Chances are, if you are a history buff, a fan of mythology, a hardcore metal head, or an all-out real-world Ren FairViking, you’ve at least tried it once. But, have you ever had a taste of a fresh, frothy homemade batch, just pulled off fermentation… and was it your own?
In this in-depth blog post, we are going to give you the low-down on that sticky goodness that we call MEAD. Read on to learn all about the nectar of the gods, or skip ahead now to learn how to make your own Viking style mead!
Chances are, if you are a history buff, a fan of mythology, a hardcore metal head, or an all-out real-world Ren FairViking, you’ve at least tried it once. But, have you ever had a taste of a fresh, frothy homemade batch, just pulled off fermentation… and was it your own?
In this in-depth blog post, we are going to give you the low-down on that sticky goodness that we call MEAD. Read on to learn all about the nectar of the gods, or skip ahead now to learn how to make your own Viking style mead!
Mead is such a simple drink that it really is surprising how few meaderies (breweries which make mead) there are, and how relatively unknown the drink is in general. I have been brewing and even barrel aging meads for several years now, and every time I mention my little Viking hobby, I hear something like, “I’ve heard of mead before. It’s made with honey, right?” or, “Oh, I’ve tried it once and its just not for me.”
If you find yourself or your friends reflected in one of the above quotes, then chances are that you have tried some fancy bottled mead and I’m sorry, but If you’ve never tried to craft a gallon or two for yourself, then you really don’t know what you’re missing out on! Mead was never intended to be mass produced, pasteurized, or fermented to the point where you can’t even recognize the sweetness of the golden honey it came from.
This silky honey drink is truly a gift from the gods, and as I’ve liberally hinted at already, is best enjoyed in its natural form, still carbonated from the hardworking yeast, or clarified with time as the only additive.
When someone quotes some epic or lost verse, saying how mead is ‘the drink of the gods,’ its likely that they don’t realize how accurate those words really are. As best we know from recorded histories, epics, odes, and even archeological trace evidences, is that mead was popular all over the world! It seems that no matter where you went in the ancient world. Some scholars believe Queen Sheba and King Solomon enjoyed mead as their drink of choice, and evidence shows that from the Aztecs to the courts of Queen Elizabeth herself, throughout history, you could always find mead in one form or another. Truth be told, mead is still quite popular as a heritage drink in Ethiopia. Though, they know it as “Tej,” and it’s history dates back to the 4th century.
For those of us who remember King Midas, the great king from Greek mythology who was cursed with the “Midas touch” which turned everything he touched into gold, well it turns out he was actually a real king! And apparently he and his father really enjoyed mead as well!
In 1957, a conspicuous hill in Turkey was found to actually be a royal burial mound. And guess who’s stuff was inside… Well, if you guessed Midas, you’d be wrong, but no more wrong than the archaeologists that found the place and declared it as the great tomb of King Midus. Haha! Well, thankfully technology has improved a LOT since 1957, and we have since been able to determine that the tomb was a bit older than the original discoverers had realized, and it actually belonged to Midas’ father.
We also learned from the residue left in in several vessels, including a rather conspicuous 2,700 year old ram’s head goblet, that Midus’ father, and likely he himself were BIG fans of supple blends of honey and ales. I mean, you’ve got to really love something to want to bring it with you into eternity, right?
Moving more into Viking territory though, another tomb nearly as old as that of the Midas family, is the 2,500 year old tomb of Hochdorf, in Germany. This is one archeological find that makes me wish I could go back in time, because what was found there nearly knocked me out of my seat. Among a tomb littered with drinking horns was a 500-liter cauldron (over 132 gallons)! And yes, when tested, they found a copious amount of honey residue all over the bottom. Somebody back then knew how it was done!
But, still older, and I’m sorry to say, very very far removed from the Scandinavians and their ancestors, are the traces of meads found in of all places… China! You heard it right. Some of the oldest physical traces of fermented honey beverages were found in China, and they date back nearly 9,000 years! An archaeological chemist Patrick E. McGovern, who goes around the world discovering and recreating ancient alcohols (I want his job!), has analyzed an ancient Chinese drink that was made from rice, honey, and fruit, making it a unique blend of a Melomel and a Braggot, but we will be getting into those specialized mead terms in the next section.
This is the section where everyone but the fans of microbrewing may start to feel a little intimidated. When I started out, I didn’t want to know or even care about specialty terms and varieties. I’ll be perfectly honest, I got into mead making for the fun and for the booze! And, it was fun, and there was lots of booze to be had. Haha! But, as you will find, just like in the craft beer world, no one really takes you seriously if you can’t keep up with the lingo. So, in this section, we’ll learn a few words to help expand your mead vocabulary.
Starting simply, Mead. Mead is a term that just means, “the fermentation of honey.” There is no such thing as a “honey mead,” because mead only has one ingredientbesides water and yeast, and that is honey. Saying “honey mead” isn’t wrong by any means, but it is redundant, and it may net you a giggle or two for breaking your Viking character while out with your friends.
Typically, an organic or at least unfiltered honey will be used, and the more potent the flavor of the honey, the more will carry over into the final product. Wildflower, Buckwheat, Orange Blossom, etc. all have a great flavor, and while you can use clover honey, there isn’t much of that rich wild honey flavor to work with. And, please god, stay away from cranberry honey! You don’t need that in your life… consider yourself warned. Haha!
A melomel is a mead that has had fruit introduced at some point during or after fermentation. Introducing fruit during fermentation reduces the fruit flavor, due to the yeast going to town on the fruit sugars, along with the sugars in the honey. Introducing fruit or fruit juice/concentrate after fermentation leaves all the fruit sugars intact, making it much fruitier. Typically mead makers will toss in a lemon, or some piece of citrus to give the yeast a boost when they are setting up and getting used the their new home in your fermenter, but that doesn’t make it a melomel… though I’m sure some people would love to debate that point.
Fruits that sit will with rich honey flavors include, Peach, Blueberry, Strawberry, Apple, Raspberry, Blackberry, etc. Basically, if it would taste good covered in honey, it will taste AMAZING in honey!
Metheglin’s aren’t as far out as you may think. If you’ve ever had a spiced cider or a mulled wine, you’ve had something like a metheglin. Basically, a metheglin is a spiced mead. Adding spices during or after fermentation can totally change the flavor of your mead, and possibly even the temperature it is best consumed at, or even the season you’d prefer drinking it in.
Spices like clove, nutmeg, cinnamon, coriander, and bay leaf all work amazingly well to craft sweet and spicy meads that are best served from warm to hot and make light snow so much more enjoyable.
A braggot is as I mentioned before when we were discussing King Midas, is a mix of mead and grains that are typically associated with ails or beers. They maybe malted (sprouted) or un-malted (un-germinated) and could be anything that with starch. However, I have never really heard of a “corn mead,” so I would probably stay away from the cattle feed end of the spectrum of grains. Corn is used in beer and whiskey mash for its sugar content, and honey by itself brings plenty of that to the table. Otherwise, adding grains into a mead will help to develop the “body” of the mead into something more akin to an ale.
Possible grains could be Barley, Rye, Rice, Oatmeal, etc.
If you didn’t sleep through high school botany like I did, you may recognize part of the name of this unique mead already. The “Rhodo-” in rhodomel is the same as the rhodo- in Rhododendron, the scientific name for Roses. So, yes, rhodomel is a mead with roses (pedals, hips, or water) added. But, be ready if you intend to make a rhodomel. You will need a substantial amount of pedals and/or hips to really get any flavor out of them, and adding rose water would dilute your mead so much, you’d likely be better off adding your mead to the rose water instead of the other way around.
I’ll admit, I’m still a bit scared to try this one… A capsicumel is as I’m sure you could guess by the word “capsicum,” is a mead made with peppers. … I have nothing more to say about this…
Making Your Own Mead!
If you've read the rich history and I have to clap you on the back and invite you to the mead-maker’s club, because we are about to get into the best part of this blog post...
MEAD MAKING!
Now, you may or may not recall that we released a Viking mead recipe back in 2017, and we've had lots of passionate microbrewers and aspiring mead makers asking for more mead content! That's why we're breaking down the step-by-step instructions here.
You can make mead in pretty much any container, but to be safe, glass, steel, ceramic, or food-grad plastics should be used when making any consumable goods.
Sanitizing Agent
CO2 Bubbler Valve (Airlock)
1-5 gallon container (carboy)
3-15 pounds of honey
2-5 grams of yeast
After only 24 hours, you should see you balloon filled, or your airlock bubbler moving, letting you know the yeast is active and healthy, but as much as you want to look at it, just leave it be for at least 2 weeks. There won’t be anything worth tasting in less time than that anyway.
If you can, try to keep the yeast at a happy temperature, and you let them do their job, you can start stealing little tastes of you brew after only a few weeks. Regardless of if you have a gravity meter or not, or whether you invested in professional equipment, specialized nutrients, or are trying out any number of variations on this simple recipe, the mead will be done when you think it’s done. If it tastes right to you, go ahead and drink it!
You can enjoy your mead with active yeast, giving it a little tickle of carbonation, or you can through the whole brew container into the refrigerator and “Cold Crash” it to help stop the fermentation and clarify your mead.
Call yourself a mead maker because after you take that first sip of your own homemade mead, you have officially joined an exclusive crew of people who not only remember history, but who can relive the best parts of it whenever they want! And, let’s not forget that when you start to brew your own mead, you can share it with your friends, and that’s the best part!
Well, the best part is actually drinking your own mead from your own mead hornand making all of your friends jealous. If you don’t have one, go check out Norse Tradesman and get one for you and a friend!
Cody Dees
“Resident Viking”
Norse Tradesman
The guess of the wise is truth.
-Grettir Saga, c.31
Mead is such a simple drink that it really is surprising how few meaderies (breweries which make mead) there are, and how relatively unknown the drink is in general. I have been brewing and even barrel aging meads for several years now, and every time I mention my little Viking hobby, I hear something like, “I’ve heard of mead before. It’s made with honey, right?” or, “Oh, I’ve tried it once and its just not for me.”
If you find yourself or your friends reflected in one of the above quotes, then chances are that you have tried some fancy bottled mead and I’m sorry, but If you’ve never tried to craft a gallon or two for yourself, then you really don’t know what you’re missing out on! Mead was never intended to be mass produced, pasteurized, or fermented to the point where you can’t even recognize the sweetness of the golden honey it came from.
This silky honey drink is truly a gift from the gods, and as I’ve liberally hinted at already, is best enjoyed in its natural form, still carbonated from the hardworking yeast, or clarified with time as the only additive.
When someone quotes some epic or lost verse, saying how mead is ‘the drink of the gods,’ its likely that they don’t realize how accurate those words really are. As best we know from recorded histories, epics, odes, and even archeological trace evidences, is that mead was popular all over the world! It seems that no matter where you went in the ancient world. Some scholars believe Queen Sheba and King Solomon enjoyed mead as their drink of choice, and evidence shows that from the Aztecs to the courts of Queen Elizabeth herself, throughout history, you could always find mead in one form or another. Truth be told, mead is still quite popular as a heritage drink in Ethiopia. Though, they know it as “Tej,” and it’s history dates back to the 4th century.
For those of us who remember King Midas, the great king from Greek mythology who was cursed with the “Midas touch” which turned everything he touched into gold, well it turns out he was actually a real king! And apparently he and his father really enjoyed mead as well!
In 1957, a conspicuous hill in Turkey was found to actually be a royal burial mound. And guess who’s stuff was inside… Well, if you guessed Midas, you’d be wrong, but no more wrong than the archaeologists that found the place and declared it as the great tomb of King Midus. Haha! Well, thankfully technology has improved a LOT since 1957, and we have since been able to determine that the tomb was a bit older than the original discoverers had realized, and it actually belonged to Midas’ father.
We also learned from the residue left in in several vessels, including a rather conspicuous 2,700 year old ram’s head goblet, that Midus’ father, and likely he himself were BIG fans of supple blends of honey and ales. I mean, you’ve got to really love something to want to bring it with you into eternity, right?
Moving more into Viking territory though, another tomb nearly as old as that of the Midas family, is the 2,500 year old tomb of Hochdorf, in Germany. This is one archeological find that makes me wish I could go back in time, because what was found there nearly knocked me out of my seat. Among a tomb littered with drinking horns was a 500-liter cauldron(over 132 gallons)! And yes, when tested, they found a copious amount of honey residue all over the bottom. Somebody back then knew how it was done!
But, still older, and I’m sorry to say, very very far removed from the Scandinavians and their ancestors, are the traces of meads found in of all places… China! You heard it right. Some of the oldest physical traces of fermented honey beverages were found in China, and they date back nearly 9,000 years! An archaeological chemist Patrick E. McGovern, who goes around the world discovering and recreating ancient alcohols (I want his job!), has analyzed an ancient Chinese drink that was made from rice, honey, and fruit, making it a unique blend of a Melomel and a Braggot, but we will be getting into those specialized mead terms in the next section.
This is the section where everyone but the fans of microbrewing may start to feel a little intimidated. When I started out, I didn’t want to know or even care about specialty terms and varieties. I’ll be perfectly honest, I got into mead making for the fun and for the booze! And, it was fun, and there was lots of booze to be had. Haha! But, as you will find, just like in the craft beer world, no one really takes you seriously if you can’t keep up with the lingo. So, in this section, we’ll learn a few words to help expand your mead vocabulary.
Starting simply, Mead. Mead is a term that just means, “the fermentation of honey.” There is no such thing as a “honey mead,” because mead only has one ingredient besides water and yeast, and that is honey. Saying “honey mead” isn’t wrong by any means, but it is redundant, and it may net you a giggle or two for breaking your Viking character while out with your friends.
Typically, an organic or at least unfiltered honey will be used, and the more potent the flavor of the honey, the more will carry over into the final product. Wildflower, Buckwheat, Orange Blossom, etc. all have a great flavor, and while you can use clover honey, there isn’t much of that rich wild honey flavor to work with. And, please god, stay away from cranberry honey! You don’t need that in your life… consider yourself warned. Haha!
A melomel is a mead that has had fruit introduced at some point during or after fermentation. Introducing fruit during fermentationreduces the fruit flavor, due to the yeast going to town on the fruit sugars, along with the sugars in the honey. Introducing fruit or fruit juice/concentrate after fermentation leaves all the fruit sugars intact, making it much fruitier. Typically mead makers will toss in a lemon, or some piece of citrus to give the yeast a boost when they are setting up and getting used the their new home in your fermenter, but that doesn’t make it a melomel… though I’m sure some people would love to debate that point.
Fruits that sit will with rich honey flavors include, Peach, Blueberry, Strawberry, Apple, Raspberry, Blackberry, etc. Basically, if it would taste good covered in honey, it will taste AMAZING in honey!
Metheglin’s aren’t as far out as you may think. If you’ve ever had a spiced cider or a mulled wine, you’ve had something like a metheglin. Basically, a metheglin is a spiced mead. Adding spices during or after fermentation can totally change the flavor of your mead, and possibly even the temperature it is best consumed at, or even the season you’d prefer drinking it in.
Spices like clove, nutmeg, cinnamon, coriander, and bay leaf all work amazingly well to craft sweet and spicy meads that are best served from warm to hot and make light snow so much more enjoyable.
A pyment is a mead that has been fermented along with grapes, or has had grapes or grape juice introduced at some point during or after fermentation. It doesn’t matter if they are red, green, or white grapes, it’s the succulent skins of the grape that bring all the flavor. So, if you really want to do that much work, you could peel all the grapes to reduce the tangy flavor, or ad only skins to enrich the mead with a more wine-like body of tannins.
A braggot is as I mentioned before when we were discussing King Midas, is a mix of mead and grainsthat are typically associated with ails or beers. They maybe malted (sprouted) or un-malted (un-germinated) and could be anything that with starch. However, I have never really heard of a “corn mead,” so I would probably stay away from the cattle feed end of the spectrum of grains. Corn is used in beer and whiskey mash for its sugar content, and honey by itself brings plenty of that to the table. Otherwise, adding grains into a mead will help to develop the “body” of the mead into something more akin to an ale.
Possible grains could be Barley, Rye, Rice, Oatmeal, etc.
If you didn’t sleep through high school botany like I did, you may recognize part of the name of this unique mead already. The “Rhodo-” in rhodomel is the same as the rhodo- in Rhododendron, the scientific name for Roses. So, yes, rhodomel is a mead with roses(pedals, hips, or water) added. But, be ready if you intend to make a rhodomel. You will need a substantial amount of pedals and/or hips to really get any flavor out of them, and adding rose water would dilute your mead so much, you’d likely be better off adding your mead to the rose water instead of the other way around.
I’ll admit, I’m still a bit scared to try this one… A capsicumel is as I’m sure you could guess by the word “capsicum,” is a mead made with peppers. … I have nothing more to say about this…
If you've read the rich history and I have to clap you on the back and invite you to the mead-maker’s club, because we are about to get into the best part of this blog post... MEAD MAKING!
Now, you may or may not recall that we released a Viking mead recipe back in 2017, and we've had lots of passionate microbrewers and aspiring mead makers asking for more mead content! That's why we're breaking down the step-by-step instructions here.
You can make mead in pretty much any container, but to be safe, glass, steel, ceramic, or food-grad plastics should be used when making any consumable goods.
Sanitizing Agent
CO2 Bubbler Valve (Airlock)
1-5 gallon container (carboy)
3-15 pounds of honey
2-5 grams of yeast
