Drinking Horn Meadcast

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🎙️ Episode Description:

Welcome back, mead enthusiasts and fantasy lovers! Grab your mugs and listen in on an early-morning chat as we delve into the mystical world of mead with a touch of dragon magic. In this episode, we're talking with the brewers about the final Dragon Tea series mead, Toothless!

This finale to the series gained a huge following and it is probably the most asked for mead in the series. Unfortunately, it has taken its last flight except for a few more Dragon Packs at the Mead Hall. *Get yours NOW!

As always, thank you to the brewers for joining us and thank YOU for all of the support and love that we felt during the time of these Dragon meads. Pour yourself a hornful and enjoy the conversation!

Mead - Flagstaff - Honey - Bees - Brewers - Dragons - Arizona - Drinking Horn 

Creators & Guests

Host
Nick Irvine
Ambassador of Buzz
Guest
Charlie Felkins
Head Mead Maker at Drinking Horn Meadery
Guest
Clint Birkland
Mead Maker at Drinking Horn Meadery
Guest
Nick Perez
Mead Maker and Sales at Drinking Horn Meadery

What is Drinking Horn Meadcast ?

A light-hearted show featuring talks on Mead History, Meadery Events and all types of honey fun!

TOOTHLESS MEADCAST TRANSCRIPT

00:05
Coming to you from beautiful Flagstaff, Arizona, this is the Drinking Horn Meadcast. Join us as we take a deeper dive into mead and mead culture.

00:26
All right, here we go. We are back for one fun, I sounded really annoyed right there. Yeah, I don't sound so excited about it. You're a bruh. You work too much, you work too much. Hey everybody, are you ready for another episode of the Meadcast. Yes, Meadcast, Meadcast, Meadcast, Meadcast, Meadcast. There we go. All right, coffee's kicking in now. Thank you, Perez. So we're here with the brewers for one more episode, hopefully more in the future, but one more episode in the series.

00:55
for our Dragon tea meads. We've got Charlie, Clint, and Perez left to right as we're watching here on the live stream, which we've got going right now. You probably miss it if you're listening to this now. I'm just kidding, there's no live stream. That would be cool. Would it be cool? No. Raise your hand if you would like this to be a live stream video. Oh, Clint, yeah, we're good.

01:21
I mean that's where a lot of people are making money now. Wave to the camera. Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. Lots of people are making money with live streams. Oh yeah. I saw this one girl. She's like a high school age. Trust me, this is going the right way. She has this show called Only Pans instead of Only Fans and she cooks meals. Yeah.

01:48
Nice. I'm gonna cut that out. That was I've seen that it's relatable. Oh, yeah. Yeah Anyway, yeah live streams. Mm-hmm. So Okay So we're here to talk about number four of four in our dragon tea mead series and this one is I Will Oh train Choo-choo. I'd have to look at the numbers and we probably will look at the numbers once toothless is gone

02:17
Which is very soon, in fact if you're listening to this you probably missed it unless you can find it somewhere in a bottle shop around the state. But I don't know which one sold faster, Falkor or Toothless. I still think my vote would be Falkor. Could have just been because it was the first one though. Yeah, yeah. You're defending Toothless.

02:40
It’s okay Toothless, it's just because you were last. Yeah, no that absolutely could be the case, but do you guys agree that Falcor went faster? I think so. Yeah, okay, we're all in agreement. All right, so it wasn't even close. Sorry Toothless, but Charlie's got your back. So I've already named what this mead is. It is Toothless, and there, I found actually that this dragon might be the one that at most was.

03:08
Unknown as far as a name when I talk to people about it, and I think that might be just the age demographic For this one because this one is the latest by far as like a character being created and put out there, right?

03:24
I'm right on that, right? By far. Yeah. I guess so. Yeah, because Falcor was Never Ending Story. Elliot was Pete's Dragon, which is the earliest, 1970s. Smog, we learned, was what year? 1937. How to Train Your Dragon, 2010. 2010. Yeah, yeah. I actually saw that. So by a good... When was Never Ending Story? It had to be like 85, 86, I think. Yeah, right around there. Yeah, so by a good, you know...

03:54
25 years or so, Toothless is. Anyway, when I was talking to people about Toothless for our black tea dragon mead, every once in a while I'd have to explain like, oh, from how to train your dragon, they're like, oh yeah, and they'd recognize at least the name of the movie. And then you can picture that dragon.

04:13
Speaking of which I never actually saw how to train your dragon. Did you guys see it? I did. Yeah Yeah, we got to so me and Clinton did not present and Charlie you guys saw it I think prez you saw all four like you would like there's four of them Well, no, no the dragon or the dragon meads. Okay. Yeah, I went back and rewatched him because it had been so long. I wanted to have some you know reference points and a little insights Especially if we were doing these podcast episodes like did you know? Yeah

04:43
you said that too. Did you know that in the filming of Elliot of Peach Dragon, 17 coffees were needed for every... Oh wow. Yeah, I needed a good cry too after watching the first like 10 minutes of Neverending Story. Oh god. Yeah, I thought that scene came much later in the movie but it's like 10-15 minutes in when his horse gets sucked in. Oh god. Fight the

05:13
That is terrible. I thought it was later in the movie too, if I had to think about it. So kids in the theater, like right off the bat, like their parents are having to coddle them right, like first 15, I guess, yeah. Then they're like kind of tired from crying. Yeah, might as well get it out of the way earlier. I guess so, yeah. What was the name of the horse again? I think it was Artex. Yeah, something like that, yeah, Artex. Yeah, oh, so well, way to bring us down here, but.

05:39
But it actually when it sunk down all the way it ended up going into another world and living a great life and you know Raised a family sure It's called the under stage under stage Have to look that one up Yes, so that would be actually I think that'd be fun I don't know why I never thought about this and I'll put this out to the listeners. Here's something you could do if you perhaps Were able to grab all of the dragon meads then

06:08
It would be fun to pick out four evenings and watch the movie while drinking the mead. Oh my gosh. Maybe you guys have thought about that before, but I never thought about that. Like a movie night. Like movie night. Yeah, four different movie nights. Or a movie marathon. But, god. How long is the Smog Hobbit movie? Like three hours or something? However, they made that into a trilogy. Yeah, three hours per... Okay, yeah, so pick one. But even just doing that four in a row.

06:38
That's a lot of mead, but challenge accepted. Now, yeah, it'd be great to watch those movies. Would you pick, we're kind of going off on a little tangent there, but in FALCOR, there's only one movie, I guess. There was not another Neverending Story. Tell them there was, there was a two. Three? There were three, I'm pretty sure. Three, oh man, so just the first one. And the dragon and the animatronics changed every time and people got more and more upset about the.

07:06
Yeah, people do, right? You hold on to that memory and you're like, You're running it! Looking at you Disney with Star Wars. Even Pete's Dragon. From the cartoon to the CGI. Oh god. That's gotta be the big... Well, I guess The Hobbit is a pretty big difference too, in movies, in the two movies. But like, yeah, Pete's Dragon is way different. He's like some goofy cartoon thing and then in Pete's Dragon he's like,

07:36
Yeah, I mean, not as lovable. Yeah, no, definitely. Yeah, away from the lovable side. Yeah. So I would say yeah, pick Neverending Story one pick the original 1970s. Pete's Dragon, pick the cartoon Hobbit and then I know there's a couple of how to train your dragons, but the first one would probably be be good enough. That's my professional suggestion. Anyway, I think that'd be great. Sit down, you know.

08:05
you know, winter time coming up, cuddle up with a nice bottle of mead and a cool movie and watch that. Sweet, all right, I'm doing that. All right, let's get to this fourth dragon. So we had a white dragon, a green dragon, a red dragon, and now we have a black dragon, all associated with the tea colors, so white tea, green tea, red tea, and now black tea. And so was there any thoughts?

08:34
of different dragons out there to use with the black tea? Not a lot of black dragons out there. No? Well, at least not pop culture black dragons that are like, you know, super famous. Yeah, like, yeah. I feel like there's maybe like a Warhammer 4K black dragon, something like that maybe, no? None 40K. Then you would probably have to go to Warhammer Fantasy or some kind of D&D, something like.

09:01
That's not something that a lot of people outside these little niche groups would know. Got you. What are you talking about? Me nerd stuff. Okay, nerd stuff. Okay, cool. But like video game stuff? Or like D&D or what's... There's like three headed black dragons I'm sure, but it's like, you know, they probably have some weird name that no one's ever heard of. What color was Hydra?

09:24
Isn't that like a three headed dragon or four headed dragon or something? It depends on which version we're talking about. Like Hercules. Yeah. I think it was just something like they never described. The Xena Princess Warrior comes in and the clapper. More green normally. Okay, so different versions though. All right, so pretty easy decision then I guess for a pop culture dragon that is black is going to be Toothless. Yeah, which is the lovable, I think lovable. I haven't seen this one. I need to.

09:53
But the lovable dragon. But I did a little background on Toothless. You've seen it, Perez you saw it. Did you guys see how to train your dragon? I saw it, but it's been a bit. Yeah, yeah, 2010? 2010, yeah. Yeah, so that, god man. 13 years ago. Time flies. It does, it does, especially as you get older. So I've heard. And so I did a little research and somehow Toothless is like.

10:21
this type of dragon who is like the greatest of all dragons somehow or the most powerful or something like that. But like maybe it was like his hero's journey was accepting that and getting through like his you know issues. But I don't know anyway I don't know anything about Toothless. But did it seem that way that he was? I think from what I remember was that he didn't have a writer. Like no one could.

10:45
you know, make that bond with him because he was such a unique dragon, you know, fastest, strongest, whatever it was, but because he didn't have a human to, you know, be with him. Hmm. Yeah. No one was worthy. Right. Until I'm sure there's a lot of character arcs out there of, you know, they got to find someone who's willing to, you know, train the untrainable or. Yeah. Tame the beast. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Cool. So.

11:12
So Black Tea, Black Dragon is toothless from How to Train Your Dragon. And so Black Tea is, when I think Black Tea, I think strong and caffeinated. And so this was something that maybe we'll talk about how you guys had to deal with the thought of something that's full flavor and full strength to it. But before that, Charlie, you looked up something?

11:42
Which is agreeing that this one had a little extra tea punch to it. Oh! Not like punch like fruit punch, but... Definitely put a little extra tea in this one. Okay! Compared to the other ones. Nice! And it's a specific type, there's probably a multitude of black teas out there. Um, this was what type of black tea? Earl Grey. We went with the Earl Grey on this one. Earl Grey? Well, and that was kind of news to me when I thought Earl Grey for...

12:11
some reason, I don't know why. I'm not a big tea guy, but I thought of that as like a nighttime herbal tea when I thought it rolled great. And no, no, it's got a nice... It's breakfast tea. Yeah, see, breakfast tea, that's more what it is. And so, what gave it this... What gives it kind of the punch that you're talking about? Just the fact that it's the darker teas got a little bit more caffeine in it, I believe. And so...

12:37
That and we seeped it for a little bit longer than the others to You know a little bit more bitter on the flavor, but we balanced that out with a nice Citrus from the the bergamot oil that goes on the black tea and makes it the Earl Grey Okay, so bergamot oil From the bergamot fruit and acting like I know this I just learned from you guys this before we hit record the bergamot is an actual fruit that you use the

13:07
the peel or the oil from or I don't know the process. Do you guys know the process of getting that in there? I know it comes from, like you said, the peel is where the oil comes from, not necessarily the juice or anything. Gotcha, so yeah, it's got a punch, Earl Grey tea. Are all Earl Grey teas, do they all have this bergamot? Yes, otherwise it won't be called Earl Grey. Okay, gotcha. The one defining feature of it, yeah. Gotcha, excellent. And now, not only that, as a citrus note,

13:37
But, and I want to come back to the tea flavor in this mead, but we also had another ingredient, which is one that I'm not familiar with until now. And what's that ingredient? Yuzu. Yuzu, yeah. Y-U-Z-U. So I didn't know about that fruit before this. Did you guys? The only time I had seen it before was in sushi restaurants. You could get like a yuzu sauce, and it's kind of infused with that same thing, infused with that citrus oil. Okay.

14:06
All right, yeah, and it is almost citrusy to me. We can talk flavor notes. Oh yeah, let's talk flavor notes, I guess. That the tea really comes out, like you said, Charlie, there's a punch and that was something that you guys did. You steeped it for longer. Used a little bit more of the tea ingredient as well compared to the other dragon teas that we did. Okay, was there any reasoning or thought behind that? What were your thoughts when you're making that stronger? Was it because the...

14:36
other ones you wanted to kind of make this one stand out a little bit? Yeah, we wanted to separate it a little bit and then because we knew we were going to be adding the citrus we wanted something that would be able to, you know, stay on par with the stronger citrus notes coming through. Cool. Nice, I love it. I actually, this is the first of the tea meads where, like I can definitely taste the green matcha tea in Elliot.

15:02
The white tea is very subtle, but it almost brought the tannins to my tongue on that one. The red tea, I probably tasted it, but I'm not familiar enough with Rubo's teas. But this Toothless, when I drink it, I'm like, holy cow, that's a tea mead. So yeah, mission accomplished on that one.

15:21
and beautifully done too. Some people might be thinking, I don't know about tea and an alcoholic drink, but if you think tea and honey, I mean, duh, fits perfectly. So what did you guys think, Clinton Prez, about the tea ingredient on this one? I think, you know, to go along with the series, to have different variations of it, you know, especially when you look at sales, people love it. People love the, you know, the pop culture references and the flavors, I think.

15:51
You know, having the balance of, yeah, typically the tea is going to give you some tannin, some bitterness, but trying to avoid overdoing it. And then having that balance of some sort of sweetness, whether it's from the honey or some fruits. Yeah. Gotta work it in. Cool. Were you happy? Excuse me. Were you happy with the tea on this one? Yeah. It was pretty much what I had expected. I...

16:19
To be fair, I had never tasted Yuzu before this point. So I was like, huh, this is different. Yeah. Yeah, I hadn't either. And one of the tasting notes I got from that, whether other people did or not, I'm not sure, but not just the citrus, but a specific citrus, more grapefruit kind of flavor to me. So that tangy, I guess, would maybe be a word for it. Like that I give for grapefruit, a little bit of a citrus.

16:46
I keep using tart. There we go. I was going to say bitter and I'm like, not bitter, but something different. Tart. Yeah. Yeah. Tart kind of grapefruit flavor. Did you guys get any of that or something different? Yeah. It's kind of a, uh, mandarin orange slash grapefruit with maybe even a little lime in there. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I could see that. Yeah. Because limes have that tartness to them. Little pucca factor. Right. Pucker up and give tootles a kiss. Wow.

17:15
Caffeine's kicking in. Whee! So this was the fourth one. Were there any lessons that you guys took from the previous three when looking to create this fourth and final mead? I would say starting small with any ingredient that we add into it. Kind of like with cooking, you don't want to say, oh, add in a tablespoon of salt.

17:43
and then realize, uh oh, that was too much, now what do we do? Especially when we're dealing with new types of tea or new types of juices that we hadn't used before, kind of easing our way into it to figure out where we want it to fall in and we can always add more but can't take it out after the fact. Yeah, I think that's been a theme too. In fact, I was listening to one of our episodes on the way over talking about that, about yeah, you can always add more but you can't take it out. So that's an important lesson.

18:11
lesson for sure with a lot of things in life. That's a metaphor for life. No go full throttle YOLO. Cool so this one was one of our best sellers. It was the fourth in the series so I think you guys knocked it out of the park with the flavor profile and the taste of this because being the fourth, like Charlie said the first one probably went fast. You'd think the fourth one people are kind of like okay.

18:40
You know, we got the Dragons, you know, maybe a little, a little, I don't know, burnout on it. I don't know if that's even a thing, but this one, this one surpassed it out. It almost outsold Smog, or didn't outsell, but it almost was out before Smog. Just barely stayed longer and it has, and it, I guess it's to be determined. We don't know yet which is going to go, but it is almost Elliot as well.

19:06
But Elliot is a different one because it has jalapenos. So that's going to knock some people off of the list. So that makes sense. But anyway, I'm just saying Toothless was a great smeller. It was. It smelled very good. But it's a great seller for sure. And if you guys can find it, I would snag a bottle. We still have some at the Mead Hall as of recording, but it is moving super fast. And so you might be able to find some at your local retailer in Arizona.

19:34
But if you want to order it online, it's Dunzo's. So you gotta search for it. But I will throw to our Meadcast listeners a little hint that you might be able, around the holidays, to, that's all I'll say, right there. Right there. Yeah, joy to the world. Cool, anything stand out when you guys were making this? Did the yuzu juice that you added?

20:03
Was it a surprise? Was it a weird color? I don't know. It was a lot sweeter than I thought it would be. The only experience I had before was yuzu and a soy sauce base. So you're getting a lot of that salty umami, more complimenting fish and sushi overall. It's not like I've ever had pure yuzu. I thought it was going to be more like a grapefruit. A little more tart and astringent. But still pretty sweet overall.

20:33
Clint, you agreed with that? Yeah. Mostly what I got out of it was just the orange and lemon flavor with that weird grapefruit after flavor right at the beginning. And so when I first tasted it, I was like, rrr? This is a mixture of different types of citrus. This can't be one fruit.

20:55
Huh, I wonder if that actually is the case with the user, if it was like a hybrid of different services or if it just kind of came up on its own. Anyone know anything about that? Do do do do do do do do. How comes the research? Get right on that. Serious tapping in the background. Yeah, on something that looks like a calculator. Don't know how you're gonna get the answer. Oh, turn it upside down, look, we have boobies.

21:23
Yeah, did everything go pretty smoothly with this one, Charlie? The process was pretty straightforward on this? Yeah, we definitely had to go back and add more tea on this one more than the other ones. Just, you know, like we said before, start small. Started small and was like, nope, not enough, add more tea. Went through that process more than a few times on this one, but I think what we ended up with was a nice balance. And I know personally,

21:52
There's a song out there called Earl Grey and Chamomile by a band called Dada. It's pretty obscure, but I was a huge fan of them back in the 90s. And it was just going through my head the whole time I was making these. It was kind of a talking about a guy and his girlfriend are as different as Earl Grey and Chamomile. And so that was their preferred tease. One really strong one.

22:22
lighter more of a nighttime thing so You know just a little side note check out the song. I love it No, you saw me just write that down. I was like I gotta look up that Charlie's always good for those obscure obscure songs and bands But that's a great little reference to yeah Earl Grey And chamomile if some if I had to listen to that if I had listened to that song earlier I wouldn't have been so confused thinking Earl Grey was a nighttime tea You know because I would have known that the difference there

22:51
And so what do we got over there for us? A couple tidbits. So believed to have originated in central China as a hybrid of a mandarin orange. And here's pronunciation, Icing papeta, which obviously we can see it. But if you describe that to the listeners, maybe like a weird wrinkly lime. A big fat wrinkly lime? Yeah, yeah. Almost like a durian without the spikes.

23:17
Slow growing species, characteristic lemon scented. But on the bottom here it says it is with the exception of one other citrus, one of the hardiest citrus plants in the world tolerating both moderate frost and damp conditions. So I could see why they would try to hybrid that with a mandarin just to make it grow in different areas, different climates. Yeah, yeah, grab that root stock and.

23:45
splice it on something else so that could maybe grow here in flag stuff. I don't know, said frost. I don't know. Yeah, I think the temperature range is set down to 17. Oh no, okay. Yeah, not 17 Fahrenheit. Yeah. Yeah, okay. 17. I think it was like negative seven Celsius or something like that. Yeah, 17 Fahrenheit. Yeah, that's we get maybe like the banana belt by Elden around there could survive but interestingly there you go. There's

24:14
And now you know. Yes. Do do do do. There goes the star. Wee. Cool. Well, yeah. Any other final notes on Toothless? Well, the artwork. So it's sitting here staring at me. The label. And it is a very close-up of Toothless, of the dragon. And you can basically... It wants your soul. Yeah. It's staring at me. And it's somewhat friendly, but it's like, I'm friendly, but I'll fuck you up.

24:44
um and uh it reminds me of a cat kind of like because it's got a little bit like the pupils are a little bit um in lines the nose um yeah yeah the nose and that like a black cat with those yellow eyes um and i think maybe does toothless as a character kind of have cat like characteristics at all i can't quite remember i just remember is fast yeah okay fast cats are fast

25:12
But again, nailing it with this artwork and hopefully we don't get nailed with any kind of lawsuit, but if we get a cease and desist, we will frame it and put it on the wall. And then we'll just be like, are you kidding me? Have you seen craft beer labels? So but again, the Oamo said his name, he wants to say incognito, but our artist who will be here today. Yeah, flying in today.

25:40
and he did a great job on all four of these labels. In fact, you can either at the Mead Hall or online order the label stickers. We created a four pack of stickers that are the labels for these Meads and you can actually buy them and keep those, whether you put them on like a cooler or a garage fridge or I don't know, whatever you wanna do with them.

26:08
They're cool to have and we still have some left. And maybe a great little holiday gift coming up as well. If you already grabbed all four, you could buy the stickers too and give those away. Or maybe like I said, a little hint coming near closer to the holidays, something might be available. Stay tuned on that. Yeah, anything else on Toothless? I don't think so. Yeah, pretty straightforward, right? I mean, it's just a delicious mead. It's very popular. People love it.

26:38
It was cool to use that black tea. If you're drinking this at night, be careful. If you're caffeine sensitive, it will give that nice strong, you know, wakey wakey time punch. Yeah, switch to smog. You switch over. Yeah, it's a nice... Because Rubos is caffeine free. Yes. Nice. Yeah, switch over. This toothless is more of a... Daytime. Yeah, a breakfast mead. It's kind of fitting because smog is always the sleepy dragon anyway. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Sleep's on his go.

27:07
He sleeps on his gold and then he opens up the eyeball and that light shines over. He's like, who is in my lair? He's like, I'm Sleepy, go away. Meanwhile, you look at the label on this one, it looks more like a black-scaled horny toad, which we've never seen those. They run super quick as soon as you come close to them. Yeah, and Prezzy said he's fast in the movie too. He's like the fastest dragon. So there you go. Yeah. Smog for Sleepy and Toothless for fast.

27:34
Speaking of breakfast, one of the tasting notes that I get from this now that it's been out for a little bit, to me I get fruit loops. Oh, from Toothless! Alright, right on. Because you get a bunch of different fruit flavors, you know, if you've got, well, I mean, what fruits are in there, right? Yeah, lime, lemon, like there's the green and the yellow fruit loops for sure. Yeah. I don't know what fruit does. Tricks that kind of citrusy, breakfasty.

28:03
Yeah, all right, nice, I like that. That's cool, yeah. So you can have it with your tricks and your fruit loops. Man, I haven't had that in forever. Cool, well thank you guys for joining on all four episodes. If the listeners wanna hear any of the other Dragon Mead series talks, just scroll over and look at episode, let's see, if I can, it's episode 31, 32, 33, and now this is episode 34. So we're in the 30s.

28:32
So yeah, thanks for listening. If you guys ever have any thoughts, suggestions, comments, or questions, you can send them on any of our social platforms or you can email me, nick at drin Or one of the coolest things you could do, I really want people to, it'd be so fun to take advantage of this, you can leave us a voicemail and I will add it to the show. And you can either remain anonymous or tell me you know who it is, but you go to

29:01
Speakpipe.com slash drinking horn. So S-P-E-A-K-P-I-P-E, like a pipe you speak into, Speakpipe.com slash drinking horn. And it's super easy, you don't have to download anything, you don't have to like do anything, you just like click record, you do it, and it gets sent to us and we get a voicemail from you. So if you're sitting there enjoying one of the Dragon Meads, let us know about it. If you have a memory from one of the movies that you wanna share.

29:28
or a favorite part in one of the movies, share that as well. Just anything. We would love it. Drum dial us. That'd be great. Yeah, just be goofy on here. Lord knows we are. Oh, God. Cool. Well, thank you guys very much for joining. I know you guys are busy. Get back to work here after we're done with this and we gotta keep making the mead. Keep making the mead. Keep giving the people what they want and holy cow, they want it.

29:53
Alright, well thanks again and we will see you guys on episode 35 or whichever episode you go to. Peace, thanks for listening to the Drinking Horn Meadcast.