Solar Bud's Wild Ramblings - May 2009

Marvellous Mead

Well, spring has definitely sprung and the garden is starting to buzz with life again, and as you will know from elsewhere in this issue, the fates of people and honeybees have been fundamentally intertwined for millennia.

Honey is an incredibly rich and luxurious natural energy food, and as such is often used as a symbol of sexuality and fertility. In fact, the term 'honeymoon' comes from a reference to the oldest alcoholic drink known to humanity - mead. Mead is simply honey dissolved in water, and fermented to produce a sweet and also slightly savoury wine-like beverage, which is said to have aphrodisiac properties. Mead was traditionally drunk by the happy couple for a month after getting married, whilst they enjoyed their new union, as a luxury celebration and for its arousing properties. Hence the term 'honeymoon'.

Mead is actually quite easy to make, and I make it very much as it would have been made thousands of years ago, without the aid of modern brewing equipment.

The rule is four pounds (4lb) of honey for every gallon of mead made. The last time I made it, I made three gallons, and the main reason for this was the price of honey! I am lucky enough to have friends who keep bees, so I could obtain top-quality honey from home producers. But because honeybees had such a bad summer last year, it cost me nearly £50 for the honey to produce my three gallons of mead!

I heated a large pan of water on the stove and dissolved a few jars of honey in it, then poured it into a large plastic five gallon brewing container I bought quite cheaply from a local hardware store. I repeated this a few times until I had three gallons of liquid with all twelve jars (1lb each) of honey dissolved in it.

Then I added three heaped teaspoons of some standard wine yeast (one teaspoon per gallon) which I also got from the hardware store. In days gone by, the brewer might have introduced a few grapes to the mead. There is a natural yeast colony on the skin of grapes, and throwing a few grapes or other fruit with a similar yeast colony on the skin of the fruit would start off the fermentation.

A water airlock on the brewing vessel allowed me to see the fermentation in progress, and I simply allowed it to run its course, until the bubbles were very few and far between, or completely absent. In olden days, there would have been no hydrometer to check the alcohol content, so I simply left it until it had stopped fermenting.

Then I added three crushed campden tablets (one for each gallon) to the mead, and gave it a good stir. This sterilised the mead and made sure that no more fermentation was taking place. After a few days, it was ready for bottling, and I syphoned it all off into sterilised bottles, taking care to leave as much sediment at the bottom of the brewing vessel as possible, undisturbed by the syphon tube so it would not go into the bottles.

It is possible to use 'finings', which take out some of the suspended sediment, but commercially sold finings can contain fish extract, so I didn't bother. Some sediment was left in suspension, but over time it gradually settles out at the bottom of the bottle.

Mead should be left for at least six months, and preferably for at least one year, before drinking. The longer it is left, the more the various subtle flavours mellow out as the different parts of the mead undergo chemical maturation.

It's very difficult not to drink it whilst it is maturing, it looks so delicious sitting there! So I have tried to hide as many bottles in dark places out of sight as possible, so that it makes it to its first birthday at the very least.

I suppose that we should plan our wedding around when these bottles of mead will have served their time. Great! That gives us at least an extra year, I was beginning to worry that we should be getting on with it! Never do today what you can put off until the mead is ready to drink.

Andy

honey on spoon photo (c) hilaryaq - everystockphoto.com2009

honey and cakes (c) GeekPhilospher.com 2009

mead photo (c) Solar Bud 2009

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