Topic The oldest Fermented Drink? Part 1
Pictures of Oregon Raspberry Mead and Wild flower Mead.
Being as how I am admittedly interested if not downright obsessed with all things ancient as it relates to food I felt I should embark on the great adventure of making wine and beer myself. Now I do not have the space to make grape wine and I’m not a great fan of most beers, but I do love my honey-wine; so what a better place to start.
Last year I started with two batches of mead, both 1-gallon sized. I wasn’t sure I would enjoy it enough to keep up the hobby and I wanted one of them to be made using wild yeast so I wanted to go small. The lesson with small (1 gallon as opposed to 3 or 5 gallons) is that you loose to much mead along the way what with racking to eliminate dead yeast cells etc, and it’s a lot of work so if you are interested I would advise at least 3 gallons to start, besides you can always through a mead party! I will post some pictures from last year along with ones from this year as I go along. As to why I didn’t blog on it last time….
The first batch of mead in 2010 was Oregon Raspberry made with commercial sweet mead yeast, and the second, Wildflower made by capturing wild yeast. Both were a success and produced enjoyable meads but were totally different. The names reflect the honey I used for both. The Oregon Raspberry made medium sweet mead with approximately 10 percent alcohol and the Wildflower made a dry mead with about 13 percent alcohol.
I used 3 ½ pounds of honey for both and the same amount of yeast nutrient so I was able to see what the different types of honey and yeast produced. I won’t go into the procedure for these two but I will be doing so for this year’s batch.
Wild yeast can be unpredictable so I will be using commercial yeasts from now on but as you will be able to see in the photo’s I am posting not only do the meads taste different there variations in the way they look as well-mostly the foam on the wildflower mead. There was a difference in the color as well but it doesn’t show up as much in the photos.
More to come….
Original article:
By Joanna Linsley-Poe
copyright 2011
AncientFoods
Mead-Glorious and Delicious- Mead « Ancientfoods…
Here at World Spinner we are debating the same thing……
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[…] know what those naughty Vikings used to say: “Let there be mirth, mead and fornication!” Cancel […]
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I have made mead (wild yeast) and each time it was different, even with the same honey–always wonderful though!
Last year I made hard “cider” with mead yeast. It tastes like a lighter mead, and is quite delicious. This year I will try it with honey as the sugar to see how complex and delicious it can be . . . I guess that’s really cyser? Worth making, at any rate.
Have you read Stephen Harrod Buhner’s Sacred and Healing Herbal Beers? He has a good chapter on mead, with recipes.
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Thank’s for the comment. I don’t have the book you mentioned but I will check it out. I also make sourdough breads which I have done several times by capturing wild yeast.
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Very interesting post. I’m a beekeper from Tuscany, and now y want try to make mead.
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That’s great. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. I can’t think of anything better than Mead you make with your own honey. Check back as I will blog on my racking process in a couple of weeks.
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Very useful info. Hope to see more posts soon!
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