Bochet, Druid Mead, Viking Mead, Strawberry and vanilla mead

Ah HA! I have found the historical misinformation! They didn't have PACKETS of yeast back then! You all were right. It's a fake.

dessertmaker said:

Ah HA! I have found the historical misinformation! They didn't have PACKETS of yeast back then! You all were right. It's a fake.

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It was right in front of my eyes! You are a genius I tell you!

dessertmaker said:

Ah HA! I have found the historical misinformation! They didn't have PACKETS of yeast back then! You all were right. It's a fake.

Click to expand...

It's not that somebody did or didn't historically drink mead, it's just that we don't know their recipes, lol. They didn't have lots that we have besides cultured yeasts- including carboys that seal out bacteria, airlocks, bottles, corks, any of the chemicals we use, honey that was separated well from the rest of the hive, and many other things. It's also not very likely that we know what their tastes were, and when you consider all the fruits grains and adjuncts that are available to the modern maker, remember that many of the herbs and flavorings that they would have likely used some aren't known to us.

Just as an example here's what wine (and area much more well researched) was like in the middle ages-

"Because casks and barrels were exposed to the elements outdoors, the wines in them frequently became infected with bacteria. To avoid this, vintners rushed their new wines to market. These had dead yeasts floating in the liquid, so were cloudy... men and women tended to drink from metal cups or beakers, not glasses, so how a wine looked was irrelevant.. freshly fermented wine, hazy and perhaps still fizzy, was just about the only wine that did not taste unpleasantly shrill. Everyone knew that spring wine, sometimes called rec or reck owing to its having been racked from the dead yeast or lees, simply did not taste as good. Then came summer, when that same wine almost always had just about turned into vinegar... Given how rapidly wine's flavors degenerated with the seasons, it is not surprising that (they) celebrated the harvests... with festivals.
As bad as barrel stored wine surely was, plenty of medieval wine must have tasted even worse. Following fermentation, a great deal of it... never saw a cask or barrel. It was stored in animal hides. These imparted flavors of their own, which, would seem extremely undesirable to our tastes. Moreover since the hides were dirty, they would infect the wine with bacteria.
As in earlier epochs medieval wine was diluted with water. Since people drank it all day long, this was done as much with the goal of sanitizing the water as doing anything to improve the wine... Many poor people did not even have wine. They instead had to make do with piquette, a thin, acerbic drink made by adding water to pomace- the mass of skins, stems, seeds and pulp.."

"The abundance of bad wine explains why so much commentary concerned efforts to prevent it from souring or, if it already turned, to restore it... They employed all sorts of methods to preserve it, including adding burnt salt, boiled wheat, eggshells, cardamom, holly leaves, sand, or lead to casks and hides. One solution was to plunge a torch dipped in pitch into the cask, another was to boil the wine, atill another to expose it to frost. Here is a Parisian "cure" for cloudy and vinegary wine: 'Take a dishful of wheat, soak it in water, throw away the water, boil it in other water until it is just ready to burst, and remove it. If there are grains that have burst, toss them out, and throw the rest hot into the cask. If the wine doesn't come clear with this, take a basketful of sand well washed in the Seine and throw it into the cask.' "

"... a great deal of the medieval wine must have been terrible. Not surprisingly, the ancient practice of adding flavorings remained quite common. Wines were adulterated with honey, herbs, spices, and other aromatics- all in an effort to make them more palatable... But when beer and wine started to go bad, people simply poured in more flavorings. In fact, they added cinnamon, garlic, ginger, mustard, nutmeg, and more to all their different drinks. They also cometimes combined them. Bochet, a French concoction, blended beer, honey, various spices, wine and water. Its English equivalent, called a bracket, included a good deal of pepper, and Anglo-Saxon oxymel was made by combining vinegar and honey. Even mead, fermented honey and water, was often adulterated through the addition of herbs and spices." (Quotes from Inventing Wine by Paul Lukacs- very enjoyable and enlightening read..)

SOOOOOO.. If you mean that they had a beverage that was technically a mead, I don't think anyone at all disputes that with you. The point is that you likely wouldn't WANT to recreate what they made even if you DID have their recipe. There is just is probably no way to overstate how much this is the case, lol.

o..O

You mean you don't drink your wines out of animal skin...?

I KNEW I wasn't doing something right. Oh well, guess ill have to find another use for all those pesky stray cats running around the neighborhood...

And I was SO enjoying the catnip aroma.....

Is this what my wife meant when she said too much body in my wine?

SEE PEOPLE? That's what this forum is FOR! You LEARN from these guys. I'm taking notes on this one.

Notes: .....no more kitty mead....

You got me thinking catnip metheglin now. Hmmmm..

Edit: just googled it, it's actually been done. Getting hard to think of anything new!

Downwards said:

You got me thinking catnip metheglin now. Hmmmm..

Edit: just googled it, it's actually been done. Getting hard to think of anything new!

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Who and why?! I just threw up a little bit in my mouth.

Short thread here, but check it out.. Description sounds interesting. http://forum.northernbrewer.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=30141

Just stopping in to say that your kitchen (after the honey explosion) looks like my kitchen every day. I can only blame mine on three sloppy kids and a dog, though.

Great photos and tips. I would love to try a vanilla mead and I have it on my to-do list!

Just reading the title of this thread made me thirsty.

Looks like you've got some interesting and (hopefully) yummy batches going over there - good luck and keep us posted!