Something’s a ‘buzz at the Bergen House
By Mike Agogliati, Courtney Zieller
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MIDDLETOWN, Connecticut (WFSB) — The Bergen House opened during the middle of the pandemic and Courtney Zieller visited the meadery in Middletown.
Talon Bergen joined Zieller to talk about the honey-based alcohol, which most people think is going to be on the sweeter side.
“So mead is wine made from honey, and it’s pretty interesting,” he said. “The biggest misconception is that mead’s always going to be sweet. But when you take sugar out of something and make alcohol with it, it’s a lot less sweet.”
Bergen said he began home-brewing about a decade ago and was hooked on the process. Since his wife doesn’t drink beer, he began looking for something else to brew and found mead and cider.
“Slowly it went from terrible to palatable,” he said. “When we moved to Connecticut, we were at a Yard Goats game, and I shared a cider with Emilie, and she told me she’d rather have one of my meads. After that it just clicked.”
Bergen said the meadery always has about 8 offerings on draft at all times and they are always rotating one per week.
“We usually change about one a week,” he said. “But it tends to come in clumps. So we’ll change like three in one week and then none for a while.”
The first one Bergen and Zieller spoke about was a tart, dry offering called “Just Cherries”.
“Just Cherries is a little bit stronger in alcohol than we usually do,” Bergen said. “We tend towards a session strength, which is lower in alcohol. Um, and a little bit more crushable and delicious– not that just cherries isn’t delicious, but it’s just– it’s more approachable and sociable.
Next was “Not Your Average Joe” which is an homage to the owner of Perkatory Coffee Roasters next door to Bergen.
“It’s a coffee mead,” Bergen said So the only ingredients are honey, water and yeast. And the coffee that we blended together and-and made for this- for this batch.”
“Ginga” was the next mead the two spoke about – with Bergen calling it his lawn-mower mead.
“You can drink this all day, every day,” he said. “It’s right at 7 percent. And we’re hoping to start distributing that here this quarter.”
The last mead Bergen and Zieller spoke about was “Gin-ish”. The mead is a Juniper-berry mead that is sweet up front and has a gin finish.
Bergen said most of the offerings are below 10 percent, but there are some that are planned to be about 14-15 percent.
“They’re only going to be available in the bottle,” Bergen said. “So, it’s going to be interesting and different. Something to take home and sip by the fire.”
Cheers!
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