Mead

There comes a point in every SCAdian's life, usually fairly early on for adults who imbibe, where they can say they've tried mead. It might be good mead, it might be bad mead, it might actually be a metheglin or a melomel. Mead is an ancient drink that has a place of prominence in the SCA. As a person who focuses on Viking Age Scandinavia, it was inevitable that I would find my way to brewing it at some point.

My hope has always been to brew a mead I like. But everyone likes different things and for me, I like meads that are dry to semi-dry, I like them bubbly and I like them light. I like floral notes, I like spices, sometimes I like fruit notes but above all, I want to taste the characteristics of the honey. I have had some success brewing meads that I like, but I've also made a whole bunch that I don't love. That said, I refuse to serve a mead that I straight up do not like. Most of the meads I have on hand at this point are ones that I think are pretty good even if they don't necessarily have all of my favorite qualities in a mead.

When I decided to begin brewing, I wanted to do it approximating period Scandinavian techniques as much as I could. I used the text Make Mead Like a Viking by Jereme Zimmerman to learn the basics of using wild fermentation to brew mead. As a how-to guide, it is an excellent text. He offers a lot of history and lore surrounding mead brewing in the Viking Age as well as practical discussions and advice. As much as I want an academic text, this is not that though there are extensive endnotes and an excellent resources list at the end. I absolutely recommend this text to get started with wild fermentation if you are interested in brewing honey wines and beers

A Discussion of Terminology

For the most part, I err on the side of specificity when it comes to terminology. While I do not prescribe to the idea that metheglins and melomels don't count as mead, I do try to use those terms to specify what is happening with a particular brew. Additionally, there are a few general terms that you can find definitions for here. You can also follow the hyperlink at the top of the page to the Wikipedia entry on Mead, which has a thorough discussion on the different names for different types of meads. Additionally, there are a few terms that I use in a specific way that are maybe less widely used. Those are:

Initial fermentation - the stage during which the must begins to ferment. For my brews, this takes place in the stockpot, before being transferred into a carboy

Primary fermentation - the stage directly after initial fermentation when the mead has been transferred to a carboy with whatever flavor bases added. This lasts for a varying amount of time

Secondary fermentation - the stage after primary fermentation has slowed down but the flavor profile is still being tweaked. The line between primary and secondary is blurry but for me, this happens during the second racking. This stage is when fermentations finalizes and aging begins. Sometimes there are multiple rackings during this stage.

Show Meads, Metheglins and Melomels

In the SCA, there are three things that generally get called mead: metheglins, melomels and show mead. Purists will tell you that if the brew is flavored with anything other than honey, it's not properly called mead. If it's flavored using spices, it's a metheglin. If it's flavored using fruits, it's a melomel. You can go down a rabbit hole of specificity of honey wine names. When someone refers to a "show mead" they typically mean a honey-only mead. Your average drinker is less concerned with the minutiae of the distinction between varieties and will be satisfied with "This is a mead." It is the difference between specifying something is an ale and a lager. Enthusiasts will want to know the difference, everyone can taste the difference, not many people are terribly concerned about the difference. Just as "beer" is a general term applied to a wide variety of drinks with a few key similarities, so too is "mead" a general term applied to a wide variety of drinks with a few key similarities.

When it comes to the historicity of the distinctions, it's difficult to say, particularly in the Viking Age or earlier. There is no reason to think that people in Scandinavian countries did not add spices or fruits to their meads but nor is there evidence that I know of to suggest they do, beyond humans being humans. It is possible there is an analysis of a Viking Age crock that found a honey wine with a particular herb added in, but I haven't found it if there is. In modern times, people all over the world brew using honey with as many variations are there are cultures. We know that various ingredients were used to add tannins and acids to the brews as the process of making mead was refined. It requires an unjustified rigidity of imagination to assert that mead during the Viking Age would not have had any herbs, spices or fruit added to them. Still, in deference to modern distinctions and a lack of historical evidence, I try to specify when I am dealing with a show mead, a metheglin or a melomel.

What is wild fermentation?

Wild fermentation occurs when you capture naturally occurring yeasts from your environment and cultivate them to brew with. It's very similar to growing a sourdough starter. Zimmerman's book teaches brewers to use a "ginger bug" to kickstart their fermentation, which is what I have done with all of my brews with great success.

A ginger bug is the sourdough starter of wild fermentation. I used approximately equal parts grated ginger from a fresh rhizome and plain old sugar from my baking supplies. I mixed those in about 2 cups of room temperature well water and covered the jar with cheesecloth. I stir it as often as I think of it, with a wooden chopstick. For the first week, I added more ginger every day as well as sugar. After it was obvious that the wild yeasts had been captured, I switched to sugar every day and ginger every four days. Just like a sourdough starter, you'll need to feed your ginger bug. When I use part of it for brewing, I replenish that much with water and add more ginger, regardless of where I am in the every-four-days cycle. A ginger bug can be made in a glass jar, which my first bug was in, but I make mine now in a ceramic Viking Age style jar.

The ginger bug begins

The Bug Jar

In my house, the ginger bug took about three days to really start popping. You know you've got wild yeasts when you can hear it fizzing while it is still. It should smell sharp, but not unpleasant. You don't want to grow mold, so be sure you stir it often and keep the cheesecloth on it. The activity of the yeast should discourage mold from growing but if your yeast is slow to start, you might need to start over.

I started this bug in November, which is not ideal. Yeast likes warm environments and is inhibited from growth in the cold. Still, in our modern homes, it's warm enough for yeast to grow so while it was not quite so robust as it was when I started it in the summer, it did its job.

Yeasts are captured

A Discussion of Meads

Buckwheat Dry Show Mead

One of the first meads I tried was a dry show mead, brewed using buckwheat honey and aged first one year, then another four years. In the picture to the right, you can see the buckwheat mead during its primary fermentation. It is the carboy with the dark brew in it. Like all of my meads, it was wild fermented. The glass jar on the left with the cheesecloth is the original ginger bug that I used in the initial fermentation, which according to my notes, took about three days to really kick off. I transferred it to a carboy after five days and sealed it with an airlock for it's primary fermentation. I racked it four times for clarity, meaning I transferred it from one carboy to another four times, which separated the brew from the sediment leftover from fermentation, also known as the lees. I bottled it in glass bottles to age for a year before trying.

The buckwheat was very good at one year. It had a bit of a bite that I did not mind but knew was not necessarily popular with someone drinking a mead. I saved some back to see how it aged further and the answer is, in my opinion, very well. It is a very dry mead, which may surprise some people. But in its dryness, the complexity of the buckwheat shows through. It is, without question, the prettiest mead I've ever brewed. The rich browns and red of the buckwheat honey stayed throughout the fermentation and aging process and it is truly lovely.

The lovely buckwheat

The Pumpkin Abomination

This mead is technically a melomel and what I have lovingly referred to as the pumpkin abomination, pictured during it's primary fermentation to the left.

This mead was fermented using wild fermentation but it was also an experiment. I grew pumpkins that year and had more than I knew what to do with so I roasted one and used it in the fermentation process of this mead.

You can see that during its primary fermentation, it off-gassed so much that it blew out the airlocks in both bottles. The fresh roasted pumpkin provided SO MUCH nutrient to the yeast that it took a really long time for the fermentation to settle down enough to age with an air lock. As I racked it, I sampled it and found that I did not like it at all, so since it was an experiment, I began adding various things to try to make it more palatable with each successive racking.

Those additions were: whole allspice, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon sticks, ginger, peppercorns, star anise and orange juice (as an acid, to cut the cloying sweetness).

I did not like this mead at any step of the process until it sat for five years and even then it's a bit heavy for my preference. It has a body like a port wine and I prefer champagne. But it finally, FINALLY was drinkable to me. When it was young, it was sickly sweet and had an aftertaste that told me it was not done aging yet. Some people really liked it but to me it tasted unfinished. I did not have a hydrometer when I started this brew, so I cannot say how alcoholic it is but my gut tells me it's very alcoholic, possibly sack strength, likely due to the natural sugars in the pumpkin. I am also attempting to freeze-distill a small quantity to see if that makes a good liqueur, called "honey jack." We'll see.

The Pumpkin Abomination

Additionally, I have done a blend of the pumpkin abomination melomel with a cinnamon metheglin. The metheglin was dry and bitey in a way that I did not enjoy. It needed to be a little sweeter and the abomination needed to be a little less sweet so it made sense to give it a shot. Mixed equal parts with the pumpkin abomination it made an acceptable blended mead.

Short Meads

A short mead is a mead that is brewed to drink young, typically aged less than a year.

In a world where the water may or may not be safe to drink and where beer was commonly consumed as the default drink, it makes sense to me that a short mead was likely made, particularly as air-tight environments for aging would have been pretty tricky for your standard Viking Age homestead. Short mead is sweet, bubbly and only slightly alcoholic. My short meads have technically been short metheglins, as they are flavored with spices. In a first for me, I attempted a Short Show Mead for the Atlantian Persona Pentathlon, Category 4, in addition to the five year old buckwheat. That process is documented on the Mead Entry page and is typical of the process for brewing Short Meads.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse