SC - Mead recipes from the Danish cookbook

[Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir]

Here are two or three mead recipes from the Danish cookbook, for the brewers
on the list. If anything sounds strange, I plead ignorance of brewing
methods, and especially of English brewing terminology. There  are a couple
of phrases I can´t quite find the meaning of, and modern Danish dictionaries
are no help - I´ll see if I can find a better dictionary somewhere, or maybe
someone has a suggestion.

How to make white mead that can be kept

For a barrel of mead, take 5 lispund* white honey (as taken from the  bees,
"dog bjerne wflactede",** as is usually done over in Skaane).  Fill  the
brewing cauldron with water, and for each barrel of mead you want  to brew,
take a double handful of sweet gale, with seeds, leaves and  stalks, and add
a double handful of hops, sewn into a sack, and boil  until it sinks. The
water should simmer or boil for around five hours.  Then take the cauldron
off the fire and pour the water into a barrel. Add  the honey and let it
soak well, then squeeze it with your hands and  place each handful of wax in
a basket. This you can do once or three times, until all the sweet stuff has
been removed from the wax (combs?)  and dissolved in the water, which is now
sweet and good. Pour it  through a hair sieve to remove all traces of comb
and scraps. Float an  egg or two in the liquid; if what shows of it above
the surface is as big  as a two skillinger coin***, then the liquid is
sufficiently sweet. Now ladle  the liquid back into the cauldron and boil it
for an hour. When it cools down to bloodwarm, pour it into barrels and add a
spoonful of yeast  to each barrel. When fermentation is complete, then fill
the barrel up  and close it and let it stand for a year, then drawn into
another barrel.

* One lispund is around 8 kilos.
** Not sure of the meaning, has something to do with how the honey (or
beehive?) is treated.
*** No, I don´t know how big that is.

Another method

For each part good, clear honey, take eight parts fresh spring water.  Pour
this into a large cauldron and simmer together on a slow fire, and  take
care the fire doesn´t smoke, and skim it carefully and often, as  long as
you see any scum rise to the surface. Do this until the water is  beginning
to be beautifully clear and clean. The longer you want to  keep this mead,
the longer you should boil it. When it cools off, then  pour it into a
barrel, but do not fill it to more than three fingerbreadths  below the
brim, so there is room for the fermentation.

If you want your mead to smell and taste strong and lively, then place  the
following spices, well crushed, in a sack and hang it in the barrel.  For
one barrel of mead, take:

Pepper, 6 lod*
Ginger, 8 lod
Grains of paradise, 2 lod
Cloves, 3 lod
Galingale, 3 lod
Cinnamon bark, 10 lod

If you want less spices, then take for each barrel:

Cinnamon bark, 4 lod
Ginger, 2 lod
Galingale, 1 lod
Cloves, 1 lod
Grains of paradise, 1 lod

When it is well fermented (Some fry an apple** and smear it with yeast  and
cast it into the barrel),  then let it stand tightly closed for 3 months,
before it is drunk.

In certain places in Livonia it is customary to bury the barrel deep into
the ground and cover it with earth and let it lie for a long time. This
mead becomes so strong and potent that it far surpasses wine, when
you want to make sombody drunk.

* A lod is 16 grams
** The term used is "krigsæble", literally "war apple"; I´m not sure what
is meant here. Wasn´t toasted bread sometimes used?

Nanna


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