SC - Mead

[david friedman]

Hannah Thomas asked about brewing a quick mead.

Mead can mean anything from a wine-strength drink which may take a year or
more to a roughly ginger-ale strength drink which may take only a week.
Anything which only ferments for a week will have a very low alcohol
content--on the one occasion we tested our quick mead, the alcohol content
was about 1 percent.  This means if you drink several large glasses of it,
you will feel some effect, but it takes a lot. Our recipe boils the honey
and water first, so one does not have to worry about bacteria; just make
sure everything you are using is clean.  You do have to worry about the
effects of carbon dioxide pressure; back when we bottled in glass bottles,
we had some bottles which exploded (literally) from the pressure, which was
a mess to clean up and would have been hazardous if we had been present at
the time.  We now use plastic soda bottles and open them chilled and very
carefully, so that we do not get a short-lived mead fountain instead of
being able to drink it (even chilled, it is often rather like trying to
open a warm Coke bottle which someone has thoughtfully shaken up before
handing to you to open).  Here is our recipe, from a 17th c. English source.

Weak Honey Drink [More commonly called Small Mead]
Digby p. 107/147

Take nine pints of warm fountain water, and dissolve in it one pint of pure
White-honey, by laving it therein, till it be dissolved. Then boil it
gently, skimming it all the while, till all the scum be perfectly scummed
off; and after that boil it a little longer, peradventure a quarter of an
hour. In all it will require two or three hours boiling, so that at last
one third part may be consumed. About a quarter of an hour before you cease
boiling, and take it from the fire, put to it a little spoonful of cleansed
and sliced Ginger; and almost half as much of the thin yellow rind of
Orange, when you are even ready to take it from the fire, so as the Orange
boil only one walm in it. Then pour it into a well-glased strong deep great
Gally-pot, and let it stand so, till it be almost cold, that it be scarce
Luke-warm. Then put to it a little silver-spoonful of pure Ale-yest, and
work it together with a Ladle to make it ferment: as soon as it beginneth
to do so, cover it close with a fit cover, and put a thick dubbled woollen
cloth about it. Cast all things so that this may be done when you are going
to bed. Next morning when you rise, you will find the barm gathered all
together in the middle; scum it clean off with a silver-spoon and a
feather, and bottle up the Liquor, stopping it very close. It will be ready
to drink in two or three days; but it will keep well a month or two. It
will be from the first very quick and pleasant. [end of original]

11 pints water	1 pint honey = 1 1/2 lb
1 T peeled, sliced fresh ginger (~1/4 oz)	1/2 T fresh orange peel
1/2 t yeast

Dissolve the honey in the water in a large pot and bring to a boil. Let it
boil down to 2/3 the original volume (8 pints), skimming periodically. This
will take about 2 1/2 to 3 hours; by the end it should be clear. About 15
minutes before it is done, add the ginger. Peel an orange to get only the
yellow part, not the white; a potato peeler works well for this. At the end
of the boiling, add the orange peel, let it boil a minute or so, and remove
from the heat. Let the mead cool to lukewarm, then add the yeast. The
original recipe appears to use a top fermenting ale yeast, but dried bread
yeast works. Cover and let sit 24-36 hours. Bottle it, using sturdy
bottles; the fermentation builds up considerable pressure. Refrigerate
after three or four days. Beware of exploding bottles. The mead will be
drinkable in a week, but better if you leave it longer.

This recipe is modified from the original by reducing the proportion of
honey and lengthening the time of fermentation before bottling. Both
changes are intended to reduce the incidence of broken bottles. Using 2
liter plastic soda bottles is unaesthetic, but they are safer than glass.

Elizabeth/Betty Cook


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