Strawberry Rhubarb Moonshine, by Still Fired Distilleries in Nova Scotia, is a fun, light un-aged whisky^[1]. Northern Rose Spirits, a New York-based distributor of Canadian distillers, was super-awesome and sent a sample pack with the moonshine and a gin, both from Still Fired. I have notes on the gin, too, and I’ll write about that in another article, but the summary of that post will be that the gin is close to spectacular.

The moonshine was a particularly suprising delight for me and a few taste testers. There is a sweetness that is just imparted by the strawberry juice with no added sugar. The natural sweetness is supported by the low alcohol content, which does not compete with the flavors imparted by the fruit. I have to make an effort to not refer to this as a liqueur, because, well because it isn’t a liqueur, which would be sweetened.

Although it’s not sweetened, it smells like strawberry jam, and how nice is that? Not surprisingly, it tastes like strawberry with an edge of savoriness that I attribute to the rhubarb. The tasting notes for Northern Rose Spirits say it’s best served straight and that it can replace sherry or vermouth in cocktails. I used it instead of sweet vermouth in Manhattan, but found that the rye I used (Michters) overpowered the moonshine and, of course, the Manhattan was very dry.

I am looking forward to using the moonshine in other cocktails. Northern Rose Spirits also suggests using the moonshine in a spritz. That makes perfect sense. I think I’ll have a spritz tonight and then try one or two of the cocktail recipes that were sent with the samples. And while I did have some folks try the Strawberry Rhubarb Moonshine, I am hoarding the rest until I find out where to get more, which pretty much shows how much I’m enjoying it. Flavorful and dry, fun and unique, without too much heat from the alcohol, it’s an adult’s liquor (as opposed to liqueur).

Okay, some notes for the type of person who continues to read content after the recipe. I used a repasado tequila, because that’s all I usually have on hand, but plata is perfectly fine. The grapefruit seltzer is just that. It’s not a hard seltzer. The butterfly pea serum makes it a very nice color, but doesn’t do much for the flavor, except add a very slight astringent note, which I suppose is because it’s essentially a tea.

Right now, it’s a very rainy and windy January evening, and I can’t say this iced drink was the made for the night, but it was tasty – mildly sweet and no harsh edges. Since the agave syrup is the only sweetener, it’s easy to adjust the sweetness depending on your taste. Using 6 oz. of seltzer makes it easy to make two cocktails from a single 12 oz. can. And we just happened to have grapefruit seltzer. We’re practical here at DnU HQ, if nothing else. Any other citrus-based seltzer would probably work just as well.

Gosh, it seems like forever since we’ve written anything for our wonderful site. We kind of lost ourselves for a bit when we forgot that we write this for our own amusement, and if our readers enjoy it too, that’s wonderful!

So here it is, another winter. Over a decade ago, during a different winter, we wrote up an article about a cranberry margarita, but that one used cranberry sauce. Eh, we don’t need that. Unsweetened cranberry juice is easily available in our supermart. We also recommended repasado or añejo tequila. Don’t waste the good stuff on this. Blanco is fine, and we still recommend Espolon. That, we’re thankful, hasn’t changed.

And that last recipe had you shaking the drink and putting salt on the glass rim. Sure, you can do that stuff. But it’s late, and we don’t want to clean another thing just to have a drink. So swirl it around with your finger, or a chopstick if you’re fancy.

Man, the past few years have been rough. But tonight, it’s Christmas in Cabo.

I learned about Havoc Mead Psychopomp in probably the worst way: A Facebook ad, dammit. There it was, a red-labeled can with a raven on it saying, “Psychopomp Sour Cherry Mead.” For weeks, I resisted each time it came up on my feed, but little did Facebook know that I was sold from the very first time the ad popped up, not because it was a mead or that it was flavored sour cherry, but because the label had a raven on it saying, “Psychopomp.”

Both the raven and the psychopomp, you see, reminded me of The Sandman, in particular issue #52, Cluracan’s Tale, where an elf meets a psychopomp. Now there is no raven in that particular story, but if you know The Sandman comics, you know Matthew, the raven. If none of this makes any sense and is completely irrelevant, that is fine. The thing of it was, I was going to buy this damned mead because it reminded me of a favorite comic book run that ended two decades ago.

Havoc Mead is located in Vermont, and because of probably stupid legal reasons, it has no New York distributor, but it can ship its mead to New York residences. So after initially looking, pointlessly, at my local distributors, I finally clicked on the damned ad, which took me to the site where I learned I could get Havoc Mead directly to my door.

The 4-pack of Psychopomp is $14, a perfectly fine price. But there were shipping costs, and doing some hand-waving math in my head to justify ordering more stuff so I wouldn’t have to pay for shipping, I went with a variety case that had 3 different Havoc Mead 4-packs, including Psychopomp, and 3 Groennfell Meadery 4-packs. The two meaderies seem like sister companies, although they have entirely different websites, and it is probably an interesting story why there are two, but I don’t know what that story is. At any rate, it all seems to be brewed at the same physical location.

Let’s focus here for a paragraph and talk about how Psychopomp tastes, with the understanding that I know that I like it, but I don’t know if it represents any Platonic ideal of mead. It hits the tongue slightly sweet, but finishes dry. It’s got some undeniable funk, which reminds me of a genuine, wild-yeasted lambic. The cherry flavor, not too sour, is big in the nose and hits right in the center of the tongue. It’s good. If someone gave me this and told me it was a lambic, I’d never question it. Having the 4-pack, I thought I’d save some for friends when this interminable pandemic is over, but, no, they’ll have to try some of the other flavors, because this one hit a lot of high marks, and they’ll just have to order some for themselves.

The mead weighs in at 6.9% ABV, but does not drink like that at all, making it—Lord, help me—crushable, but not sessionable. This, one can hope, might be the only time I write something like that.

The other meads I received from both Havoc and Groennfell were either good or very good. This means I have more content to fill the site, so I’ll save those for other reviews.

And so, Facebook has my number now. I clicked on its link, and its inscrutable algorithm now knows I’ll buy mead and like things with ravens. It doesn’t know my The Sandman fanship, though, because I made a more obscure connections in my own head than it can make, at least for today.