Drink
Fermented and unfermented. Mead is one member of a family that includes tej, balché and honey beers, and it is not the senior one.
6 practices · what it is for
- BalchéRitual and ceremony · Local living practiceA fermented drink of stingless bee honey and the bark of the balché tree, used ceremonially in the Maya lowlands. Suppressed under colonial rule, documented across several centuries, and still made.
- Fermented pot honeyCultural use · Local living practiceStingless bee honey ferments readily because it is wetter than Apis honey, and several traditions treat that as the point rather than as spoilage — deliberately aged, soured and drunk.
- TejCultural use · Widespread living practiceEthiopian fermented honey drink, flavoured with gesho, made domestically and commercially and drunk in hospitality, celebration and religious contexts. The largest honey-drink tradition anywhere by consumption.
- Mead makingCultural use · RevivedFermenting honey and water into alcohol — the simplest possible fermented drink, made across much of Europe and beyond, revived commercially in the last few decades.
- Honey beers and ferments of sub-Saharan AfricaCultural use · Local living practiceFermented honey drinks made across a wide band of sub-Saharan Africa, from the Xhosa iqhilika of South Africa to the honey beers of Central African forest communities.
- Honey drinks without alcoholCultural use · Widespread living practiceHoney with water, with vinegar, with herbs, with milk or with citrus — a family of preparations that sat on the boundary between refreshment and medicine, and mostly on the medicine side.