What are you drinking right now?

My first encounter with products from this seemingly quite popular brewery. It's the only mead that can be bought in stores. The ingredients are honey, water, and mint. They probably just didn't list the yeast. The aroma is rather weak and indistinct, but not unpleasant. You could say roughly the same about the taste. It tastes like regular beer, but without the hoppy bitterness; the malt flavor and smell have been replaced by a honeyed aftertaste. It differs significantly from the Suzdal and "Krasnaya Gorka" varieties; it's much more bland and resembles beer more closely. But it’s also cheaper, about one and a half times less expensive. Overall – a decent alternative to beer, 7/10


I tried my own homemade mead. After soaking for a couple of days, it became milder and easier to drink. You can feel the alcohol, but not as strongly as in wine, which means the ABV is indeed around 8-10%. It's not carbonated, smells like wine and honey. Perhaps it has a stronger aroma than the Suzdal variety, but the scent is sharper, and you can sense the alcoholic notes. It tastes like wine (it was made with wine yeast). There's a slight hint of citrus, resembling grapefruit. In terms of taste, it's quite unremarkable, absolutely not sweet, very similar to young dry wine, with a honey-hoppy aftertaste. Basically, if the Volkovskaya version is almost like beer, then I created something closer to classic wine. Next time, I should definitely try not fermenting all the sugar completely and letting the yeast finish fermentation. And experiment with different types of yeast. I give this beverage a 6/10 based on its flavor qualities, but considering the strength, it could have even scored higher...