Chthonic 

3rd member bottle 

Late Summer 2025

Mead Details 

This mead is a special one. 

This was the first time we tried to ferment and make mead in a fresh-dumped whiskey barrel. If you were a member in 2024, you might remember the base for this mead, “Kissing Whiskey By The Fire”.

So this mead is a double bourbon barrel-aged bochet. The first barrel was a special pick directly from Dom and his family. He and his family took a trip to Four Roses and specifically picked out the barrel. It fermented and slept in that barrel for over a year. We were so in love with it we pulled 15 gallons to make the first member bottle last year.  After that, we put it in a fresh dumped Detroit City Distillery Bourbon barrel for another year. Around June 2025, we pulled it from the second barrel and started the process for making this a root beer mead. We added a high-quality root beer concentrate with brown sugar, Indian Sarsaparilla root, molasses, star anise, clove, and vanilla. 

This mead is approximately 32 months old before bottling.  

We used D47 yeast. 

Karl’s tasting notes 

Coming up as our third entry for our Final Gravity Society Members this year is the fascinating-sounding Chthonic! Not just fascinating from the name, but from the very little I was told about this one, we’re apparently in for barrel-aged root beer!

That is a wild nose, it’s gotta be said. Unsurprisingly, a barrel candy root beer (iykyk) mixed with a honey barrel of whiskey wood. Sweet caramel wood and sassafras. Unmistakably mead and a root beer whiskey. Huh. Opening it up, and then some of the wooden barrel and root beer notes fade into the more subtle spices in the root beer; root-like smells down to anise even. Remarkable!

It’s time! What will this taste like? Not just root beer, for starters. It’s like honey wood root beer. A boozy root beer. So much more complex. It smooths out on each sip, revealing sweet caramel honey, whiskey sarsaparilla after. Each taste hits me with more flavors. I’m getting charcoal, wood, whiskey, honey, caramel, toffee, sassafras, anise, and so much more. If you were expecting a charming child-like root beer mead, then I’m sorry, but instead you get a well-developed and fascinating tasting experience for whiskey and root beer AND mead enjoyers alike! Would be perfect in a float still, just sayin’. You get that one for free