Contents
Mead – one of the oldest, tastiest and healthiest alcoholic beverages invented by mankind. As a rule, mead has a strength that fluctuates in the range of 1-16 revolutions.
The lower degree bar is inherent in the non-alcoholic variety of the drink, while the upper one is occupied by vigorous strong mead. At the same time, it is interesting that mead is gaining degrees both due to the length of the aging period and the increase in the content of pure honey in it, and due to various ingredients that enhance the fermentation process.
Mead is considered classic, the composition of which includes: honey, yeast, spring or artesian water and, in some cases, sugar. But it wasn’t always like this…
Mead in ancient Russia
Honey alcohol has been known to many early Indo-European communities, as well as to some non-Indo-European proto-ethnic groups (for example, the ancestors of modern Ethiopians), since at least the Late Neolithic.
In the early Middle Ages, the drink spread throughout Europe: from the British Isles to the Ural Mountains.
The lands inhabited by the Eastern Slavs were no exception. Here, from time immemorial, they used a honey drink, which received a completely logical and expected name: drinking honey.
It was prepared by the so-called setting: keeping a water-honey solution in buried oak barrels, to which various red berries were added, as a rule: cherries, raspberries or strawberries (the latter were just responsible for the fermentation process).
Actually, it was a mead made from fermented honey without the use of yeast. The aging period of such a drink could range from five to twenty to sixty or more years. It is clear that with such an excessive preparation time, ancient Russian honey could not be used as an everyday drink.
Before the baptism of Russia, its use had a pronounced ritual character. Light sweet nectar, prepared from healing honey, brought, according to our ancestors, by winged bees from heavenly honey rivers, was supposed to help establish a sacred connection between a person and the transcendent worlds of the gods and the dead.
Accordingly, the drinking of honey mash was accompanied by such significant events in the life of one kind or another, such as religious festivities, marriages, the birth of new members of the community, or the departure of relatives to the land of the dead.
Starting from the XNUMXth century, the drink associated with pagan rituals gradually lost its significance. The mass production of cheaper beer, the spread of more refined wine, and, finally, the appearance of much stronger vodka led to the fact that by the end of the XNUMXth – beginning of the XNUMXth century, honey was finally given in to give.
Even the practice of mead production introduced at the beginning of the XNUMXnd millennium, which made it possible to speed up its production by dozens of times, could not save the drink from oblivion.
The harsh economic realities, multiplied by the fight against pagan remnants, gradually but steadily turned the sacred Slavic drink into the heritage of history.
Thus, between the patriarchal mead in oak barrels and modern mead in kegs lies a remarkable time interval of almost half a millennium.
During this time, the good old honey drink managed to survive several centuries of oblivion, a short return to life on the wave of romanticism and Slavophilism of the XNUMXth century, a genuine, but very short-lived boom of the NEP times (in fact, it was then that its current somewhat vulgar name was finally established behind the drink) and , finally, a new unprecedented surge in popularity, observed in our days.
Mead and Modern Europe
Today, in Eastern Europe, the industrial production of honey drinks is partially established in the Russian Federation.
The main centers involved in this industry are:
Suzdal
Velikiy Novgorod
Kolomna near Moscow (this is where Kolomna mead, known to many connoisseurs, is produced).
Petersburg Medovukha Medved or Medved.
Tver mead with cranberries (although the presence of flavors and cranberry concentrate in the drink makes you think about its quality).
Numerous small private honey factories in Ukraine and Belarus are also famous for their honey. It is curious that representatives of the Ukrainian diaspora have created a small enterprise for the production of this colorful drink even in distant Canada.
If you look at today’s mead making on a pan-European scale, then among the leaders in this industry it is worth mentioning the Czech Republic, Germany, Great Britain and, of course, Poland, whose superiority in this area does not cause the slightest doubt.
How is mead made
Today’s honey mash, in the vast majority of cases, is the successor of not archaic – set, but later – boiled honey. It is prepared, as a rule, in three stages.
11 homemade mead recipes.
Boiling
You can’t boil honey, but you can heat it up to 50-60 degrees and boil it, depending on the recipe. At the same time, various additional vegetable ingredients can be added to the base substance during thermal treatment.
Among these ingredients, it is worth mentioning the berries of temperate latitudes: viburnum, blueberries, currants, strawberries, strawberries, raspberries, mountain ash, cranberries, cherries (seedless) or even rose hips; various spices: cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, cloves, vanilla, pepper, ginger, almonds; as well as some other components of plant origin: hops (the famous mead with hops), oregano, sweet clover, valerian root, orange and lemon peel, linden blossom, juniper berries, St. kidneys.
Moreover, even the replacement of the water component of the drink with other liquids is allowed (for example, there is an incomparable mead on birch sap).
fermentation
The boiled liquid is cooled to a temperature of 25-30°C, after which yeast is added to it.
Further, the resulting substance wanders for about six days in a warm, dark place.
Note: Even if you use hops, you still need to add yeast or you end up with a sour mead.
The only exception to the rule may be a drink with the addition of freshly picked hop cones.
Охлаждение
Fermented honey mash is carefully filtered and already in this form is brought to the desired condition in a dark, but now cold place.
It takes about a month, after which you can safely proceed to the tasting.
Of course, you can try making good old honey and even buy a real oak barrel for the occasion.
But before you decide on this, think carefully about whether you have the patience not to touch the drink for if not three to five years, then at least three to five months. If yes, then full speed ahead!
And to avoid problems with yeast-free fermentation, it would be better if your first drink is cherry mead.
Varieties of mead
Find out the benefits and harms of mead for human health.
In addition to the division of honey alcohol into set and boiled, there are several more criteria for its classification.
With and without honey
Drinks come with the subsequent addition of honey or without it. The first option is very common in the Suzdal mead tradition.
According to the content of honey
Meads are divided into quadruplets (1/4 honey to 3/4 water), triplets (1/3 honey to 2/3 water), twins (proportion 50 to 50) and half-and-half meads (2/3 honey to 1/3 water).
At the same time, the strength of the mash increases in direct proportion to the amount of honey contained in it.
By exposure time
Also responsible for increasing the fortress. Honey drinks are divided into young, ordinary, strong and set (in this case, we are not talking about the fermentation method, but rather the aging period).
By its composition
Drinking honeys are divided into natural ones (at the same time, if you are on a diet, a drink that does not even contain sugar is optimal for you; such mead, whose calorie content is only 87,31 kilocalories per 100 grams, will cover only 4% of your daily intake ), hoppy (or vegetable-hoppy, for example: monastery mead with the addition of hops and brewed black tea), spicy (homemade) and berry (or, if you like, fruit and berry; for example, there is apple mead: an extremely pleasant drink with adding apple juice).
There is also a classification based on the presence or absence of ethyl alcohol in the finished product. But such a typology is fundamentally erroneous, since fortified honey substances are already a completely different alcohol.
Mead in other drinks
All about Suzdal mead.
In addition to being consumed in its pure form, honey brew is often a component of other alcoholic beverages.
First of all, we mean various variations on the theme: vodka + mead. As a rule, in this case, we are talking about either a fortified honey drink or a white honey drink slightly sweetened by it. However, sometimes there are more or less artistic solutions, for example: a forty-degree bitters called Buckwheat Mead with the aroma of honey.
There are also combinations based on the formula: mead + beer. First of all, this is the so-called overvar (not to be confused with the sbit, which once had a similar name). As a result of joint brewing, beer and mead form a beer drink, which is distinguished by a peculiar, not devoid of pleasant taste.
In addition, there is a similar decoction in which beer is replaced by bread kvass. And it’s called a wedding.
And, finally, mead and sbiten … If the spirit of experimentation is not alien to you, try making alcoholic sbiten by adding honey mash instead of ordinary honey. I am sure that in this case, one of the oldest alcoholic beverages on earth will rise to the occasion.
Relevance: 26.03.2016
Tags: other alcohol