Monkey Bread

16% ABV

4th Member Bottle

Winter 2025

Mead Details: 

We have been highlighting our Hawaiian series this year so we wanted to continue the trend for this final members bottle of 2025. This bottle features the unique flavors of Monkey Pod honey. 

This mead was inspired by the name and the flavor that it presents. We wanted to do something special to feature a winter flavor. Monkey bread ended up being the ultimate inspiration. Due to Alicia being particularly intolerant (annoyingly of many foods), this was made with her in mind. Gluten free oats were used in secondary to give a slightly bready mouthfeel. Amberano wood was used to give a rich cinnamon and barrel flavor. Lastly, some vanilla was added to bring all these flavors together. 

This mead is approximately 13 months old before bottling.

We used QA23 yeast. 

Karl’s tasting notes

The time has come. The final of the four Final Gravity Society Members’ meads is here! This time, we’re playing with one of our plethora of Hawaiian honeys, which we’ve been incrementally releasing this year. A cult classic of these honeys made its way onto our Draft Menu, known to all as “Funky Monkey”, if you know, you know. The feature of this mead was its rather strange and hard-to-explain flavor profile, thanks to the ‘monkey pod honey’ that its name was drawn from. So here we are again! Playing with this notoriously strange honey reimagined a whole lineup of fascinating ingredients. Let’s begin!

The first scent right off the top is nectar backed by the siren’s call allure of amburano wood. It seems that the feral and untamable profile of the monkey pod, through scent at least, has been enraptured into a gorgeous bouquet of sweet honey nectar, soft grain sweetness, and a backing of spiced vanilla. Gorgeous!

Let’s see if the tasting profile matches that extemporal nose! The first sip tastes something akin to honey brandy, if you could imagine such a thing. Not as rich as a port, but a balanced sweetness of the rather indescribable Monkey Pod honey notes and the savory grain sweets, compiled into a heat of woody spices. It has a profile that tastes both fine and simple, with flavors of leather and haygrass, infused with floral sweet spice, wood, and milky oats. Undertones of earthy sweetness uplift a lingering grain note, leaving an unprecedented flavor for one of our meads! There is so much to dissect in this profile. I can also say that despite the plethora of sweet notes, this mead is indeed like a liquor in profile, offering semi-dry and/or tannic notes deep under its vast tasting profile. This mead certainly has its own air and presence, worthy to be one of our Members’ bottles, indeed!