One of my favorite cuisines of all time is Ethiopian. In two Ethiopian places I go to in Berkeley, they sell "honey wine" which is most delicious.
So I set out to make honey mead. This was before I learned about The Original Home Brew Outlet, so I stupidly went to "Brew It Up" in Davis. They totally raped me on the price of honey; I could've gotten it less than half price at the Home Brew Outlet. Also, Brew It Up didn't have the right kind of yeast. They gave me champagne yeast and I didn't know better back then. None of bottles exploded, but you have to open my mead over the sink, and you consequently lose over half the bottle contents to foaming. What a waste!
I was worried that the mead was contaminated because "gushing" is a sign of wild yeast contamination. I brought a bottle into the Orignal Homebrew Outlet and John sampled it. He complemented the aromatics, the clarity, the color, the taste and the finish. In short, he said it was perfect. He mentioned that sometimes with honey, fermentation stops for a couple of days and start back up quite suddenly. I simply bottled it when fermentation wasn't completely finished. I remember bottling it half a week earlier than the recipe called for because fermentation seemed to have finished.
However, the honey mead is delicious. Not that I'm bragging, but I gave some to my friends Ron and Doe, whom I go motorcycling with, and it totally blew them away. I'm going to try the recipe again, but this time, I'll use the right ingredients and pay less than half of what I payed before.