Frequently Asked Questions about Mead Making
Is Mead a Wine or a Beer? – Neither
Well if Wine and Beer Makers also make Mead there must be some similarities, so which is it most like, wine or beer? Mead is made from fermenting honey rather than grapes, fruit, or malt, so in that respect it is like neither wine nor beer, however, it is usually boiled for pasteurization like beer but aged for an extended period of time like wine, also the alcohol levels ranging from 10 to 18 percent are comparable to wine, but like both beer and wine Mead is bottled both carbonated and non-carbonated.
What does mead taste more like, wine or beer? Depending on the recipe the taste of mead resembles more that of a white wine.
What types of mead are there?
- Traditional Mead is made with only honey, water, and yeast, plus perhaps a small amount of acid to balance the sweetness.
- Metheglin is mead made with added herbs or spices, such as cloves or cinnamon. Metheglin is the English translation of the Welsh word Meddyglyn, meaning Medicine. Historically medicinal herbs were infused into a sweet mead to make the medicine more palatable.
- Melomel is mead made with the addition of fruit or fruit juice to traditional mead. Melomel may also contain spices similar to that of Metheglin.
- Cyser is a particular Melomel mead made from apples or apple juice.
- Pyment is Melomel made with grapes or grape juice, alternatively a wine sweetened with honey.
- Hippocras is spiced Pyment
- Sack is a name for stronger meads made with larger amounts of honey than usual, typically resulting in a sweeter mead
How do you make Mead? There are about 1,000 different ways to make mead so, there is no one way to make mead and certainly no single right way to make mead.
Which mead making method should be used? There is no best way to make mead, the best way is the way that creates mead you like best. Since there are so many ways to make mead, rather than being confusing it is actually encouraging that you can deviate from a plan or recipe either intentionally or by mistake and yet still create a great tasting mead Mead is quite easy to make, it pretty much makes itself and is very forgiving deviations and even errors.
So how do you make mead? Here is a link to our Mead Making Tutorial
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