Fusion Mead
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Today I’m bottling the Fusion Mead, that I previously showcased the labels for. There is a cryptographic element to this mead, but let’s introduce the mead first.
As the name hints it’s a “Fusion of Meads”. you could say it’s a mixture of two, but those two are in some ways also mixtures.
Mead 1 - which is around 75% of the content (of Fusion Mead) is a mead previously sold as “Branden på Orten” (specifically the batch from 2017). It’s a super sweet mead (almost no water 2/3 of the content is honey) that also won the Mazer Cup in 2017 (the largest mead contest in the world) in the sweet dessert mead category. “Branden” means “The Fire”, but it could also mean “Brand” in anglofied swedish and “på Orten” means “in Town”. It’s a mead that consists of a mix of completely fresh honey (50%) and purposely burnt until black honey (50%). The combination allows for a feeling of freshness while still bringing about a caramelized taste. Small parts of the honey (around 3%) is from heather, while the rest is regular meadow/wildflower honey. Part of the batch (around 1/3) of the content has also had time (maybe a year) on Hungarian Oak, medium roast barrels. The reason for the name “Branden på Orten” is in part because it’s made with burnt honey and in part because another company had trademarked the name of the town where it was made (for food, drink and other things), so I was not allowed to mention the name of the town on the bottle by them (was contacted by their lawyers). In terms of customer response on this mead, it was probably the best of any that I ever made.
Mead 2 - which is around 25% of the content does not really have a name, but is similar to a mead called “Bear’s Feast Brew”, which is a Bilberry (Nordic wild blueberries) mead that also is hardly made with any water as most of the volume comes from the bilberries. It becomes quite similar to a red wine, but with a more “foresty” feel. The amount of honey is much less (2/9 of the content), which makes it a completely dry mead, where no sugar at all remains post-fermentation. The content of the unnamed mead is about 95% this, but it’s been put into a small (100L) high roast american oak barrel for about 6 months, together with about 1 kg of thuja brabant sprouts from my garden and also 5% of a mead fermented together with scots pine sprouts and lingonberry juice added post fermentation. All together quite a lot of different woods, oak, scots pine and thuja. The role of this mead in “Fusion Mead” is to bring a higher level of complexity to all the sweetness.
The combination is really good. I’m actually not a super-fan of sweet meads -I’m more a dry guy- but the level of complexity becomes great enough for me to enjoy. You even get some level of tannin into it (from the “mead 2” contribution). So althoughBranden på Orten was previously considered the best dessert mead in the world, I feel this “fork” can only be better.
But these bottles will be a little more than just good mead as hinted earlier, they’ll have a crypto-element to them. This element is that they’ll have information about a wallet containing 100 “FSN/FUSE” LP-tokens that’s hidden under the shrink capsule that holds down the glass cork. The label also holds parts of the “clues”. But there should be no way to get to it without actually opening a bottle.
According to FUSE governance anyone with 100 FSN/FUSE is considered a Fusionite. And as such, anyone in possession of one of these bottles will be so as well. There won’t be a lot of them and a maximum of 50 will have the encryption notes.
I’m glad I was able to get this done in time for Fusion halving, so I can celebrate with half a bottle of Fusion Mead. ;)
