Go to honnibrook.com for review our tap list, upcoming events and to order online!
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Upcoming Shows
Show links and notes
Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff
The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff
Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff
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