Pliny on Mead

Pliny has much to say on Mead in his natural histories, and specifically the medicinal benefits of Mead, of Honey and vinegar, of Mead with oil, with milk or even with breadcrumbs.

Also of importance is the water you make the Mead with, Pliny suggests rainwater aged for at least 5 years.

Equally it’s not clear where the line between a honey / water mixture and fermented Mead are.

Hydromeli, or Melicration
There is a wine also made solely of honey and water. For this purpose it is recommended that rain-water should be kept for a period of five years. Those who shew greater skill, content themselves with taking the water just after it has fallen, and boiling it down to one third, to which they then add one third in quantity of old honey, and keep the mixture exposed to the rays of a hot sun for forty days after the rising of the Dog-star; others, however, rack it off in the course of ten days, and tightly cork the vessels in which it is kept. This beverage is known as "hydromeli," and with age acquires the flavour of wine. It is nowhere more highly esteemed than in Phrygia.

How Hydromeli is made
Hydromeli, also, was a mixture formerly made with pure rain-water and honey, and was prescribed for patients who, were anxious for wine, as being a more harmless drink. For these many years past, however, it has been condemned, as having in reality all the inconveniences of wine, without the advantages.

The various influences of different aliments upon the disposistion
While speaking of the uses of honey, we ought also to treat of the properties of hydromel. There are two kinds of hydromel, one of which is prepared at the moment, and taken while fresh, the other being kept to ripen. The first, which is made of skimmed honey, is an extremely wholesome beverage for invalids who take nothing but a light diet, such as strained alica for instance: it reinvigorates the body, is soothing to the mouth and stomach, and by its refreshing properties allays feverish heats. I find it stated, too, by some authors, that to relax the bowels it should be taken cold, and that it is particularly well-suited for persons of a chilly temperament, or of a weak and pusillanimous4 constitution, such as the Greeks, for instance, call "micropsychi."

Hydromel: eighteen remedies
Hydromel is recommended, too, as very good for a cough: taken warm, it promotes vomiting. With the addition of oil it counteracts the poison of white lead; of henbane, also, and of the halicacabum, as already stated, if taken in milk, asses' milk in particular. It is used as an injection for diseases of the ears, and in cases of fistula of the generative organs. With crumb of bread it is applied as a poultice to the uterus, as also to tumours suddenly formed, sprains, and all affections which require soothing applications. The more recent writers have condemned the use of fermented hydro- mel, as being not so harmless as water, and less strengthening than wine. After it has been kept a considerable time, it becomes transformed into a wine, which, it is universally agreed, is extremely prejudicial to the stomach, and injurious to the nerves.

Oxymeli
Vinegar even has been mixed with honey; nothing, in fact, has been left untried by man. To this mixture the name of oxymeli has been given; it is compounded of ten pounds of honey, five semi-sextarii of old vinegar, one pound of sea-salt, and five sextarii of rain-water. This is boiled gently till the mixture has bubbled in the pot some ten times, after which it is drawn off, and kept till it is old; all these wines, however, are condemned by Themison, an author of high authority. And really, by Hercules! the use of them does appear to be somewhat forced, unless, indeed, we are ready to maintain that these aromatic wines are so many compounds taught us by Nature, as well as those that are manufactured of perfumes, or that shrubs and plants have been generated only for the purpose of being swallowed in drink. However, all these particulars, when known, are curious and interesting, and show how successfully the human intellect has pried into every secret.

None of these wines, however, will keep beyond a year, with the sole exception of those which we have spoken of as requiring age; many of these, indeed, there can be no doubt, do not improve after being kept so little as thirty days.

Godshill Mead

First of the haul from Middle Farm, I thought I’d try something undemanding first. Hey I waited 24 hours, and am saving the best till last.

A small corked bottle, and a good name for a Mead, the bottle seemed to almost ooze honey. The aroma seems remenscent of fairly rough cider, although that may be my mind playing tricks, I’ve been to Godshill. I also like rough cider.

Initial tasting is a bit sweet and sickly, in the manner of Harvest Gold or Norfolk Mead. The after taste is more pleasant but again feels more like a flavoured wine (or even a cider) than a Mead.

The bottle describes it as a country wine from the Isle of Wight. The website reads thus:

Thought to be the most ancient alcoholic drink, dating back some 12,000 years, before wine, beer and even cider. Our mead is made from fermented honey, and is medium in sweetness.

They also do a Christmas Mead so an excuse to visit Wigit

A better experience slightly chilled, or with ice, as the sweeter sense blends into the ice, but still nothing special. I appear to be becoming a Mead snob, which I guess was the inevitable intention all along.

Mission for Mead

I’ve been saving this for a special occasion, and today has been a day of glorious sunshine and a frustrating morning in the office, so off to Sussex I headed.

At Victoria station I stopped in the Cheese shop, and enquired about Mead. Apparently they normally stock a variety but had sold out, which is interesting on different levels. I’ll need to return to find out what it was, and again it’s reassuring to know others drink the stuff.

An hour and a half later I’m in Lewes killing times between trains, with a pint of Black Rat cider. Lewes is also full of posh Deli’s so I suspect there’s Mead to be found here, but my mission is clear.

Another hour later I’m at Glynde, and so begin the long march. A long march down a busy and positively lethal A27 to Middle Farm. This is not an easy place to get to without a vehicle and only the Mad and the English would attempt it. Luckily I’m both.

The sun is scorching, I’ve not got any water, I’ve chosen to wear new boots and the blisters are starting to kick in as my ankles are rubbing raw. I’m still dodging thundering Lorries and inhaling exhaust fumes but 40 minutes (2miles?) and countless false summits later I make it.

Middle Farm is pretty special. Go there.

It’s packed with people tasting ciders. They have a serious amount of ciders, allegedly 200+ and free tasting of the draft varieties. They have beers and fruit wines and a ridiculous range of Meads to choose from. Very aware that I’m going to have to carry them back down that damn road I end up buying a mere 8 bottles (more to follow).

I’ve attempted to note the different varieties of Mead they had on display but to be honest got bored writing them down, so I missed a few. I also failed to notice the 3 draft Meads behind the till until I was leaving, not to mention the range of 15-20 miniatures. Clearly I’ll be back.

However this is most of what they had:

Friary Vitners Mead (£6.82)
Friary Vitners Spiced Mead (£6.82)
Friars Choice (Brandy, Honey & Spices, £16.19)
Cornish Liquor Mead (£9.22)
Cornish Mead Wines (£8.64)
Moniak Mead (£8.66)
New Quay Honey Wine Mead-Apricot (7.45)
New Quay Honey Wine Mead-Blackberry (7.45)
New Quay Honey Wine Mead-Raspberry (£7.45)
New Quay Honey Wine Mead-Ginger (£7.45)
New Quay Honey Wine Mead-Heather (£7.45)
New Quay Honey Wine Mead-Honey (£9.27)
Lyme Bay Traditional Mead (75cl, £7.45)
Lyme Bay Traditional Mead (375cl, £4.48)
Lyme Bay Christmas Mead (£7.45)
West Country Liqueurs- Whisky & Mead (£8.55)
Godshill Cider Company Mead (£4.81)
Norfolk Mead (£6.65)
Lindisfarne Mead (75cl, £9.34)
Lindisfarne Mead (35cl, £5.73)
Lythe Hill Hotel (Lurgashall) English Mead (£5.99)
Camelot County Products Mead (£8.09)
Sussex Boar Hunter (£14.50)
Dark Mead (£9.99)
Pernards Organic Mead (£7.03)
Carr Taylors Mead (£5.68)
Malmesbury Reserve Mead (£14.30)
Malmesbury Dry Mead (£11.46)
Lurgashall Honey Whisky Mead (50cl, £9.70)
Lurgashall English Honey Mead (50cl, £8.43)
Lurgashall Spiced Honey Mead (£8.99)
Lurgashall Celtic Honey Mead (£8.43)

So depending on how you count perhaps 33 different varieties of Mead. I got lucky only spending £70

Mead-A Slavonic invention

The Miody Apis website boldly claims that Mead was invented by Slavonic tribes in Poland, which I find hard to believe but makes for an interesting read:

Polish art of honey-based beverage making - 1000 years of tradition

The art of making beverages from honey was initiated by Slavonic tribes that inhabited the Polish land over 1 thousand years ago.

Historians agree that the first attempts to process honey into alcoholic beverages, later to be known as meads, is a Slavonic invention. Already back in 966, Spanish travellers noted that besides ample food, forests and arable land, the country of Prince Mieszko I offered honey in abundance, and Slavonic wines and heady drinks called meads. The development of mead making was determined in the main by the climate which was favourable to wild bees rather than vine. Over 10 centuries ago, Ibrahim ibn Jacob, a Jewish merchant and diplomat from Spain, wrote that "Meads are heady wines drunk in the land of Prince Mieszko." Gallus Anonymous, the first Polish historian who lived at the turn of the 11th c, reported that our country "abounds with gold and silver, bread and meat, fish and honey." Meads were for centuries served only in well-to-do families.

However, their recipes were commonly known, especially in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Mead is considered to be the oldest alcoholic beverage known in Central and Northern Europe where vine could not grow because of adversary climatic conditions.

In Poland mead enjoyed the reputation of "a fine liquor" and was served in monasteries and homes of the Polish nobility. A favourable drink of the Piast aand Jagiellonian dynasties, mead was also extolled by Zagłoba, the famous 17th c. warrior described by Henryk Sienkiewicz in "The Trilogy", who never parted with a demijohn of fine, mature, and very strong mead" to "refresh himself in the time of need". Mead is, thus, the Polish national drink, an important part of our cultural heritage.

during the second half of the 17th c. the production of mead in Poland fell into decline due to the political and economic policy of the partitioning countries.

This situation continued until after the Second World War when the production of meads based on traditional recipes was revived. Cultivating technological traditions in the production of meads is of vital importance. Therefore, the production process requires careful supervision.

Poland is the only country in the world in which mead is produced on an industrial scale. It is probably no wonder that meads are so strongly identified with our country.

Polish art of honey-based beverage making or maliniaki, dębniaki an other types of meads

Polish meads were a highly coveted commodity already in the 15th c. Merchants carried wagon or barge-loads of meads and beeswax to Gdańsk and further to other European countries Such a demand prompted increased production. Mead making establishments or "meaderies" were founded in many towns by experienced brewers known as miodowary. In time, in order to diversify flavour and aromatic properties, fruit juices were added giving rise to maliniaki (raspberry flavoured meads) wiśniaki (cherry flavoured meads) and others. Dębniaki, or meads poured into barrels made of freshly cut oak wood staves, were very popular because of their unique flavour and aroma. Equally popular were Polish and Lithuanian lipce or meads produced exclusively from honey collected in July.

Forest beekeeping and hive beekeeping in historic Poland

The original beekeeping in Poland was largely a forest-related activity which consisted in collecting honey hollows in trees where bees lived. In was not until the 14th c. that beekeeping was moved into villages by bringing tree trunks with bee hollows away from forests. From that moment on the role of this form of beekeeping grew considerably and became highly profitable. This is testified by the volumes of beeswax sold in Polish harbours or given away in the form of rent paid in kind. Beekeeping flourished until the 18th c. wars between Poland and Sweden which brought this activity to ruin.

Mead production process

Sometimes known as honey wine, mead is a fermented alcoholic beverage made from diluted honey. The amount of mead and water determines the basic type of mead produced. These type include półtoraki (1.5 part of honey to 1 part of water), dwójniaki (2:1), trójniaki (3:1), and czwórniaki (4:1). However, depending on various kinds of honey, the addition of fruit juices and spices, and various modifications of the fermentation and maturation processes, the variety of meads seems endless. Whatever the type or kind of mead, its production requires particular supervision and care. Selecting the raw material, proper strains of yeast, preparing the barrels, and timing fermentation and maturation processes have an effect on the quality of the final product. Since maturation is key, all currently used production methods are based on traditional recipes and technology. Meads have a unique alcoholic flavour and a high nutritious value due to the high content of natural honey and no added aromas, colorants or preservatives.

Tradition and modernity

Since its establishment in 1932, APIS Apiculture Cooperative in Lublin continues the glorious traditions of the Polish art of making meads. Soon after the Second World War the production of meads was carried out by cooperatives in Cracow, Poznań, Nidzica, Milejów and Lublin providing for the following decades a variety of meads to consumers. The only cooperative that has remained faithful to the traditional art of mead making is here in Lublin. Thanks to the vision of the Cooperative's management and highly qualified staff, the Cooperative continues to invest in modern equipment and to extend the product line in keeping with the quality requirements laid out in the Polish Norm and in European acts on winemaking. In 2004 APIS launched the most modern mead bottling line in Poland, and the investments made during the years 2002-2004 qualified the copany to receive the ISO 9001:2001 quality certificate and the HACCP food safety certificate.

Recipes

Al types of meads sold under the brand name of APIS are produced in accordance with modified centuries old formulae without any artificial aromatic substances, preservatives and sulphur dioxide. During the production process we make every effort to maintain the traditional character of our products. We produce meads of the highest quality and the widest variety from heavy sweet meads with the highest content of honey and alcohol (15-17%) such as Półtorak and Dwójniak through Trójniak with 12-14% of alcohol to light dry meads such as Czwórniak with 9-11% of alcohol.

Six Patterns of Mead

I’m still at the beginning of this quest, and have yet to do much more than sip at the varieties of British Meads. However there is such an abundance of information on the wicked web I’d like to clarify the varieties of Mead as I understand them.

There are muddied divisions between national traditions and names, and the patterns of making the Mead itself. The patterns include

1) Traditional or plain mead
A Mead brewed with honey and water, and little else. Varieties include:

• Great Mead – brewed to be aged before drinking (sometimes Old Mead)
• Short Mead – a more effervescent variety, brewed to be drunk quickly
• Hydromel (also Aquamiel, Idromele and similar and perhaps Berz (Ethopian) - A lighter low alcohol mead, presumably with more water involved so also akin to the Polish Czwórniak and Półtorak varieties
• Sack Mead – a very sweet mead with excessive amounts of honey
• Show Mead – a modern invention? of honey & water with nothing added relying on artificial yeasts and enzymes.
• Bochet – burnt Sack Mead
• Dębniaki - fermented in oak barrels for a specific taste (Polish)
• Thalassiome – mixed with seawater (more of a medicine - ref Pliny)
• Lipce – only uses honey collected in July (Polish/Lithuanian)

2) Braggot (also Bracket, Brackett or Bragawad, maybe also Miodomel)
A Mead brewed with honey and hops, or honey and malt, or sometimes all three. One could argue that Tej (Ethopia) is almost a Braggot, as a traditional mead fermented with Gesho instead of hops. At some points Braggots evolve into ale, and perhaps honey ales deserve some recognition here. Varieties include:

• Stakliškės - lime, juniper berries herbs & hops (Lithuanian)
• Trakai – lime, juniper berries acorns & hops (Lithuanian)

3) Melomel
A Mead brewed with honey and fruit juices. Varieties include

• Cyser – apple juice
• Pyment (also pyment claree)– grape juice. If white grapes sometimes known as a ‘white mead’
• Morta (also Mora)– mulberries
• Omphacomal – verjuice (unripe grapes)
• Perry – pears (although there is a boundary with pear cider somewhere)
• Black meads (also Kurpiowski) – blackcurrants
• Maliniaki – rasberries (Polish)
• Wiśniaki (also Podczaszy) – cherries (Polish)
• Sima – lemons (Finnish)
• Apis? – rowanberries (Polish)
• Bernardyński – chokeberries (Polish)
• Stolnik – plum stum (Polish)
• Jadwiga – raspberries (Polish)
• Lubelski – wild forest fruits (Polish)
• Bočių – juniper berries (Lithuanian)

4) Metheglin
A traditional mead with added herbs and/or spices. Common additives include Ginger, Tea, Orange peel, Nutmeg, Corriander, Cinnamon, Cloves, Vanilla, Rosemary. Varieties include:

• Capsicumel (Chile peppers)
• Gverc (Croatian)
• Pitarrilla (Mayan, Balche tree bark)
• Rhodomel (Rose hips & petals or Rose Attar)
• Trójniak Piastowski – alpine herbs (Polish)
• Hippocras – a spiced Melomel or, according to some,
simply a wine with added honey and spices

5) Undefined (maybe cocktails)
There is a pattern of making, or serving Mead, mixed with another alcoholic beverage, often wine. One interpretation is that this makes such Meads a Melomel. Wine being a fruit (grape) juice. Sometimes this may include alcoholic drinks with honey added, again especially wine. To me there is a clear difference between fermenting honey and fruit juices together as opposed to adding in pre-fermented fruit juice after the honey fermentation has finished. Be it wine, cider, or even a vinegar. Th Polish / Lithuanian meads seem to rely on such a process. So perhaps a question to a Mead maker or some in depth taste testing ( a better option).

Of more concerns that the cheaper Meads I have tasted may be little more than white wines with added honey. Harvest Gold has been described as ‘a classic interpretation of traditional mead’ which sounds like not mead to me. Varieties include

• Pyment – added wine (as above)
• Mulsum – added high strength (fortified?) wine (Roman)
• Oxymel – added wine vinegar (more of a medicine)

6) Distilled Meads
At some point it became possible to distill Mead in the same method as one produces Brandies, whether from wine or cider. One could easily argue that we are now in the realms of liquors and not Meads. Varieties include:

• Krupnik - (Polish)
• Suktinis (Lithuanian)
• Šventinė (Lithuanian)
• Vilnius (Lithuanian)
• Trys karaliai (Lithuanian)
• Žalgiris (Lithuanian)
• Stakliškių pipirinė (Lithuanian)

And more undoubtedly exist.

Stilton and Mead part I

On a recent trip to the Hive, I had the delight of stumbling upon some tasting notes for the drinking of Mead. They suggested that the Mead in question went well with a Strong Stilton, and despite the Mead in question having been long ago drunk here are my first thoughts.

The Stilton in question was the strongest I could find at the evil corporate superstore that was open at the time, and I need to try this again with a cheese more interesting. The Meads were both Harvest Gold and Norfolk, which I had on hand from the previous nights drinking.

The taste of the Stilton was a very bitter, pungent contrast to the Meads and the difference was very interesting, and incredibly intense. Intense enough that I broke the two up with bread on most attempts. Equally I’m not sure the two complimented each other in any way, which may have been a reflection of both meads being sweet and sickly (and cheap).

So not a stunning success, but a clear path to a 2nd attempt with a cleaner drier Mead, and a subtler less homogenised Stilton. For now the best accompaniment to mead seems to be more mead.

Norfolk Mead

A surprising find at Budgens and pretty cheap at £5.80 a bottle, Broadlands Norfolk Mead is perfectly palatable but nothing particular special.

With quick a sweet stickly taste akin to that of Harvest Gold, it lacks the drier lighter taste of more expensive (better quality?) meads. There’s also a slight vinegary scent so perhaps the bottle’s been sitting in Budgens for too long. Equally my snobbery may be corrupting my palate at this point.

Quite a smooth texture with a bitter after taste, more reminiscent for a white wine than a Mead. Successive glasses have proved to be much more drinkable.

The bottle describes the Mead as

The Grandfather of Country Wines

Which I guess suggests the makers are more into the production of fruit wines than the drink of the gods that is Mead.

Overall a better drink than the Harvest Gold from Morrisons but perhaps you really do get what you pay for.