An Introduction to Mead

The benches were filled with famous men who fell to with relish, round upon round of mead was passed; those powerful kinsmen, Hrothgar and Hrothulf were high in spirits in the raftered hall.  Inside Heorot there was nothing but friendship.

 - Beowulf, Seamus Heaney translation

Blackberry Buzz, one of my meads.  The label was produced by my friend John Dougherty.  Sorry for the picture quality.  I like my point and shoot but it was not really designed for these types of photos.

      I wanted to post this on Thanksgiving but I ended up going gigging instead, so here it is.  After moving out of Tallahassee last May, I realized that I have stockpiled a lot more homemade beer, mead, and wine than I thought.  I need to drink some up before my next move.  So, this year I added a bottle of my blackberry mead to our Thanksgiving feast.  I’ll provide a brief, general description of mead for those of you who are not familiar with this drink of the gods.  Then, I’ll describe my particular mead to the best of my ability.  I’m no connoisseur but I know enough about wine and mead to make them so I should be able to describe them.

      Mead is the alcoholic product of the fermentation of diluted honey.  Although it is similar to wine in alcohol content and occasionally flavor, it is erroneous to label mead as a honey wine.  Mead is made from honey and wine is made from grapes (I also use the term “wine” to describe other fruit juices that have been fermented, but in the strict sense, wine is fermented grape juice).  Mead is often associated with old European cultures such as the Norse and Anglo-Saxons.  It probably was the dominant alcoholic drink in these regions before it was gradually replaced by beer.  Anyone who has read Beowulf will recall Heorot, the great mead hall where thanes (warriors) go to drink with their lord, Hrothgar.  I have also heard that the Greek ambrosia (nectar of the gods) may have been mead.

      In my experience, mead is relatively easy to make, which may have contributed to its early popularity.  Honey, water, and yeasts are mixed and left to sit until fermentation completes.  Next the liquid is siphoned off the sediment that forms (often multiple times to get a very clear finished product).  Finally it is bottled and aged.  However, honey lacks protein and nutrients which can lead to a very slow fermentation, a stuck fermentation (when the fermentation process stops before completion), or mead that just doesn’t taste right.  One modern and simple solution is to add yeast nutrient (a nitrogen source that is actually crystallized urea), but I like to use more traditional methods.  Fruit, either whole or in juice form, can be added to provide a small amount of nutrients and protein, plus they will impart flavor to the mead.  Herbs can also be added for the same reason.  They have a preservative effect in addition to a flavoring effect making them especially useful in mead making.

      Mead is currently making a small comeback.  It has started to appear in pop culture including the Harry Potter series and the new video game Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (so my sources say, I don’t play video games).  You can even find some commercially produced varieties at specialty wine stores.  I even got to visit a few Meaderies in Pallisade, CO this summer.  Many of these commercially produced varieties are very sweet (some honey is left unfermented) to help bring out the subtle flavor of honey.  Some people complain about the sweetness and then give up on mead.  The reality, however, is that just like beer and wine, there are infinite ways to make mead.  It can be made as sweet or dry as the mead maker wants it to be.

      The particular mead I would like to describe here, Blackberry Buzz, is a recipe I devised in 2009.  It has a very low alcohol content of 9% and was bottled, after 6 months of aging, on December 7, 2009.  It was made from gallberry (Ilex glabra) honey, a couple pounds of blackberries and dewberries (Rubus sp.), and yarrow (Achillea millefolium).  The blackberries and dewberries provided flavor, nutrients, and a nice rosy color.  The yarrow added a slight bitterness and probably contributed some tannins, which help to settle out yeast after fermentation.  The first bottle I had (in 2010) was overpowered by the bitter yarrow, but herbs and spices tend to mellow out with time.  When I had a glass two days ago, the flavors were all perfectly balanced.  I don’t like sweet drinks, so I made this mead very dry.  Fortunately the berries (botanically speaking they are not actually berries) added a few complex sugars, which the yeast could not consume, resulting in a very subtle sweetness.  Although the sugar from the honey all fermented into alcohol, there was still a lingering flavor, and aroma of honey.  These artifacts come from the aromatic compounds that were originally in the flower nectar.  The bitterness from the yarrow was the last flavor I detected and it lingered a little bit after I swallowed the mead.  I was pleased.

     Oh, by the way, I picked all my blackberries and dewberries in the wild, growing along dirt roads and old fences.  Wild blackberries are a little more tart than farm grown blackberries, but the tartness can really benefit a mead.  I collected and dried the yarrow while hiking and visiting my brother in Colorado.  Also, the leaves of the blackberry, dewberry, yarrow, and gallberry plants, and the flowers of yarrow can be dried and used to make herbal tea.

      By the way, although I have made gallons of mead, no warrior has ever shown up and sworn his allegiance to me.  I'll just have to keep making more.