Mead

Definition

Honey diluted below roughly 80% sugar concentration stops being self-preserving, and wild yeasts convert its sugars to alcohol. Modern mead is made by mixing honey with water at a chosen ratio, pitching a selected yeast, fermenting for weeks to months and ageing — often for years. Because honey is low in the nitrogen yeast needs, it ferments more slowly than grape must and usually wants nutrient added. Styles include traditional mead (honey, water and yeast alone), melomel with fruit, metheglin with herbs or spices, and braggot with malted barley.

Where the word gets used loosely

Often assumed to be uniformly sweet and cloying on the strength of the historical-festival version. The modern range runs from bone dry and sparkling to hopped, barrel-aged and fortified — a spread comparable to wine's. Note also that unlike baking, fermentation preserves honey character, so a distinctive honey is worth using here rather than wasted.

Honey records that discuss this

• Ethiopian red honeyStrong and warm with a malty depth, a resinous eucalyptus lift and a faint smokiness from traditional harvesting — an assertive honey that stands up to fermentation.

Plant records that discuss this

• BuckthornA modest but highly accessible nectar source over several weeks.

Guide records that discuss this

• Mead: honey's oldest useProbably the first alcoholic drink humans made, and almost certainly by accident. Mead is fermented honey and water, it spans a range as wide as wine's, and it very likely predates both beer and grape wine.
• Fermented honey traditions beyond meadHoney ferments easily, and people worked that out repeatedly. Tej, balché, honey beers and mead are separate traditions, and mead is one of them rather than the category.

Question records that discuss this

• Where does the word honeymoon come from?Not from a month of drinking mead — that story is folk etymology. The earliest English uses take the moon as an image of something full that then wanes, applied to the first affection of a marriage, which is close to the opposite of the sentimental version.
• Is mead the oldest alcoholic drink?The question does not have a clean answer. The earliest chemically identified fermented drinks are mixtures — honey with rice and fruit, honey with grain — so fermented honey is among the earliest identified alcohols, but mead as a distinct category is a later tidying-up.
• What is the Mead of Poetry?A Norse myth in which a mead brewed from a murdered wise being's blood confers poetic ability, and Odin steals it. It is recorded principally by Snorri Sturluson around 1220, two centuries after Iceland's conversion.