In progress, this mead was put into primary on June 26th, 2007. It follows the Summer Champagne recipe, but removes the ginger and bitter orange, boosts the honey to 2.5 pounds, and four bags of Stash Chai tea were added during the last 4 minutes of the boil. Depending on how it tastes after primary, more chai may be added, and I’m also thinking of oaking it. If it turns out, there’ll be a full writeup.
Update: It’s now more complex than I could possibly imagine at the start, and impossible to recreate in terms of a simple recipe. Half of it was consumed last year during the holidays, but the rest was fortified with a mix of port and brandy, stabalized and sweetened with honey and liquid chai tea mix, and oaked. It’s good, but not repeatable. In the near future I’d like to do the recipe from scratch in a far more sane and logical set of steps. Look for Chaimera Mark II in 2009, it’s definitely worth it.
