Honey is unique among fermented substances. As always, when it comes to alcoholic beverages, yeasts are integral to mead making. Mead, though, poses unique challenges, relative to beer and wine because honey is not an ideal food source for yeast*. Ever ingenious, humans have found ways to surmount the hurdles that honey presents for those intent on transforming it into an alcoholic beverage from honey.
The early mead makers eventually solved the problem with the addition of wild fruits and grains, both of which are more suitable yeast substrates, hence facilitate honey fermentation. Patrick McGovern refers to these augmented meads as grogs. They are essentially, part mead, part wine, part beer but it was the quest for stronger mead that probably motivated grog development.
The earliest evidence of a mead grog comes from Jiahu in northern China around 9,000 years ago. The Chinese grog contained fermented honey augmented with domesticated rice, as well as hawthorn fruit and wild grapes.
It is noteworthy that the fruits—including the grapes—in the Jiahu grog were wild. At that time, no fruit species had yet been domesticated, except, perhaps, figs. Dates and olives were the next to be domesticated in western Asia. Grapes weren’t domesticated until at least 2,000 years after the Jiahu grog was made. Once grapes and other fruits—e.g. pomegranates, apples, pears, citrus and stone fruits, such as peaches, plums, apricots and cherries—were domesticated, they came to predominate over wild fruits in grogs.
The majority of domesticated grains and fruits devoted to divine communion, however, came to be fermented as more or less pure beers and wines, which were much easier to produce in quantity than mead, no matter how augmented. Nonetheless, mead grogs continued to be produced for the elites, as is evident from a grog dated from over 6,000 years after the one found in Jiahu. This grog comes from the tomb of the famous Phrygian king, Midas, who epitomized the aphorism “be careful what you wish for”. In his case it was that everything he touched turned to gold. After his initial exhilaration at having his wish granted, he soon realized its downside, first when it came to food and drink. Gold is not easy to chew, nor is it particularly nutritious. Unfortunately for Midas, comestibles were not the only problem—he eventually touched his daughter with predictable results.
The man behind the myth was a powerful figure. As is often the case with powerful figures, their tombs are as monumental as their egos, and throughout much of human history replete with the trappings required for an afterlife as privileged as the actual life just completed. The tomb of Midas was huge, one of the most prominent features in the surrounding landscape—even thousands of years after its construction-- when it was discovered by University of Pennsylvania archaeologists in the 1940s. Inside, it was supplied with, well, a feast for a king. And a large retinue too. This feast was a banquet. Among this bounty was a mead grog, the only alcoholic beverage identified—by Patrick McGovern, the pioneering molecular archaeologist-- through residues in the pottery. In composition this grog closely resembled that of Jiahu but the grains were domesticated barley and wheat, and the fruit was domesticated grapes.
Both beer and wine had been available for thousands of years by the time Midas was buried. That a mead grog was deemed more appropriate than pure beer or wine for the next phase of king Midas’s “existence” is testimony to the high regard in which honey-based alcoholic beverages held at this time. There were probably two reasons for this. First was the relative scarcity of honey, compared to domesticated grains and grapes, enhancing its prestige; second, honey-based beverages probably tasted a whole lot better than the beers and wines available at this time. They certainly aged better.
By the time of king Midas (sixth century B.C.) meads in various forms could be found throughout much of the old world. It is mentioned in the foundational Hindu text, the Rig Veda (1500-1200 B.C.E. ), as well as in Ancient Egyptian illustrations from the tomb of the pre-dynastic Pharaoh Scorpion I (3100 B.C.E.). In Europe, another tomb for a king contained more archaeological evidence for the widespread popularity of mead among royalty. In The so-called Hochdorf tomb, near Hohensberg, Germany (~500 B.C.E.), huge (500 liter) pottery storage vessel were preserved, as well as animal horns for dipping. The vessel contained another grog-like mead.
Beekeeping Means More Mead
Until the 15th century, honey was virtually the sole sweetener for human foods that were not fruits. Hence, there has long been an incentive to maintain a more reliable source of honey than that provided by wild bees. There is Evidence of some form of husbandry from at least 4,000 years ago in western Asia, and the Egyptians seem to have taken it to the next level in the form of portable artificial beehives. This made honey more readily available and in unprecedented quantities. Potentially, at least, there would be mead available for commoners, at least seasonally.
The quasi-democratic Greeks may have been the first to spread this wealth. Even so, Greek mead was still largely reserved for special occasions, ceremonies and celebrations. (Some believe that Dionysius was originally the god of mead, only later the god of wine.) The Romans too drank mead, though wine was their staple. In his opus, The Natural History, Pliny the Elder, describes how to make a pure mead consisting only of honey and water. (A 40 day fermentation was recommended.) Most Roman meads, however, were augmented with grapes and/or grape juice, as described in a recipe from Columella (4-70 C.E.), the foremost expert on agriculture of his time.
When first encountered by the Romans, the Celtic, Germanic and Slavic tribes of Europe were already at least occasional mead makers. Under the Roman influence and more advanced beekeeping, they no doubt increased production. The Middle Ages, especially in northern Europe, was the Golden Age for mead enthusiasts. The Celtic bard, Taliesin, rhapsodized about mead in the 6th century. Later (8th-11th century), the poet, Beowulf, also sang its praise in the oldest preserved English text. Beowulf set his tale in Scandinavia, which seems especially appropriate in retrospect, for it was the Norse, particularly the Vikings, with whom we most associate mead.
The central event in Beowulf occurs in a large communal banqueting hall, called Heriot. Here, the giant, Grendel, slaughters two armies, themselves in the process of slaughtering each other in a mead-fueled dispute. (It was evidently the noise they made that bothered Grendel and prompted his actions.) Heriot was what came to be known as a mead hall because mead was the primary motivation for the social gatherings that occurred there, usually at the behest of a king. Though fighting was particularly bad form in mead halls, it seems to have occurred repeatedly throughout the northern European Middle Ages. It was not so much due to the fact that mead induced violence, rather devious plans made in advance to kill enemies once their wits and fighting skills were mead-compromised.
The most famous mead hall was Valhalla, the Viking paradise for which men killed in battle were rewarded. The menu at Valhalla is revealing. It consisted solely of boar meat and mead. The Vikings, evidently, were not fond of vegetables. The absence of bread, though, is somewhat puzzling. Perhaps in paradise mead is a sufficient carb source.
Presiding over Valhalla was the great Norse God, Odin, who famously stole the magic mead of poetry and wisdom from a giant, who had himself stolen it from a band of dwarves. The dwarves were not to be pitied in this tale, as they had previously acquired the magic mead –by quite nefarious means, from the man for whom the gods had originally made it. Fortunately the chain of custody ended at Odin. Even more fortunate, he was willing to share it with mortals, particularly those of a poetic bent. In doing so, he facilitated their worshipful communication with him.
Even in the Viking period mead was usually adulterated, often with herbs and grains. Meads consisting of Honey fermented with herbs are called metheglins. Meads consisting of honey fermented with grains came to be known as braggots. In Southern Europe, fruits of various sorts continued to be an important part of the mix. The fruit and honey combos are called melomels. Melomels are distinguished from each other by the fruit source: grape melomels are called “pyments”; apple melomels are called “cysers”. Columella’s recipe was for a pyment.
Though mead is a staple of Renaissance fairs, its popularity had begun to wane by the Renaissance, especially in southern Europe, where wine culture was most advanced. Mead, in various guises did remain popular in the north—including Elizabethan England-- but nowhere near as popular as in the Middle Ages. Much fermented honey was consumed in the form of braggots, which remained popular until relatively recently.
Post-Renaissance, mead experienced a steady decline in popularity. Several factors probably contributed. One being the arrival of distilled spirits, which brought consumers into communion with god much more expeditiously than any mead concoction. Distilled spirits could be produced much more quickly as well. Another important cause of mead’s decline was the increased availability of cane sugar, beginning in the 16th century. This cut into the honey market generally. Beeswax, especially important in the candle industry, was also replaced by cheaper substitutes, including, ultimately, sperm whale oil for lamps.
By the 18th century mead consumption was largely confined to special events. It has been alleged, albeit without much proof, that the term “Honeymoon” is derived from the practice of supplying newlyweds with a month supply of mead. The mead would certainly be an effective a sexual icebreaker, especially valuable for arranged marriages. The brides may have been especially grateful for this sexual lubricant.
The conservative impulses of the Catholic Church may have saved mead from oblivion in much of Western Europe. While everyone else had abandoned beeswax candles, the Catholic authorities insisted that only the traditional beeswax could fulfill the holy role of interior church illumination. (Rapeseed oil and other substitutes, which burn much more cleanly, were abjured for the sake of tradition. (The high seeming price of candle-blackened interiors was tolerated to this end.) Monasteries were charged with supplying the beeswax, one corollary of which was honey. Some monasteries, most notably Lindesfarne, became known for their well-crafted meads. Since time is not money in a monastery, the long fermentations required for pure meads were no hardship.
Elsewhere in Europe, mead remained more common, especially among Slavic populations. A strong and diverse mead-making tradition continued unabated in Poland, the apotheosis of which is the world famous Poltarak, a so called Great Mead, which is intended to age for several years. Medovina remains a popular mead among western Slavic populations, as is Medovukha among eastern Slavs, particularly Russians. Britain also managed to maintain its mead tradition, albeit in a somewhat muted form. Braggots and cysers remained popular, as did metheglins of various sorts, including wassails, a mulled Yuletide treat. Wassails were originally mead mulled with cinnamon, nutmeg and other spices, with some floating apples. The apple component, in the form of cider, has come to predominate in modern wassails, the mead component dropped accordingly.
This brief history of mead has been quite Eurocentric because developments have been easiest do document there. But mead has long been produced worldwide, wherever social bees of various species gather in colonies of sufficient size to produce honey worth harvesting. Mead is consumed throughout Asia and Latin America. Africa may very well have been the cradle of mead as it was of mankind. An Ethiopian mead, called tej (rhymes with hedge), deserves mention.
Tej, which has a long history of over 4,000 years, was, like most meads, originally reserved for emperors and their retinues. Now, though, it is a drink for all. Tej is mostly made on small scales, often in homes. It is widely served in special bars called Tej Bets, where it is typically drunk from distinctive wide-bottomed, long-necked flasks. Tej is a metheglin and its distinctive coloration comes from the gesho plant, which functions as an antimicrobial bittering agent, much like hops. Gesho also provides the color for tej. Like many members of the buckthorn family (Rhamnaceae), gesho has long been used for yellow dyes. When gesho leaves are added to the mead, its color becomes pale to medium yellow. When gesho bark is added, it becomes the color of orange juice. It is the barked version that is generally consumed. For many westerners it is an acquired taste; for Ethiopians it is ambrosia, except, of course, for the abstemious Islamic citizens.
The Mead Revival
Mead was never an important beverage in America. The early European settlers didn’t begin arriving in earnest until mead was in decline in their homelands. Rum, cider and beer were the early staples. Eventually rum was largely displaced by whiskey. Much later wine gained a strong foothold but not mead. Until recently, that is. Ironically, the United States has become the epicenter of a worldwide mead revival. In 1980 there were only a few meaderies, now there are over 200.
The new enthusiasm for mead needs to be viewed in the context of the boom in artisanal booze generally. The craft beer revolution, in particular, was the inspiration for many modern day mead makers. Home brewers, in their insatiable quest for novel flavors and fermentable substrates, eventually came to address the challenge of honey. As was the case with craft beers, American home brewers, not only revived old styles but also created entirely new concoctions. At this point, it will help to review traditional mead categories:
Were Mead Yeasts Lost Or Did They Never Evolve?
Modern S. cerevisiae yeast strains are specialists; their niche preferences—temperature, pH alcohol tolerance-- are quite narrow relative to their wild ancestors. Such specialization is a hallmark of the domestication process and reflects, in part, the partitioning of the original genetic variation present in wild ancestors into distinct breeds or strains by the human hand, either hidden (unconscious) or unhidden (conscious). Consider horse breeds, for example.
The Thoroughbred breed specializes in racing over short distances; Percherons and Clydesdales, on the other hand, specialize in hauling heavy loads. Other breeds—such as Morgans and Hanoverians—are better suited to convey humans, either mounted or in carriages of various sorts, over longer distances.
Diverse tasks require diverse traits. For racing, increased heart and lung capacity are essential, ergo huge chest cavities. Conversely, racing ability is also enhanced by streamlining the rest of the body, from head to foot. If you want to haul heavy loads, on the other hand, strength is what you most desire. Since strength is directly proportional to size, you are going to need a big horse. As a consequence, draft horses such as Percherons and Clydesdales are the largest of all horse breeds. Both racehorses and draft horses have geeticaly diverged greatly from their wild ancestors to meet these divergent human niches.
The same goes for yeasts. Different tasks (human-created niches) require different traits. Bread, beer and wine, for example, provide diverse niches for which yeasts specialized for one of those particular activities will out compete generalist yeast that more resemble their wild ancestors. For yeasts, specialization begins with the nature of the fermentable sugars. Not all sugars are created equal from a yeast’s perspective. Consider first the sugars relevant to beer. Beer, you will recall, results from the fermentation of starches. Starches per se are indigestible for yeasts; rather, the yeasts feed on the sugars that result from the enzymatic breakdown of starches, most notably maltose and malotriose. Wines, on the other hand, are fruit-based. The most abundant fruit sugar is glucose; fructose and sucrose are secondary sugars. Finally, there is mead. The primary sugar in honey is fructose, though glucose is also abundant.
Generalist wild S. cerevisiae could exploit all of these sugar sources, but as grogs, in which all of these sugars are present, evolved into beer, wine and mead, domesticated yeast strains came to specialize, to more efficiently consume some sugars over others. Wines required the least evolutionary work, the least genetic modification, because glucose has always been the primary food source of wild yeasts. Beers and bread required considerable genetic modification to efficiently utilize maltose and malotriose. Pure meads would have required the greatest genetic modification of yeast strains because of the relative indigestibility of fructose and the poor nutrient environment.
The question, then, is whether there ever were yeast strains adapted specifically to ferment pure mead. That is, whether pure meads—as opposed to grogs, braggots and melomels-- were ever made in sufficient quantity to induce the evolution of pure mead yeasts. If so, they were probably lost during the long post-Rennaissance decline in mead consumption. Or maybe not. Mead-specific yeast strains may continue to exist in the Slavic world, where the mead tradition remained strong. An examination of Poltorak yeasts, for example, may prove most informative, a potential source for modern mead makers. And then there is Ethiopian Tej, which has been continuously produced for over 4,000 years
Grogs
Honey is unique among fermented substances. As always, when it comes to alcoholic beverages, yeasts integral to mead making. Mead, though, poses unique challenges, relative to beer and wine because honey is not an ideal food source for yeast*. Ever ingenious, humans have found ways to surmount the hurdles that honey presents for those intent on transforming it into an alcoholic beverage from honey.
The early mead makers eventually solved the problem with the addition of wild fruits and grains, both of which are more suitable yeast substrates, hence facilitate honey fermentation. Patrick McGovern refers to these augmented meads as grogs. They are essentially, part mead, part wine, part beer but it was the quest for stronger mead that probably motivated grog development.
The earliest evidence of a mead grog comes from Jiahu in northern China around 9,000 years ago. The Chinese grog contained fermented honey augmented with domesticated rice, as well as hawthorn fruit and wild grapes.
It is noteworthy that the fruits—including the grapes—in the Jiahu grog were wild. At that time, no fruit species had yet been domesticated, except, perhaps, figs. Dates and olives were the next to be domesticated in western Asia. Grapes weren’t domesticated until at least 2,000 years after the Jiahu grog was made. Once grapes and other fruits—e.g. pomegranates, apples, pears, citrus and stone fruits, such as peaches, plums, apricots and cherries—were domesticated, they came to predominate over wild fruits in grogs.
The majority of domesticated grains and fruits devoted to divine communion, however, came to be fermented as more or less pure beers and wines, which were much easier to produce in quantity than mead, no matter how augmented. Nonetheless, mead grogs continued to be produced for the elites, as is evident from a grog dated from over 6,000 years after the one found in Jiahu. This grog comes from the tomb of the famous Phrygian king, Midas, who epitomized the aphorism “be careful what you wish for”. In his case it was that everything he touched turned to gold. After his initial exhilaration at having his wish granted, he soon realized its downside, first when it came to food and drink. Gold is not easy to chew, nor is it particularly nutritious. Unfortunately for Midas, comestibles were not the only problem—he eventually touched his daughter with predictable results.
The man behind the myth was a powerful figure. As is often the case with powerful figures, their tombs are as monumental as their egos, and throughout much of human history replete with the trappings required for an afterlife as privileged as the actual life just completed. The tomb of Midas was huge, one of the most prominent features in the surrounding landscape—even thousands of years after its construction-- when it was discovered by University of Pennsylvania archaeologists in the 1940s. Inside, it was supplied with, well, a feast for a king. And a large retinue too. This feast was a banquet. Among this bounty was a mead grog, the only alcoholic beverage identified—by Patrick McGovern, the pioneering molecular archaeologist-- through residues in the pottery. In composition this grog closely resembled that of Jiahu but the grains were domesticated barley and wheat, and the fruit was domesticated grapes.
Both beer and wine had been available for thousands of years by the time Midas was buried. That a mead grog was deemed more appropriate than pure beer or wine for the next phase of king Midas’s “existence” is testimony to the high regard in which honey-based alcoholic beverages held at this time. There were probably two reasons for this. First was the relative scarcity of honey, compared to domesticated grains and grapes, enhancing its prestige; second, honey-based beverages probably tasted a whole lot better than the beers and wines available at this time. They certainly aged better.
By the time of king Midas (sixth century B.C.) meads in various forms could be found throughout much of the old world. It is mentioned in the foundational Hindu text, the Rig Veda (1500-1200 B.C.E. ), as well as in Ancient Egyptian illustrations from the tomb of the pre-dynastic Pharaoh Scorpion I (3100 B.C.E.). In Europe, another tomb for a king contained more archaeological evidence for the widespread popularity of mead among royalty. In The so-called Hochdorf tomb, near Hohensberg, Germany (~500 B.C.E.), huge (500 liter) pottery storage vessel were preserved, as well as animal horns for dipping. The vessel contained another grog-like mead.
Beekeeping Means More Mead
Until the 15th century, honey was virtually the sole sweetener for human foods that were not fruits. Hence, there has long been an incentive to maintain a more reliable source of honey than that provided by wild bees. There is Evidence of some form of husbandry from at least 4,000 years ago in western Asia, and the Egyptians seem to have taken it to the next level in the form of portable artificial beehives. This made honey more readily available and in unprecedented quantities. Potentially, at least, there would be mead available for commoners, at least seasonally.
The quasi-democratic Greeks may have been the first to spread this wealth. Even so, Greek mead was still largely reserved for special occasions, ceremonies and celebrations. (Some believe that Dionysius was originally the god of mead, only later the god of wine.) The Romans too drank mead, though wine was their staple. In his opus, The Natural History, Pliny the Elder, describes how to make a pure mead consisting only of honey and water. (A 40 day fermentation was recommended.) Most Roman meads, however, were augmented with grapes and/or grape juice, as described in a recipe from Columella (4-70 C.E.), the foremost expert on agriculture of his time.
When first encountered by the Romans, the Celtic, Germanic and Slavic tribes of Europe were already at least occasional mead makers. Under the Roman influence and more advanced beekeeping, they no doubt increased production. The Middle Ages, especially in northern Europe, was the Golden Age for mead enthusiasts. The Celtic bard, Taliesin, rhapsodized about mead in the 6th century. Later (8th-11th century), the poet, Beowulf, also sang its praise in the oldest preserved English text. Beowulf set his tale in Scandinavia, which seems especially appropriate in retrospect, for it was the Norse, particularly the Vikings, with whom we most associate mead.
The central event in Beowulf occurs in a large communal banqueting hall, called Heriot. Here, the giant, Grendel, slaughters two armies, themselves in the process of slaughtering each other in a mead-fueled dispute. (It was evidently the noise they made that bothered Grendel and prompted his actions.) Heriot was what came to be known as a mead hall because mead was the primary motivation for the social gatherings that occurred there, usually at the behest of a king. Though fighting was particularly bad form in mead halls, it seems to have occurred repeatedly throughout the northern European Middle Ages. It was not so much due to the fact that mead induced violence, rather devious plans made in advance to kill enemies once their wits and fighting skills were mead-compromised.
The most famous mead hall was Valhalla, the Viking paradise for which men killed in battle were rewarded. The menu at Valhalla is revealing. It consisted solely of boar meat and mead. The Vikings, evidently, were not fond of vegetables. The absence of bread, though, is somewhat puzzling. Perhaps in paradise mead is a sufficient carb source.
Presiding over Valhalla was the great Norse God, Odin, who famously stole the magic mead of poetry and wisdom from a giant, who had himself stolen it from a band of dwarves. The dwarves were not to be pitied in this tale, as they had previously acquired the magic mead –by quite nefarious means, from the man for whom the gods had originally made it. Fortunately the chain of custody ended at Odin. Even more fortunate, he was willing to share it with mortals, particularly those of a poetic bent. In doing so, he facilitated their worshipful communication with him.
Even in the Viking period mead was usually adulterated, often with herbs and grains. Meads consisting of Honey fermented with herbs are called metheglins. Meads consisting of honey fermented with grains came to be known as braggots. In Southern Europe, fruits of various sorts continued to be an important part of the mix. The fruit and honey combos are called melomels. Melomels are distinguished from each other by the fruit source: grape melomels are called “pyments”; apple melomels are called “cysers”. Columella’s recipe was for a pyment.
Though mead is a staple of Renaissance fairs, its popularity had begun to wane by the Renaissance, especially in southern Europe, where wine culture was most advanced. Mead, in various guises did remain popular in the north—including Elizabethan England-- but nowhere near as popular as in the Middle Ages. Much fermented honey was consumed in the form of braggots, which remained popular until relatively recently.
Post-Renaissance, mead experienced a steady decline in popularity. Several factors probably contributed. One being the arrival of distilled spirits, which brought consumers into communion with god much more expeditiously than any mead concoction. Distilled spirits could be produced much more quickly as well. Another important cause of mead’s decline was the increased availability of cane sugar, beginning in the 16th century. This cut into the honey market generally. Beeswax, especially important in the candle industry, was also replaced by cheaper substitutes, including, ultimately, sperm whale oil for lamps.
By the 18th century mead consumption was largely confined to special events. It has been alleged, albeit without much proof, that the term “Honeymoon” is derived from the practice of supplying newlyweds with a month supply of mead. The mead would certainly be an effective a sexual icebreaker, especially valuable for arranged marriages. The brides may have been especially grateful for this sexual lubricant.
The conservative impulses of the Catholic Church may have saved mead from oblivion in much of Western Europe. While everyone else had abandoned beeswax candles, the Catholic authorities insisted that only the traditional beeswax could fulfill the holy role of interior church illumination. (Rapeseed oil and other substitutes, which burn much more cleanly, were abjured for the sake of tradition. (The high seeming price of candle-blackened interiors was tolerated to this end.) Monasteries were charged with supplying the beeswax, one corollary of which was honey. Some monasteries, most notably Lindesfarne, became known for their well-crafted meads. Since time is not money in a monastery, the long fermentations required for pure meads were no hardship.
Elsewhere in Europe, mead remained more common, especially among Slavic populations. A strong and diverse mead-making tradition continued unabated in Poland, the apotheosis of which is the world famous Poltarak, a so called Great Mead, which is intended to age for several years. Medovina remains a popular mead among western Slavic populations, as is Medovukha among eastern Slavs, particularly Russians. Britain also managed to maintain its mead tradition, albeit in a somewhat muted form. Braggots and cysers remained popular, as did metheglins of various sorts, including wassails, a mulled Yuletide treat. Wassails were originally mead mulled with cinnamon, nutmeg and other spices, with some floating apples. The apple component, in the form of cider, has come to predominate in modern wassails, the mead component dropped accordingly.
This brief history of mead has been quite Eurocentric because developments have been easiest do document there. But mead has long been produced worldwide, wherever social bees of various species gather in colonies of sufficient size to produce honey worth harvesting. Mead is consumed throughout Asia and Latin America. Africa may very well have been the cradle of mead as it was of mankind. An Ethiopian mead, called tej (rhymes with hedge), deserves mention.
Tej, which has a long history of over 4,000 years, was, like most meads, originally reserved for emperors and their retinues. Now, though, it is a drink for all. Tej is mostly made on small scales, often in homes. It is widely served in special bars called Tej Bets, where it is typically drunk from distinctive wide-bottomed, long-necked flasks. Tej is a metheglin and its distinctive coloration comes from the gesho plant, which functions as an antimicrobial bittering agent, much like hops. Gesho also provides the color for tej. Like many members of the buckthorn family (Rhamnaceae), gesho has long been used for yellow dyes. When gesho leaves are added to the mead, its color becomes pale to medium yellow. When gesho bark is added, it becomes the color of orange juice. It is the barked version that is generally consumed. For many westerners it is an acquired taste; for Ethiopians it is ambrosia, except, of course, for the abstemious Islamic citizens.
The Mead Revival
Mead was never an important beverage in America. The early European settlers didn’t begin arriving in earnest until mead was in decline in their homelands. Rum, cider and beer were the early staples. Eventually rum was largely displaced by whiskey. Much later wine gained a strong foothold but not mead. Until recently, that is. Ironically, the United States has become the epicenter of a worldwide mead revival. In 1980 there were only a few meaderies, now there are over 200.
The new enthusiasm for mead needs to be viewed in the context of the boom in artisanal booze generally. The craft beer revolution, in particular, was the inspiration for many modern day mead makers. Home brewers, in their insatiable quest for novel flavors and fermentable substrates, eventually came to address the challenge of honey. As was the case with craft beers, American home brewers, not only revived old styles but also created entirely new concoctions. At this point, it will help to review traditional mead categories:
Category Content Example
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Grogs Honey, Jiahu
Malted Grain Midas
Fruit Some Viking Meads
Braggot Honey Many northern European
Malted Grain From Middle Ages to the 19th Century
Melomel Honey Most Roman Meads
Fruit (Grapes: Pyments)
Many British Meads
(Apples: Cysers)
Metheglin Honey Traditional Wassails
Herbs Tej
Spices
Mead-Mead Just Honey Valhalla Viking Meads Poltorak
All of these traditional mead styles can be had from contemporary meaderies, often with modern twists. For example, each of these mead styles are now made in sparkling versions, usually with a secondary fermentation in the bottle, much like champagne. The range of alcohol concentration has also expanded. There have always been low alcohol meads (called hydromels), which are made by increasing the water to honey ratio and/or reducing fermentation times. Traditionally, alcohol levels varied from 5-15%. High alcohol versions are called sack meads, after the British colloquialism for sherry. Modern mead brewers have pushed the envelope to 20% and beyond.
Modern meads also vary widely in their residual sugars and hence degree of sweetness. One important trend is toward extremely dry meads meant to be more food friendly. Here mead makers are in open competition with wine makers. Dry meads are fine, as long as they don’t lead to the snobbish, misguided aversion to any residual sweetness as has occurred among wine enthusiasts, which has led to the decline in popularity of some of the worlds greatest wines. To my mind, a future fetish for dry meads will render the mead revival problematic. Semi sweet and sweet meads have considerable virtues, food or no food. And semi-sweet meads work quite well with spicy Asian dishes.
Contemporary mead makers have enthusiastically expanded the range of adjunct ingredients, especially for melomels, which was already broad in traditional meads: grapes, apples, pears, raspberries, cherries, blueberries, currents and mulberries, to name a few. To this panoply have been added citruses of various sorts, a number of stone fruits—such as plums, nectarines, apricots and peaches. I have recently sampled several meads made with chile peppers--an increasingly popular style--and was pleasantly surprised by the successful marriage of sweet and spicy hot, much like good Thai cuisine.
Mead is now being made at an unprecedented rate and it’s not because of an increase in the honey supply. The secret to modern mead making is shorter fermentations. Traditionally meads took months to complete their fermentations and often became stuck along the way. The problem, as I described earlier, is that honey is not an ideal food for S. cerevisiae. Scientific research has resulted in impressive advances toward shorter fermentations, as little as 7-10 days, which is on a par with wine. The secret is a sequential, well-timed addition of essential nutrients, particularly nitrogen, as well as vitamin/micronutrient boosters.
What is surprising is the lack of progress in creating mead-specific yeast strains. As any mead maker knows, the flavor profile of mead, as for wine and beer, is greatly influenced by the yeast strain used. Yet, in my conversations with mead makers from California to Vermont, I have found that only a few commercial yeast strains account for the vast majority of mead made during the mead revival. These are almost invariably strains developed for white wine or champagne. That means a vast space of potential mead flavors has not been explored. To understand this sub-optimal state of affairs we need to consider the factors that caused the divergence of domestic yeast strains from their wild ancestors.
Were Mead Yeasts Lost Or Did They Never Evolve?
Modern S. cerevisiae yeast strains are specialists; their niche preferences—temperature, pH alcohol tolerance-- are quite narrow relative to their wild ancestors. Such specialization is a hallmark of the domestication process and reflects, in part, the partitioning of the original genetic variation present in wild ancestors into distinct breeds or strains by the human hand, either hidden (unconscious) or unhidden (conscious). Consider horse breeds, for example.
The Thoroughbred breed specializes in racing over short distances; Percherons and Clydesdales, on the other hand, specialize in hauling heavy loads. Other breeds—such as Morgans and Hanoverians—are better suited to convey humans, either mounted or in carriages of various sorts, over longer distances.
Diverse tasks require diverse traits. For racing, increased heart and lung capacity are essential, ergo huge chest cavities. Conversely, racing ability is also enhanced by streamlining the rest of the body, from head to foot. If you want to haul heavy loads, on the other hand, strength is what you most desire. Since strength is directly proportional to size, you are going to need a big horse. As a consequence, draft horses such as Percherons and Clydesdales are the largest of all horse breeds. Both racehorses and draft horses have diverged greatly from their wild ancestors to meet these divergent human niches.
The same goes for yeasts. Different tasks (human-created niches) require different traits. Bread, beer and wine, for example, provide diverse niches for which yeasts specialized for one of those particular activities will out compete generalist yeast that more resemble their wild ancestors. For yeasts, specialization begins with the nature of the fermentable sugars. Not all sugars are created equal from a yeast’s perspective. Consider first the sugars relevant to beer. Beer, you will recall, results from the fermentation of starches. Starches per se are indigestible for yeasts; rather, the yeasts feed on the sugars that result from the enzymatic breakdown of starches, most notably maltose and malotriose. Wines, on the other hand, are fruit-based. The most abundant fruit sugar is glucose; fructose and sucrose are secondary sugars. Finally, there is mead. The primary sugar in honey is fructose, though glucose is also abundant.
Generalist wild S. cerevisiae could exploit all of these sugar sources, but as grogs, in which all of these sugars are present, evolved into beer, wine and mead, domesticated yeast strains came to specialize, to more efficiently consume some sugars over others. Wines required the least evolutionary work, the least genetic modification, because glucose has always been the primary food source of wild yeasts. Beers and bread required considerable genetic modification to efficiently utilize maltose and malotriose. Pure meads would have required the greatest genetic modification of yeast strains because of the relative indigestibility of fructose and the poor nutrient environment.
The question, then, is whether there ever were yeast strains adapted specifically to ferment pure mead. That is, whether pure meads—as opposed to grogs, braggots and melomels-- were ever made in sufficient quantity to induce the evolution of pure mead yeasts. If so, they were probably lost during the long post-Rennaissance decline in mead consumption. Or maybe not. Mead-specific yeast strains may continue to exist in the Slavic world, where the mead tradition remained strong. An examination of Poltorak yeasts, for example, may prove most informative, a potential source for modern mead makers. And then there is Ethiopian Tej, which has been continuously produced for over 4,000 years. Mead enthusiasts would do well to examine any yeast strains isolated from Tej.
Tej is also an important reference point as the only mead made today through a natural fermentation, in which the fermenting vessel is open to the environment. As such, various Saccharomyces strains and non-Saccharomyces yeast species, as well as bacteria and filamentous fungi, are free to colonize and compete in the fermenting mead. This is the way all meads were made until quite recently. Now, however, virtually all other meads are inoculated with a single S. cerevisiae yeast strain and hermetically sealed from other microbes. This gives the mead maker more control over the fermentation but may well result in a less complex product. The issue of traditional natural fermentations versus inoculated monoculture fermentations has become the source of much dispute in the wine industry. Winemakers are increasingly adopting the traditional method. Mead makers have not followed suit but it is an obvious next step in the mead revival.
The natural fermentation of Tej probably explains, in part, why it is an acquired taste for westerners today. A mead enthusiast from the Middle Ages, may have found it delectable from the first sip. A Viking may have deemed it fit for Valhalla.or over 4,000 years. Mead enthusiasts would do well to examine any yeast strains isolated from Tej.
Tej is also an important reference point as the only mead made today through a natural fermentation, in which the fermenting vessel is open to the environment. As such, various Saccharomyces strains and non-Saccharomyces yeast species, as well as bacteria and filamentous fungi, are free to colonize and compete in the fermenting mead. This is the way all meads were made until quite recently. Now, however, virtually all other meads are inoculated with a single S. cerevisiae yeast strain and hermetically sealed from other microbes. This gives the mead maker more control over the fermentation but may well result in a less complex product. The issue of traditional natural fermentations versus inoculated monoculture fermentations has become the source of much dispute in the wine industry. Winemakers are increasingly adopting the traditional method. Mead makers have not followed suit but it is an obvious next step in the mead revival.
The natural fermentation of Tej probably explains, in part, why it is an acquired taste for westerners today. A mead enthusiast from the Middle Ages, may have found it delectable from the first sip. A Viking may have deemed it fit for Valhalla.
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