Brewing is magic. Making mead is the magic one does with honey, water, yeast, and other good things, to produce an intoxicating drink that some have called the drink of the gods. This is the kind of magic we do most often. If we perform the mead ritual correctly, we get a tasty drink three months to a year later, depending on how long we want to let it age.
To begin, let's consider the basic ingredients of mead.
| ...namely, water and honey. |
The water should be spring water, with natural minerals but without the chlorine found in processed city water. People who live in the countryside usually have wells on their property that produce delicious water because of the fortunate combination of minerals. Other people have wells, but they aren't so lucky, and their water is sulfurous or otherwise unsuitable for mead-making. Be sure to notice that the water used for mead is spring water, not distilled. Distilled water would lack the essential minerals.
The best honey is the least processed honey. The wax should come out before putting the honey in the water, but the honey itself should show signs of crystals (honey "sugar") that melt when heated. Depending on the kind of mead you want to end up with, it might be important to be choosy about what sort of flowers the bees were cropping their pollen in.
| The next most essential part of making mead, after water and honey, is yeast. You don't have to use bread yeast, but it will do in a pinch. |
With water, honey and yeast, you can make mead--after a fashion. But there are other things that can be very helpful. Just as you or I would get energy from honey, but honey by itself would make a very poor diet, so too do yeast find honey to be a very tasty treat, but without added nutrients they will not grow strong and healthy. In fact, the yeast will tend to be sickly and poor performers. So it is very advantageous to add these nutrients to the mixture of honey and water before putting in the yeast.
Among these additions are tannic acid and vitamins. Tannic acid is present in both tea and grapes. Adding mashed up grapes to your honey-water will also provide some vitamins. Tannic acid does one other thing for your mead: it balances the sweetness of the honey with a little bitter. This is a good thing because pure sweet is not as pleasant as you might imagine; it's cloying. People who make soda pop add caffeine for the same reason.
There are special "yeast vitamins" that can be bought at certain stores. But you can probably think of other sources of vitamins too.
| You can add cinnamon, cloves, and allspice to your must, and experiment with other spices as well. Ginger, nugmet and rosemary are sometimes used. You can experiment with different fruits (mashed up) and fruit juices. |
A "must" is a mixture of honey, water, and whatever else you intend to make mead (or wine) with.
Mead that contains only fermented honey, water, and spices is called metheglyn.
Mead that contains fruit (or fruit juice) as well is called melomel.
Mead that contains applesauce is called cyser (and is a melomel).
The magic of mead is in the taste and the effect it will have on your state of mind. It is alcoholic, so it is not for the little ones. But they can drink some of the unfermented must, provided that you keep it frozen until just before warming and serving it. (Must is attractive to germs, and for that reason there has to be something to fight it. If you turn the must into mead, the alcohol of the mead will kill germs. Otherwise, you must freeze the must to prevent spoilage.)
