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Mead
Mead is a fermented alcoholic beverage made of honey, water, and yeast. It is sometimes known as "honey wine" (for obvious reasons) and is generally pronounced "meed" (IPA: /miːd/), though South Africans usually pronounce it "med", to rhyme with "red" (IPA: /mɛd/).
In Norse mythology, mead was the favorite drink of the Norse gods and heroes, e.g. in Valhalla, and the mead of Suttung, made from the blood of Kvasir, was the source of wisdom and poetry. The nectar and ambrosia of the Greek gods were probably draughts of fermented honey.
A mead that also contains spices (like cloves, cinnamon or nutmeg) or herbs (such as oregano or even lavender or chamomile) is called metheglin. The etymon of this word is the Welsh word meddyglyn, meaning "medicinal liquor", as healing herbs were often stored as metheglin so they would be available over the winter (as well as making them much easier to swallow). Slavic miod/med, which means "honey", derives from the same Proto-Indo-European root.
A mead that contains fruit (such as strawberry, blackcurrant or even roseips) is called melomel and was also used as a delicious way to "store" summer produce for the winter.
Mulled mead is a popular winter holiday drink, where mead is flavoured with spices and warmed, traditionally by having a hot poker plunged into it.
Hippocras is spiced grape wine sweetened with honey. A grape-based wine with added honey is called a pyment.
Cyser is made with (hard) apple cider and honey; braggot or bracket is made with malted barley and honey.
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History of mead
In Crete, fermented honey was an entheogen long before the introduction of wine, and bees remained sacred to Demeter. Mead was the drink of the Age of Gold, and the word for drunk in classical Greek remained "honey-intoxicated." (Kerenyi 1976 pp 35ff)
Mead was very popular in Northern Europe, often produced by monks in monasteries in areas where grapes could not be grown, but it faded in popularity once wine imports became economical. Mead was especially popular with the Slavs and was called miód (pronounced mjut) in Polish, meaning honey. Mead was a popular drink among the Polish szlachta. During the Crusades Polish prince Leszek the White explained to the pope that Polish knights couldn't participate in the crusades because there is no mead in Palestine.
In Finland a sweet mead called Sima (cognate with zymurgy), is still an essential seasonal brew connected with the Finnish Vappu festival. It is usually spiced by adding both the flesh and rind of a lemon. During secondary fermentation raisins are added to control the amount of sugars and to act as an indicator of readiness for consumption — they will rise to the top of the bottle when the drink is ready.
Ethiopian mead is called tej and is usually home-made. It is flavored with the powdered leaves and bark of gesho, a hops-like bittering agent which is a species of buckthorn. A sweeter, less-alcoholic version called berz, aged for a shorter time, is also made. The traditional vessel for drinking tej is a rounded vase-shaped container called a berele.
Traditionally, after a wedding the father of the bride was to provide the newlyweds with Mead for one whole lunar cycle.This custom is also believed to be the origin of the term honeymoon. Mead is mentioned in many old north Anglo-Saxon stories, including in the epic poem "Beowulf".
Mead can have a wide range of flavors, depending on the source of the honey, additives called "adjuncts" or "gruit" (including fruit and spices), yeast employed during fermentation, and aging procedure. Mead can be difficult to find commercially, though some producers have been successful marketing it.
Some meads retain some measure of the sweetness of the original honey, and some can even be considered as dessert wines. Drier meads are also available, and some producers offer sparkling meads, which (like champagne) can make for a delightful celebratory toast. There are a number of faux-meads, which are actually cheap wines with large amounts of honey added, to produce a cloyingly sweet liqueur. It has been said that "a mead that tastes of honey is as good as a wine that still tastes of grape".
See also
- East Cowdry Bootleggers1
Different types of mead include, but are not limited to:
Cyser - Cyser is a combination of honey and apple cider. example
Pyment - Pyment blends honey and grapes.
Melomel - Melomel is made from honey and any fruit other than grapes or apples.
Metheglin - Metheglin starts with traditional mead but has herbs and spices added.
Hippocras - Hippocras is a combination of Pyment and spices.
Braggot - Braggot marks the invention of Ale. Brewed from honey and hops.
Reference
- Kerenyi, Karl, Dionysus: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, 1976.
- Hartman, George The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Kt Opened, 1669
External Links
MeadWorks.ca , This is a mead resource, forum and brewing club.