The world's oldest alcohol beverageStone age: A drowned beehive becomes the first mead ...
Mead is an alcoholic beverage made primarily from honey, water, and yeast. When yeast ferments the sugar from honey, it produces alcohol and creates a beverage similar to wine, but with honey as the primary flavor contributor rather than grapes. Mead can be sweet, semi-dry, or dry, and it can be sparkling or still, high in alcohol or “sessionable,” depending on the meadmaker’s intentions..
Different Types of Mead
Mead made only with honey can sometimes lack depth in flavor, so meadmakers often incorporate different types of honey or add additional flavors using fruit, berries, spices, or herbs. This increases complexity in flavor and aroma, and there are numerous subcategories of mead, although the most frequently made styles are melomel (mead with fruit or berries) and metheglin (mead with spices and herbs). Mead can also be mixed with other alcoholic beverages such as beer, cider, or wine, resulting in even more complex drinks. A mead mixed or brewed with beer is called a braggot, while mead with cider or apple juice is called cyser, and mead and wine/grape juice combined is called pyment.
Mead in History
Some food historians believe that mead may be the oldest alcoholic beverage in the world. In certain areas during the African monsoon period, bees made hives in hollow trees, and when these trees got flooded, residual rainwater mixed with honey, creating a natural “soup” that spontaneously fermented with wild yeast and bacteria. Roaming bands of humans in the area may have found these trees and discovered the sweet liquid, leading to mead becoming an established drink of intoxicating nature.
Until the breakthrough of wine in the late Middle Ages as the preferred drink for the rich and powerful in Europe, mead was considered a luxury product. Particularly popular in non-grape cultivating areas such as the middle and northern hemisphere of Europe, mead was the drink of kings and lords. Different varieties of mead have also been made in other continents and lands such as Africa, India, China, and parts of South America. Norse mythology is full of stories about the divine characteristics of mead and its role as an inspirational source for bards and poets.
In the late Middle Ages, mead lost its importance due to the brewing of beer and wine, along with better techniques for storage and transportation, which offered stronger competition in terms of flavor and durability. The elite shifted their favorite drinks to wine and eventually fine spirits, and without its status as a beverage for the elites, the foundation for mead production slowly dwindled away. However, mead was not completely extinct, as parts of Europe, particularly in the East and Russia, but also in regions of France, Germany, England, and the Balkan countries, retained a small but continual production of mead.
The resurgence of Meadmaking
The last decade has seen the resurgence of meadmaking around the world, spurred by the resurrection of craft brewing and growing interest in beverage diversity, local food, and culinary traditions. The U.S. has a booming mead industry, and countries such as England, Sweden, and Denmark have seen the tradition of meadmaking come back through enthusiasts and a growing public interest, with increasing numbers of home brewers trying their hands at mead as well as commercial mead makers.
Vikingr hope that mead will once again become an established part of the Norwegian cultural inheritance, and that people all over the world will open their eyes to the magic of honey, water, and yeast.
Happy Bees Makes Yummy Mead
Meads make gret restaurant drinksExpand your winelist - with mead !
