Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Plans for a Mead

When we lived in Louisville I used to go to a place called the Bluegrass Brewing Company. One of the tastiest drinks I have ever consumed is the BBC's mead.

Mead is a fermented drink made from honey. It has been called the nectar of the gods. The first known description of mead is in the hymns of the Rigveda, one of the sacred books of the historical Vedic religion and (later) Hinduism dated around 17001100 BC. During the "Golden Age" of Ancient Greece, mead was said to be the preferred drink. Aristotle (384322 BC) discussed mead in his Meteorologica and elsewhere, while Pliny the Elder (AD 2379) called mead militites in his Naturalis Historia and differentiated wine sweetened with honey or "honey-wine" from mead.

One drawback to brewing mead is that it has to sit and age for 9 months to a year to be really tasty. I looked around for a site on meads and found a great one at gotmead.com. I found a good recipe to start with in the forums. The nice thing about the recipe are that it is supposedly ready to drink at about 2 months and it gets much much tastier with age. I am planning a 1 gallon batch to get started.

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