By Will Kalif
Mead is wine fermented from honey rather than the traditional way of fermenting with grapes. Nobody really knows for sure how old the art of making mead is. This information has been lost to history. But it may very well be the oldest form of brewing known to man. And it is an art that is not part of the main stream of brewing. Here are some tips and secrets revealed.
It is theorized that the mead was discovered under a tree and it makes a lot of sense. The theory goes that a beehive either overflowed or was damaged and the honey dripped down into a pool of water. To turn this into a fermented beverage all we need to add to this honey and water mix is some yeast. In an open environment a natural yeast will grow in the honey water and this is enough for it to ferment.
And this concept of natural yeast growth was followed for many centuries. An early book on Mead making written by Sir Digby in the 17th century explains just this process of adding a few basic materials to a honey water mix then covering it and letting it sit.
This process was a bit of a risk because you couldn't be sure that the right yeast would grow in your mead. You were subject to the whims of the local environment. But today there is a whole host of packaged yeasts you can put in your mead to get a great batch of the sweet honey wine.
The Simplicity of Mead Making
Mead making, while a secret, is actually very easy to make. You simply add about three pounds of honey to one gallon of water. You then add about 5 grams of yeast and you are done! The hard part is in the waiting. This will take a minimum of three to four months before it becomes drinkable and another three or so months before it becomes delicious.
Making sure you do it right
While the process is basically very simple there are some things you need to do to insure things go well. I talked a little bit about yeast and unwanted yeast and this unwanted yeast is the most important factor in determining if your mead will come out good. You absolutely have to sterilize all the equipment and containers you will be using for your mead making; and this includes any spoons or tools. This is to make sure no unwanted yeast or bacteria take hold and grow in your honey water. You want only your chosen yeast to grow and nothing else.
Also, a very important yet inexpensive thing you need to do with your fermenting mead is to add an airlock. This is a little plastic device that will allow gases to escape out of the ferment while preventing anything from getting in. Your fermenting mead will cause a large amount of gases and you want these gases to escape easily from your jug or bottle. If this gas isn't allowed to escape it could cause the jug to rupture or the cap to blow off with force.
The Weakness of Honey as a nutrient
Honey is actually rather poor in the nutrients yeast need to make mead. And it can cause a rapid growth in the yeast that only lasts a short period of time. The yeast then dies out and your fermenting process can slow or even stop. This lack of nutrient can be corrected by adding raisins, orange peels, tea leaves, or commercially available wine nutrients and energizers (Which cost only two to three dollars).
The Real Beauty of Mead
Using these guidelines I have here gives you plain and traditional mead. This is terrific but the real beauty of Mead is in its ability to be a blank canvas for an extraordinary wide range of flavors and tastes. Mead is perfect for adding things like raspberries, oranges, cinnamon, pears, plums, peaches, or just about any type of fruit or spice. And this is where it really gets exciting and it is also where the big secret lies. To get good at mead making you have to experiment with fruits and spices. You have to try different quantities and let them ferment for different periods of time.
One of the biggest reasons for the secret of mead making is that it is a very slow process and it can take up to a year or more before you are sure a recipe is good. So it can generally take years before a person gets good at it. But the internet has done a lot to change this and you can now find thousands of recipes online created by all sorts of mead makers.
Mead is a beautiful drink that has been shrouded in secrecy for thousands of years but its time has now come.
http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Secret-Art-of-Mead-Making-Revealed&id=1338216
Wednesday 24 February 2016
Tuesday 23 February 2016
Mead makes debut in downtown Irwin
By Joe Napsha
Mead has made it into downtown Irwin, thanks to the Laurel Highlands Meadery's new tasting room for its version of the honey-based wine with a history that goes back thousands of years.
Mead has made it into downtown Irwin, thanks to the Laurel Highlands Meadery's new tasting room for its version of the honey-based wine with a history that goes back thousands of years.
Matt and Mandy Falenski, who make the mead in a converted barn on their Sewickley Township property near Herminie, opened the tasting room in a building on Fourth Street. The small meadery with a few tables and a bar offers glasses of its honey wine for $6 and bottles for $17 and $18.
Falenski, 45, said he began making mead in 2007 after dabbling in home beer brewing for about 20 years.
“I won some competitions and got some encouragement to go forward,” said Falenski, who is a network administrator for a North Huntingdon company.
He makes his mead with honey, filtered water and yeast, then allows it to ferment for up to a year in stainless steel brewing tanks, ranging in size from 60 to 200 gallons, or oak barrels, which adds a different flavor.
“We've been slowly ramping up” production, Falenski said.
The Falenskis are becoming more commercial at a time when meaderies are growing in popularity. In the past three years, the number of meaderies in the United States has grown from 40 to 300, according to the Ale Street News, a trade publication based in Maywood, N.J.
“It's an extension of how craft brewing has become more popular,” said Tony Forder, publisher and editor of Ale Street News. “Mead is the most ancient of fermented beverages, and it is being rediscovered.”
Mandy Falenski said they looked at other communities, but found Irwin the ideal location for their business, which was incorporated in 2010.
“They have so many events that bring people into town,” she said.
The couple had a “soft opening” on Feb. 11. Jackie Zoglmann of Pleasant Hills — who said she prefers a dry wine — attended and was pleasantly surprised.
“I didn't think I would like it. It was sweet, but not too sweet,” Zoglmann said. “I liked it a lot.”
Laurel Highlands offers several varieties of mead: Traditional honey-based; bochet, which is made by roasting honey over a fire to produce a marshmallow and caramel flavor; one with the bitter taste of hops added; and another made with maple syrup from Western Pennsylvania.
The couple's products are available at All Saints Brewing Co. in Hempfield, Four Seasons Brewing in Unity, and Piper's Pub on Pittsburgh's South Side.
Thursday 18 February 2016
Beowulf and the Mead Hall
By Tony A Grayson
Beowulf is the title of a poem written in England between the 8th and 11th centuries. Beowulf is also the name of the main character, a hero of a Scandinavian tribal people known as the Geats. The story pits Beowulf against a merciless monster known as Grendel, who breaks into the mead hall of the King of the Danes to wantonly maim and kill members of King Hrothgar's court. In 2007, this story was told in a popular techno-animated film. I wondered, what is a mead hall?
Mead is an alcoholic beverage made from fermented honey, combined with water, grains, hops (also used in beer), and there might be a few other ingredients like fruit. This drink traces its history back to Asia, Africa, and Europe. Evidence of it has been found in jars dated to 2800 BC. I have not been able to determine why the art of fermenting the sugars of honey was attempted. The fermentation of the juice of grapes traces back at least 9,000 years.
Nevertheless, mead as a social beverage was very popular throughout many cultures. It was the national drink of ancient Greece. It was the preferred drink of ancient Rome. It figures prominently in Celtic and Germanic epic poems. I wonder why we don't readily see it in use today or when it was that it fell out of public favor.
A mead hall was a place suitable for a king to meet with his warriors and with important dignitaries. It was his court, if you will, and by calling it a "mead" hall, the king informed all who came that they would be treated with feasting and the fermented beverage. I have seen a reconstruction of one of these mead halls. It looks like a sagging barn. I think that a mead hall must have been a forerunner of an old English tavern, but I cannot confirm that.
Mead is still out there. Just as there are craft breweries springing up here and there, folks have revived the art of crafting mead and they loosely cooperate with one another as they seek a market for their product. You are more likely to find a local source for mead by contacting a bee keeper. You may want to ask about its transportation and any special storage needed to preserve its shelf life. I am pretty sure that Beowulf took Grendel out of the picture, so you won't have to worry about that.
http://ezinearticles.com/?Beowulf-and-the-Mead-Hall&id=9301317
Beowulf is the title of a poem written in England between the 8th and 11th centuries. Beowulf is also the name of the main character, a hero of a Scandinavian tribal people known as the Geats. The story pits Beowulf against a merciless monster known as Grendel, who breaks into the mead hall of the King of the Danes to wantonly maim and kill members of King Hrothgar's court. In 2007, this story was told in a popular techno-animated film. I wondered, what is a mead hall?
Mead is an alcoholic beverage made from fermented honey, combined with water, grains, hops (also used in beer), and there might be a few other ingredients like fruit. This drink traces its history back to Asia, Africa, and Europe. Evidence of it has been found in jars dated to 2800 BC. I have not been able to determine why the art of fermenting the sugars of honey was attempted. The fermentation of the juice of grapes traces back at least 9,000 years.
Nevertheless, mead as a social beverage was very popular throughout many cultures. It was the national drink of ancient Greece. It was the preferred drink of ancient Rome. It figures prominently in Celtic and Germanic epic poems. I wonder why we don't readily see it in use today or when it was that it fell out of public favor.
A mead hall was a place suitable for a king to meet with his warriors and with important dignitaries. It was his court, if you will, and by calling it a "mead" hall, the king informed all who came that they would be treated with feasting and the fermented beverage. I have seen a reconstruction of one of these mead halls. It looks like a sagging barn. I think that a mead hall must have been a forerunner of an old English tavern, but I cannot confirm that.
Mead is still out there. Just as there are craft breweries springing up here and there, folks have revived the art of crafting mead and they loosely cooperate with one another as they seek a market for their product. You are more likely to find a local source for mead by contacting a bee keeper. You may want to ask about its transportation and any special storage needed to preserve its shelf life. I am pretty sure that Beowulf took Grendel out of the picture, so you won't have to worry about that.
http://ezinearticles.com/?Beowulf-and-the-Mead-Hall&id=9301317
Tuesday 16 February 2016
Drink: Mead, mead and more mead
From: NEXT Pittsburgh
A few years ago, mead was pretty easy to ignore. Perhaps it would come up when you were browsing Viking folklore or pregaming for a Renaissance fair, but it more or less lived in obscurity otherwise. And you certainly wouldn’t see mead on tap at your local bar.
Nowadays, mead is where cider was a few years ago: still somewhat uncommon but rapidly gaining a following. In the Pittsburgh area, much of that growth can be chalked up to Carnegie’s Apis Mead & Winery, which has been producing a wide array of mead (including nontraditional flavors like Hopped Passionfruit) since mid-2014. But Apis isn’t the only one getting in on the mead game. This past weekend, Laurel Highlands Meadery opened a tasting room in Irwin, where guests can sample and purchase traditional and flavored meads. And Wigle Whiskey recently announced the launch of Threadbare Cider, a cider house and meadery that will open on the North Side later this year.
All this talk about mead may have you wondering: what the heck is it? Simply put, mead is honey wine. Fermented grain becomes beer, fermented grapes become wine and fermented honey becomes mead. The strength of mead is closer to wine than beer, usually clocking in somewhere between 10 and 20 percent ABV. The flavor of the finished mead can vary widely depending on the type of honey used, and many mead makers will add fruits, spices or hops to create additional layers of flavor. And though it’s made from honey, mead is not necessarily sweet; like cider, mead can be quite crisp and dry.
Everything old is new again, and in mead’s case, that means really, really old. Some historians believe it’s the oldest alcoholic beverage in the world, and references to mead-like concoctions have been found in the writings of numerous ancient cultures. So if you’re feeling pretty cutting-edge when you order that mead on draft, just know that you were beaten to the trend by about 30,000 years.
http://www.nextpittsburgh.com/eatdrink/eat-drink-do-tako-opens-at-consol/
A few years ago, mead was pretty easy to ignore. Perhaps it would come up when you were browsing Viking folklore or pregaming for a Renaissance fair, but it more or less lived in obscurity otherwise. And you certainly wouldn’t see mead on tap at your local bar.
Nowadays, mead is where cider was a few years ago: still somewhat uncommon but rapidly gaining a following. In the Pittsburgh area, much of that growth can be chalked up to Carnegie’s Apis Mead & Winery, which has been producing a wide array of mead (including nontraditional flavors like Hopped Passionfruit) since mid-2014. But Apis isn’t the only one getting in on the mead game. This past weekend, Laurel Highlands Meadery opened a tasting room in Irwin, where guests can sample and purchase traditional and flavored meads. And Wigle Whiskey recently announced the launch of Threadbare Cider, a cider house and meadery that will open on the North Side later this year.
All this talk about mead may have you wondering: what the heck is it? Simply put, mead is honey wine. Fermented grain becomes beer, fermented grapes become wine and fermented honey becomes mead. The strength of mead is closer to wine than beer, usually clocking in somewhere between 10 and 20 percent ABV. The flavor of the finished mead can vary widely depending on the type of honey used, and many mead makers will add fruits, spices or hops to create additional layers of flavor. And though it’s made from honey, mead is not necessarily sweet; like cider, mead can be quite crisp and dry.
Everything old is new again, and in mead’s case, that means really, really old. Some historians believe it’s the oldest alcoholic beverage in the world, and references to mead-like concoctions have been found in the writings of numerous ancient cultures. So if you’re feeling pretty cutting-edge when you order that mead on draft, just know that you were beaten to the trend by about 30,000 years.
http://www.nextpittsburgh.com/eatdrink/eat-drink-do-tako-opens-at-consol/
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