BEAR-ly Getting Started 13.5 - A New Years Toast with Jason and Craig

As 2025 wraps up, Jason and Craig drop a quick bonus “secret track” episode of Bear-ly Getting Started to raise a glass to the journey so far. This Smokey Sips installment features Smoky Paws, a limited honey pawpaw wine from Three Bears Meadery, with a relaxed discussion on mead vs. honey wine, fermentation, flavor, and winter sipping vibes. A warm, reflective toast to 55 episodes and a prosperous 2026 — Cheers! 

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Transcript

Jason:

The Buffalo Brews podcast. I'm going to jump right into this because talking about a bonus episode of barely getting started. So that'll make this episode five, five, the secret track, right?

This is the, yeah, the secret track, you know, this is, this is funny. This is where I like where people would get together and say, follow me on, you know, follow my Patreon or something like that. But the reason I'm putting this together, because we're literally at the end of 2025 and we're doing the smoky sips.

But when recently I was at the Honey Harvest Festival at Masterson's Garden Center in East Aurora. So I was talking with one of the folks at Three Bears Meadery, which is appropriate because you're Magic Bear Beer Cellar. Did you get it?

Did you get it? Yes, we got it. I drink smoky sips so I can be this funny.

Craig:

There you go.

Jason:

Anyway, one of the ones that I found that I really liked when I was sampling was called Smoky Paws. So this is their honey, their honey pawpaw wine. OK, so they make meads, but they also make honey wine.

The difference being when you make mead, your adjuncts are added at the end of the fermentation process to flavor. I didn't know that. I thought that anything that you added still made it mead.

But what I didn't know is that when you add adjuncts before the fermentation process, you have a higher ABV. It's a natural thing. So this comes in at 11.9 ABV, but we're not gonna be drinking the whole bottle. They're big glasses. It's a it's a big bottle. But I just wanted to be able to open this because it's smoky and it's it's honey wine and be able to say, you know, cheers to everything that we've done here in the last several years.

And, you know, the fact that this all started because Craig reached out to me and said, hey, how about we were to do do this series and we could talk about X basically. And then 54, now 55 episodes later. But this is just a quick little cheers for us.

Let's see if this is going to pop or not on us here. It does not. That's OK.

Craig:

Because it's honey wine or mead, it would have probably popped a little bit more carbonation on the mead. But I figured just a little, you know, we do carry mead here at Magic Bear, but it is one of the things I know a little but not a ton about. And then I know, you know, you are it's one of your hobbies is to make some mead.

Yeah. We did we did carry three beer for a little bit. I don't think they wholesale as much anymore.

They do really good at the farmers markets and small, you know, kind of like drop offs. They have they have just a good following. I mean, even with me, sometimes they would tell me, like, sorry, we're out of this because once it became available, all these people that I don't know if it's a membership or whatever it is, or if you're just on a list, they kind of let you know, hey, here's what's going to be available next month.

And then people are preordering it. So sometimes they would just be out of stuff. Definitely looks like they've increased the quality of their bottles.

I do know you can recycle their bottles. I would always save them and give them back to them unless we, you know, somebody drank it here. I would definitely save it.

But a lot of times we were selling these to go, but nice swing top bottle. They do a really nice clean mead, no real sulfur vibe to it. Some meads you can get that sulfuric note to it.

But yeah, I'm excited to try. I haven't had three bear in a while.

Jason:

Yeah, they yeah. So they run out of Hamburg. They don't have a brick and mortar.

So you'll mostly find them at you'll mostly find them at like farmers markets or, you know, in this case, I went to a honey, a honey event there. Let me see if they have their this one listed here. Here it is.

Smokey Paws. Yeah. So it's just just oh, gosh, it just describes it as sweet and eleven point nine.

That really doesn't help my cause in here.

Craig:

Well, my bottle here, it's so it doesn't say much about Smokey Paws. Just as the honey pawpaw wine. And yeah, one point nine and sweet.

They do. I remember the I forgot about this. They do market.

I mean, only 40 bottles of this were available of this, at least this batch. So you got number 12 of 40, but all fruit is squeezed on premise. We do not use anything that doesn't exist in nature.

So no pre-made juices or extracts. So producing bottled by three bear meadery in Hamburg. So they they do, you know, like this nice natural approach.

I remember him telling me about that because he would say like some of my meads, I just have to let them age longer or I have to do this or I didn't realize how much of the blackberry I actually needed. And, you know, you taste it after a while and it's like, oh, I got to add some more. And you let it steep in in whatever herbal you've added to it or you have to add some more juice.

And it's like, all right, well, I got to go squeeze some more of this juice and then let that sit. And, you know, because as you pour this and we look at it, you know, it is nice and filtered nicely. It doesn't have any, you know, real haze to it.

Nothing's in the bottle. So, I mean, it looks like a nice light amber kind of just a like, you know, honey in color. But, you know, it looks like wine.

Jason:

Right.

Craig:

No head.

Jason:

Nice aroma to this.

Craig:

Does have that honey smell. I mean, it's got a slight medicinal note. I'm not I'm not 100% I've heard of Papa before, but I'm not 100% certain what Papa is.

Jason:

That's all right. We're going to we're going to shoot from the hip on this one. But this is I thought, you know, because it's Smokey Paws and it has this light smoky flavor on it there.

I'm going to say to you, cheers for a prosperous 2026.

Craig:

And likewise.

Jason:

Yeah.

Craig:

So it almost gives me like it's good and it's not as sweet as I was anticipating. It's not it's not very smoky. It's got a little hint.

And I think that's like the medicinal kind of vibe that I'm getting from him because it is probably, you know, residual sugar wise, a lot sweeter than any of those beers we had. You know, you could definitely get that warming alcohol sensation. What do we say this was was this 11, 11, 9.

So almost 12 percent. So kind of like some of the heavier stouts that are out there. And that's why I tell people with some of these beers, it's like you're drinking wine.

It's that heavy. Alcohol wise, does have like kind of like a Krupnik aspect to it. OK.

You know, if you don't know what Krupnik is, it's an aromatized spirit, but it's made from honey. Yeah. So to me, I don't know.

I mean, to the pawpaws adding some sort of like there's some kind of like spice to it a little bit.

Jason:

Yeah. I would say this this pawpaw is definitely better tasting than Krupnik. Krupnik isn't Malort, but you know, it's some Krupniks aren't created equally.

Craig:

Some Krupniks lean on the sweet side and it balances nicely. Some Krupniks are very, very medicinal. Mm hmm.

And intense in flavor. But it's got kind of a festive vibe to it. I like it.

Jason:

Yeah, it's good. Yeah, I like it. It was a nice conversation we were talking about because I just made a hibiscus mead.

But I literally like the most basic system. I use a gallon carboy, wine yeast, about a two week fermentation period. And that's when it starts really slowing down.

And I like to get it in the bottle because I hope for a decent bottle fermentation period. I don't feel like that the one that this hibiscus that I made came out to its full potential. So it's not like the Olaf or classic that we made.

So definitely some room to play with this. But I am going out to the Finger Lakes who my other mead coach to be able to talk to him and see what he thinks as well. So we can possibly go back to the drawing board because I have more dried hibiscus flower.

Craig:

OK, flowers that I could put a little longer, might have to add another post. Like you were saying, adjunct and adjunct is a fermentable that is not from grain. So usually your fruits and chocolates and stuff like that.

But in the mead world, you know, if you're adding it afterwards, it doesn't get fermented. The yeast is not eating that. Correct.

And then considering I can't just sit here and not know what pawpaw is, I got my phone here.

Jason:

What'd you find?

Craig:

So tropical fruit. It's native to North America and southern Canada. But it's the largest edible fruit native to the continent.

And it's in the custard apple family, along with cherimoyas and soursops. I've never heard of cherimoya, but I've heard of soursop. Here's a quick overview of the pawpaw.

Taste and texture is custard like with tropical flavors. Some say like mango, banana, pineapple with a hint of berries. The ripe fruit has strong aroma, soft flesh that gives slightly when squeezed.

The appearance is oblong green with a waxy skin and also known as the Appalachian banana, poor man's banana or the custard apple. So I look at it, you know, it kind of the oblong shape of it, you know, almost just looks like almost like a cacao. Like before you make chocolate, like what's in there.

But it kind of has like a pear type look to it, but not a pear shape. But yeah, definitely has this. You know, interesting flavor, nothing, nothing that would like, you know, I wouldn't be like, oh, there's some pawpaw in there, but I don't know something spicy.

I think I think the smokiness adds like a little the smoky with the sweet gives it kind of this like little and when I mean spicy, I don't mean hot. I mean like, you know, cinnamon nutmeg, that type of spice, but not not a type of spice. You can put your finger on almost like a fermentation spice.

Right? Yeah, this it's good. I liked it.

But this is definitely warming up. Definitely. Yeah, again, I took one more sip.

It almost has like that Christmas ale, winter warmer type vibe that I think would do well.

Jason:

Oh, good. I got the right time of year then.

Craig:

Yeah, do well when this comes out and yeah, sipping, you know, if you if you have any of it left, sipping it with the in front of the fireplace with the snow drifting down.

Jason:

Very nice. Very nice. All right, well, then, you know, just a quick 10 minutes.

Craig:

I just wanted to jump on and, you know, pour something a little bonus to and let us know if you guys want to hear anything, you know, just a sampling other stuff like this, you know, throw a meat in every now and then throw a cider. You know, my expertise is definitely in beer, but I do know quite a bit about other stuff. And Jason is a wealth of knowledge as well.

So feel free to shoot us a comment. Let us know if you'd like to hear more little snippets of stuff like this as well.

Jason:

All right. In the meantime, to our listeners, we hope that you have a happy and safe new year and a happy 2026 coming up. Oh, and well, it wouldn't be us and barely getting started unless we said cheers.