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I have a youtube channel with over 20 Mead Making Videos

Articles

How to stop the ferment of mead

How to sweeten mead

Should you make 1 gallon of mead or 5 gallons?

Mead Making and Alcohol Content

Some information about Yeast

The Secret Art of Mead Making Revealed

New: 5 Tips for the beginner mead maker

It's all about the Honey - A dramatic look at how important honey is in mead making

For Beginners: How to make your first and easy 1 gallon batch of Mead honey wine

How to make a sparkling champagne style mead

How much does it cost to make a batch of mead? I have the cost breakdown here

How to make a batch of mead today! The fast, easy, and cheap way to your first batch of honey wine

The difference is the honey! A stop motion animation showing two different honeys side by side and how the fermented brew looks

Thinking about designing or buying your wine and mead bottle labels? Here is some information about labels and bottles that will help you

The Magical Transformation of water into wine with pics

How and why to use a hydrometer

How to use a wine thief to test your wine or mead

Dispelling the Myths about Mead

Thoughts about Mead and Wine Making

Important note about Sanitizing your Mead making and wine making equipment

Learning the art of Patience when making wine or mead

How do you know the ferment is working?

Discovering Mead

Mead by any other name

Checking the PH of your Mead to insure good fermentation (video)

Making Flavored Meads


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What is Mead? Dispelling the Myth about an Ancient Drink


When the word Mead is mentioned the first thing that comes to mind is a group of Vikings sitting around a fire quaffing down large mugs of a rough and tough alcoholic beverage. This is the stigma that mead has endured for centuries and it is unwarranted. Mead is an extraordinarily delicate and delicious wine.


To dispel the misconceptions about mead we have to first take a look at the misconceptions about wine. Wine is not an alcoholic beverage that is made from grapes. Wine is a fermented beverage made from any number of food or fruit. You can make wine from just about anything that has a high natural sugar content. This is the definition of wine, and grapes are only one thing that wine is made from. So, once you understand this fundamental thing you can more easily understand mead.


Mead is a wine fermented with honey and honey is a perfect food for making wine because it is very sweet and stays preserved for long periods of time. The natural sweetness of honey can be used to make extraordinary tasting wine. How many times have you tried a traditional wine and tasted the tartness or the earthiness of the grapes? You don’t get this with mead because there are no grapes, there is no tartness, and of course there is no earthiness.


In Medieval Europe mead was the de-facto drink of choice but it was reserved for special occasions and for royalty or people with wealth. This was because it took a lot of effort to harvest the honey. And this difficulty in production helped mead fall out of favor as the techniques for fermenting wine from grapes were discovered and perfected. It is much easier to grow large numbers of grapes than it is to grow large numbers of beehives. The problem of mead was also further exacerbated by the discovery of how to brew beers from hops and various grains that are even easier to grow.


With beer and grape based wines readily available, and available to the masses, mead quickly became a drink that was almost forgotten. But thankfully this wonderful drink is still made and still enjoyed. If you want to try a wine that is quite distinct from other wines I recommend you give mead a try. You might be surprised.



 
 

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