The Nursery Crimes is a strawberry basil mead from House Bear Brewing. House Bear is a small meadery out of Amesbury, MA exploring “interesting flavors wherever we find them, in our gardens, in our kitchens and in our brewery.” Sounds like the strawberry basil mead falls in the garden category of interesting flavors.
Our strawberry basil mead. It starts with the aroma of basil. The first sip is the season’s first strawberry sweetness. It finishes with a basil flavor. You will feel we have stolen some of the best parts of a summer garden.
Initially, I’m worried when I pry off the cap since there was no audible release of carbonation. Given that and the fact that the cap has a ring indent left by what i can assume was a simple bench capper or handheld capper, I worry that it wasn’t sealed properly. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be carbonated, as it doesn’t mention on the bottle or the website. As i’ve mentioned in my article about capping vs corking, you typically don’t want to bottle a still mead underneath a crown cap since that audible psssst is expected.
The Mead Review
It pours a deep, translucent gold color. The aroma is sweet, mild honey and berry with some herbal notes fighting through. The herbal aroma isn’t distinctively basil, which i think is a good thing. It drinks much lighter than the color suggests.
The light honey sweetness and strawberry stands out upfront, while the basil comes through in the middle and stays through the finish. The basil flavor, unlike the aroma is unmistakably basil, but not overpowering. There is also a little bit of tartness toward the end of the sip, with hints of fresh ginger.
The strawberry flavor is fresh and mellow, not like the artificial strawberry flavor you often get. There is still a little bit of an off flavor in the finish, but not overtly present. Also, at a significant 12% abv the alcohol is well balanced and it drinks surprisingly light. The strawberry basil combination from House Bear Brewing is pretty unique and a great way to finish out summer.
The Label Design / Branding Review
Though, from a foundational design standpoint everything about this label is wrong in so many ways, I can’t help but be intrigued by it. Maybe its just the cute groundhog nibbling on a strawberry, but there are some merits to the narrative depicted here.
While the typography, spacing, layout, and logo are painful, I think the comic strip style label is actually a quite interesting idea. An idea that needs to be fleshed out significantly more, but it’s headed in the right direction. And i’ll give House Bear Brewing this, one of the biggest components of branding is consistency, and they definitely have a uniform aesthetic…
The House Bear Brewing Nursery Crimes In Brief
The Nursery Crimes unique flavor profile overall is quite fresh – fresh strawberries and herbaceous basil. It’s worth a taste, though it could still use a little more development to brighten up the flavors and make it a little more crisp. I’d really like to see how this would be with a little less abv and some carbonation!
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