Mead (Honey Wine)

Mead is a wonderful drink, if you haven't tried it then you definitely should. It can be sweet or dry, can have a high or low alcohol content and it can be made of pure honey or flavoured with other items. Fundamentally though Mead is a drink made with fermented honey.

Nobody knows for sure how long people have been fermenting honey but there is evidence of the Babylonians making mead over 4,000 years ago. It makes sense, honey is free if you have your own bees and full of fermentable sugars. :) In modern times commercial Mead is made in carefully controlled conditions and often matured in oak barrels giving it a deep flavour.

There's a fantastic place to visit in Wales called "New Quay Honey Farm" which has an excellent shop, visitor centre and commercial meadery. The pictures on this page were taken at the meadery which produces around 20,000 bottles of mead each year. They have a website here: www.thehoneyfarm.co.uk

Making Mead can be a difficult process so commercially it is diluted and has its acid and tannin levels carefully controlled. It's fairly common to add yeast nutrients as naturally occurring hydrogen peroxide can kill the yeast off before it's had a chance to eat the sugars. Also honey is expensive to buy in large quantities so some commercial meads are made with strong white wine added. The meadery in Wales uses nothing but alcohol derived from honey. 

Mead