Oct 26, 2014
Mead, wine, and beer aficionados commonly debate the origins of the beverages and which one is technically the oldest fermented beverage. All three beverages are based on the same principles: that yeast, when given access to a sugar source, will ferment the water or juice to create an alcoholic beverage. Each drink has thousands of years of history, so why isn’t mead a household name? Why mead fell out of the public eye It’s thought that a combination of factors resulted in the decline of mead, including the rising price of honey and falling price of sugar, French specialization in fine wines, and the acceptance of hopped beers between the thirteenth and fifteenth century. As Ken Schramm (a mead expert and author of The Compleat Meadmaker) writes, the Scots also perfected whisky-making around this time period, making mead one of the lesser-known beverages in Western countries by the time the 1700s came around. (For various reasons, including availability and traditions, other countries still drink mead or mead-like beverages more commonly than North America and western European countries have until the last decade or two.) Mead is coming back The resurgence of mead began in earnest in 1986, when Pamela Spence founded the American Mead Association. By 2003, 70 meaderies existed in the US alone, and at this time, over 200 meaderies are listed on the American Mead Makers Association website in the US alone, with over 40 meaderies internationally, including us at Sunset Heights Meadery. The problem with exact definitions With this resurgence in popularity, mead makers are hotly contesting the exact definitions of different types of mead, coming...
Sep 2, 2014
Throughout the history of mead, it has gone through revivals where it was sought after for its association with royalty and luxury and lulls where it was brewed underground in monasteries, not made for popular consumption. Similar to the revival of wine in the 1970s in California and the resulting worldwide popularity of carefully-crafted wines of all types, mead is currently on the cusp of a boom in popularity. One factor holding people back from drinking mead as a daily beverage is the fact that many people simply don’t know what types of mead are available. They don’t know whether mead is sweet or dry, and they don’t know what mead flavours to expect. Worse yet, if you’ve never had mead before, drinking one bad mead (or the memory of drinking bad mead years ago at festivals or from a friend’s home brewery) can put you off the drink entirely. In reality, like wines or beers, there are so many varieties of mead that even if you don’t like one type, there will probably be another that could become your favourite evening drink! Here’s a simple guide to the most common varieties of mead. Traditional or show: the basics go a long way If you want the basic mead, a traditional (or show) mead is made with honey, water, and yeast – that’s it. Don’t be fooled into thinking this means all traditional meads taste the same, though; many beers are brewed with the same types of yeasts and grains, but taste very different due to variations in the fermenting time, temperature, and so on. Also, the many honey...
