Monday, January 14, 2013

Drinking Mead Out of the Skulls of my Enemies

Which is why I no longer have any enemies.

A few years ago I bought a bottle of mead, which is wine made from honey. Mead is supposed to be the earliest fermented drink known.

I found it a little too sweet, almost cloying. I suppose some people might like it a lot.

I prefer a semi-sweet white wine myself, specifically the German ones.

For years I'd thought beer was the first alcoholic drink brewed, but apparently nearly every culture discovered mead first. I find that a little odd, since the high osmotic pressure in honey means bacteria, viruses and yeast cannot live in it.

I supposed someone watered it down, threw in some naturally-fermented berries, let it set for a while....then drank it.

Then I suppose some people became Beserkers, ventured forth and made drinking bowls out of their enemies' skulls. That's what I'd do.

But anyway, for a while I couldn't find mead at the store so I had to buy it online. These days, some liquor stores do sell it, but when I want some I usually buy it online.

1 comment:

Ingemar said...

I am pretty sure most, if not all meads were watered down prior to fermentation. (Modern mead recipes call for 2 to 3 pounds of honey per gallon of must, adjusted for final sweetness/dryness). A Polish recipe centuries old calls for a 1:1 volumetric ratio of water and honey for the ferment.

I speak as an experienced (if hobby scale) mead maker.