Mead

Mead (IPA: ['mid]) is a fermented alcoholic beverage made of honey, water, and yeast. Meadhing is the practice of brewing honey. Mead is also colloquially known as "honey wine".

A mead that also contains spices (like cloves, cinnamon or nutmeg) or herbs (such as oregano or even lavender or chamomile) is called metheglin. This word is derived from 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" and Baltic *midus, which means "mead", derive from the same Proto-Indo-European root.

A mead that contains fruit (such as strawberry, blackcurrant or even rose hips) is called melomel and was also used as a means of food preservation, keeping summer produce for the winter.

Mulled mead is a popular winter holiday drink, where mead is flavored with spices and warmed, traditionally by having a hot poker plunged into it.

 History

Around 550 CE, the Welsh Bard Taliesin wrote the Kanu y med or "Song of Mead"The legendary drinking, feasting and boasting of warriors in the mead hall Heorot in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf is echoed in the mead hall Din Eidyn in the Welsh epic poem Y Gododdin, both dated around 700CE.

Polish mead produced in Lublin

Mead was the historical beverage par excellence in Northern Europe. However, heavy taxation and regulations on the ingredients of alcoholic beverages such as the Reinheitsgebot or Purity Laws led to commercially made mead becoming a more obscure beverage up until recently.Some monasteries kept up the old traditions of mead-making as a by-product of beekeeping, especially in areas where grapes could not be grown.

Mead was also popular in Central Europe and in the Baltic states. In Polish mead is called miód pitny (, meaning "drinkable honey". In Russia, mead remained popular as medovukha and sbiten long after its decline in popularity in the West. Sbiten is often mentioned in the works of 19th-century Russian writers, including Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy.

In Finland, a sweet mead called Sima (cognate with zymurgy), is still an essential seasonal brew connected with the Finnish Vappu (May Day) festival. It is usually spiced by adding both the pulp 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.

Mead variants

• Braggot - Braggot (also called bracket or brackett) marks the invention of Ale. Originally brewed with honey and hops, later with honey and malt - with or without hops added.
• Black mead - A name sometimes given to the blend of honey and black currant.
• Capsicumel is a mead flavored with chile peppers.
• Cyser - Cyser is a blend of honey and apple juice fermented together. See also cider.
• Czwórniak - A Polish mead, made using three units of water for each unit of honey
• Dwójniak - A Polish mead, made using equal amounts of water and honey
• Great mead - Any mead that is intended to be aged several years, like vintage wine. The designation is meant to distinguish this type of mead from "short mead" (see below.)
• Gverc or Medovina - Croatian mead prepared in Samobor and many other places. Word “gverc” or “gvirc” is from German "Gewürze" and it refers to different spices added to mead.
• Hydromel - Hydromel literally means "water-honey" in Greek. It is also the French name for mead. (Compare with the Spanish hidromiel and aquamiel, Italian idromele, and Portuguese hidromel). It is also used as a name for a very light or low-alcohol mead.
• Medovina - Czech, Macedonian (of the Republic of Macedonia) and Croatian for mead. Commercially available in Czechoslovakia, Slovakia and presumably other Eastern European countries.
• Medovukha - Eastern Slavic variant (honey-based fermented drink)
• Melomel - Melomel is made from honey and any fruit. Depending on the fruit-base used, certain melomels may also be known by more specific names (see cyser, pyment, morat for examples)
• Metheglin - Metheglin starts with traditional mead but has herbs and spices added. Some of the most common metheglins are ginger, tea, orange peel, coriander, cinnamon, cloves, or vanilla. Its name indicates that many metheglins were originally employed as folk medicines. (The Welsh word for mead is medd, and the word "metheglin" derives from meddyglyn, a compound word comprised of meddyg, "healing" + llyn, "liquor".)
• Morat - Morat blends honey and mulberries.
• Mulsum- Mulsum is not a true mead, but it unfermented honey blended with a high-alcohol wine.
• Omphacomel - A medieval mead recipe that blends honey with verjuice; could therefore be considered a variety of pyment.
• Oxymel - Another historical mead recipe, blending honey with wine vinegar.
• Pitarrilla Mayan drink made from a fermented mixture of wild honey, balche tree bark and fresh water.
• Pyment - Pyment blends honey and red or white grapes. Pyment made with white grape juice is sometimes called "white mead."
• Półtorak - A Polish mead, made using two units of honey for each unit of water
• Rhodomel - Rhodomel is made from honey, rose hips, petals, or rose attar, and water.
• Sack mead - This refers to mead that is made with more copious amounts of honey than usual. The finished product retains an extremely high specific gravity and elevated levels of sweetness. It derives its name from the fortified dessert wine Sherry (which is sometimes sweetened after fermentation, and in England once bore the nickname of "sack".)
• Short mead - Also called "quick mead". A type of mead recipe that is meant to age quickly, for immediate consumption. Because of the techniques used in its creation, short mead shares some qualities found in cider (or even light ale): primarily that it is effervescent, and often has a cidery taste.
• Show mead - A term which has come to mean "plain" mead; that which has honey and water as a base, with no fruits, spices or extra flavorings. (Since honey alone does not provide enough nourishment for the yeast to carry on its life-cycle, a mead that is devoid of fruit, etc. will require a special yeast nutrient and other enzymes to produce an acceptable finished product.)
• Tej - Tej is an Ethiopian mead, fermented with wild yeasts (and bacteria), and with the addition of gesho. Recipes vary from family to family, with some recipes leaning towards braggot with the inclusion of grains.
• Trójniak - A Polish mead, made using two units of water for each unit of honey.

 Religious usage

Mead is an integral ritual component in Ásatrú and in Germanic neopaganism. It is used in the rituals of blót and Symbel, and is also very popular among practitioners of Wicca who use mead rather than wine or ale for the Cakes and Ale portion of many rituals. Mead can often be found for sale at various gatherings and festivals.

Ethiopian mead is traditionally used in funerary rituals