Brimming Horn releases new mead with Chicago’s Huntsmen

The town of Milton and Chicago, Ill., have started a beautiful love affair, as Milton’s Brimming Horn Meadery is working with Chicago-based band Huntsmen. The Last Breath, their brand-new mead and metal collaboration released Dec. 7, is a tart cherry mead aged in smoked single-malt whisky barrels for six months and then bottled in 375ml moonshine bottles to match the appearance and sound of Huntsmen’s new album “American Scrap.”

JR Walker of Brimming Horn said, “We became aware of Huntsmen through our good friend Steve Joh at Prosthetic Records and fell in love with the band. Their album ‘American Scrap’ is one of the most innovative albums I’ve heard in years. No one is doing what they’re doing musically, and we absolutely needed to work with them.”

Huntsmen vocalist/guitarist Chris Kang said, “We learned of Brimming Horn when they mentioned us on social media shortly after the release of our 2018 record, ‘American Scrap.’ They were digging the record, and we loved what they were doing with bands like Junius and The Atlas Moth, so we reached out suggesting a collaboration, and a friendship was born.”

The name The Last Breath refers to one final drink had by The Last President, the titular character from the final song on “American Scrap,” who faces the task of informing the nation that the world is about to end via nuclear Armageddon before euthanizing her family and hanging herself in her study.

“American Scrap,” among other things, celebrates humankind’s timeless and complicated bond with fire. So, the band wrote the toast to sound as much like something The Last President might say in her final address to a doomed country as it does an ancient incantation of indecipherable origin, of which flame has erased all memory.

Mead maker Jon Talkington said, “When I heard the Huntsmen guys wanted a mead with a smoky flavor and what the album was about, my mind went directly to a cherry mead aged in a smoky single-malt whiskey barrel. The mead I made is similar to one of our core brand meads, Bloody Hoof. After fermentation, the mead was transferred into the smoky whiskey barrel where the fruit-forward cherry mead transformed into something entirely more complex from six months of aging in the barrel. The bright cherry flavor had mellowed from micro-oxidation; the smokiness emerged, and hints of almond, vanilla and caramel came through in this fiery red-colored mead.”

The Last Breath is available for $20.99 at Brimming Horn’s mead hall and online. For more information, go to www.brimminghornmeadery.com, www.huntsmendoom.com and www.prostheticrecords.com.