You ever wonder where the term honeymoon comes from?
I'm about to tell you.
See in the Middle Ages when a young couple got married their family would
give them a moon, or a month's worth of honey mead.
And then the young couple would go off, frolick, and make merry for a few weeks and
hopefully come back with a bun in the oven.
So that's what we're making today.
Not a baby,
mead.
So whether you're a Saxon warrior positioned in your shield wall
or a marauding Norse viking,
get ready for that sweet sweet, taste of alcoholic honey - mead.
This time on Tasting History.
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So a bunch of people have been asking me to make merch or merchandise.
So there is some that I just got up in the bar beneath this video,
but you know what I would love some ideas about what kind
of stuff you guys want. What I should have made, because i'm not very good at that kind of stuff.
Anyway, merch below more to come.
So today's recipe comes from the
13th century Tractus Manuscript Folio 20r.
Catchy title. Now usually I read the full recipe, but this recipe is rather long and
rather wordy so i'm just going to give you the hits, but I am going to put the full translation
in the description if you care to read the entire thing.
"For to make mead.
Take one gallon of fine honey
and to that four gallons of water and heat that water till it be as 'lengh'
then dissolve the honey in the water.
Then set them over the fire and let them boil and ever scum it as long as any filth riseth theron
and then take it down off the fire and let it cool in another vessel till it be
as cold as milk when it cometh from the cow.
Then take dregs of the finest ale or else barm and cast it into the water and the honey
and stir all well together... and so let it stand three days and nights...
Then draw it from the dregs as clear as thou may into another vessel clean and let it stand one
night or two, and then draw it into another vessel and serve it forth.
So anyone who makes mead on the regular today
is probably thinking 'that just doesn't really sound right to me' because mead
usually ferments for weeks not days, and then ages for months not a couple nights.
So this is a quick!
quick mead and you know probably they would have let it age longer if need be.
I don't know. This mead is probably going to be not as alcoholic, very sweet, and cloudy,
but we shall see.
Now the recipe also gives us instructions on how to make this mead
'eglyn' by adding various herbs such as: hyssop, bettony, moonwort, heartstongue, and white horehound
just to name a few.
Kind of sounds like the three Weird sisters at the beginning of Macbeth, ooh!
Now eglyn is a shortened version of the word meddyglyn meaning healing mead
because in Medieval recipes usually when there were herbs added
it was medicinal because that was the medicine that
was most commonly available. And even today any mead that is made with herbs and spices is called
a meteglin, very similar to meddyglyn.
There are actually dozens of terms for all different kinds
of mead depending on what you're adding into it, and how alcoholic or how much honey is in it
there are tons, and i'm not going to go into them all right now but there are some great resources
books in the video description if you really want to kind of get into to mead, and how to to make all
the different various forms. But for today we're sticking with the traditional three ingredients:
water, don't use distilled water for this.
Mineral or spring water that's the way to go.
Honey.
And ale dregs or dried ale yeast.
So the recipe calls for four gallons of water and one gallon of honey,
but that's a lot so I am going to be making one gallon of water and a quart of honey,
and really as long as you stay with the four to one ratio you're going to be good to go.
Now as for the yeast if you can get ale barm or dregs,
fantastic, but if not you can go ahead and use dry yeast.
The thing is in either case they didn't tell you how much to use and it's really going
to depend on how active the yeast is so you're kind of just guessing. What I ended up doing
was about two tablespoons of barm and then I put it into a little bit of water with a drop of
honey just to make sure that it was was active, and it was. If you're using dried yeast
it's hard to say. Usually for a gallon you would use like a pinch but because we're only doing
this for three days, fermenting it for three days I'd use a little bit more maybe like a third of
a packet, maybe. So first if you're worried about bacteria you can go ahead and sterilize all of
the tools that we're going to be using though in the 13th century they wouldn't have really cared
though they actually kind of have a way around that so we'll we'll get to that but it can't
hurt to to sterilize your equipment.
So what you'll need is: a large pot for boiling,
a large container for fermenting,
another container for aging for all of two nights,
and preferably like a bottle with a small opening
so you can fit a bubbler or airlock.
That lets the carbonation out without other things
getting in, and then you can also probably use a siphon or a funnel depending on how you plan on
getting the mead from one container to the next uh siphon our funnel will definitely make things easier.
So following the recipe we heat our water until it is 'lengh'. Now i could not find anywhere
a translation. Middle English, Old English anything for the word 'lengh' so if anyone knows
great, otherwise it really probably just means rather hot because what you want to be doing is to
dissolve the honey in there so it's not just falling to the bottom.
So add the honey and give
it a mix until it's dissolved
then boil the honey and water mixture called must.
Now a lot of modern mead makers
would not boil it at this point, but I think that that's that's part of the way that they
got rid of bacteria that might have been in the water in the Middle ages. If you boil it it'll
get rid of most of the bacteria. Also this thing is going to have alcohol and a ton of honey in it so
there's not going to be a lot left alive no matter what so you're probably pretty safe.
As it boils skim off any scums that forms at the top
though you really shouldn't have that much scum unless you're
using honey directly from honeycomb because that can have dirt or pieces of wax in it and that's
really what's going to be bubbling up to the top.
Once boiled take it off the fire and pour it into
the second vessel. Hopefully doing a better job than I did because I spilled a bunch and it got
really, really sticky for like days afterward. I just, I couldn't get it to be non-sticky.
Then you got to let that honey and water mixture cool until it is
the temperature of milk when it comes out of a cow about 98 degrees Fahrenheit, or 37 degrees Celsius.
If you put yeast in there before it gets
about to that, it could kill the yeast so just wait it can take a while, but just wait.
Then pour in your dregs, or barm, or yeast then cover the top, not airtight, and leave it be
out of direct sunlight.
You could even put it like in a closet.
Now by the next day the mead should be in what I call
the Don Ho phase of mead making because you'll see tiny bubbles starting to rise to the top.
Oh sometimes I hate myself for those kinds of jokes,
but I don't care.
It makes me laugh. xD
Now if you were leaving it for longer than three days
it would actually start to get clear in this beautiful golden colored mead that we know and
love so well, but in three days that ain't gonna happen.
So after three days go ahead and transfer it,
try not to get too much of the yeast at the bottom to that next container or bottle.
Then stick a bubbler in it and let it sit for a couple more nights.
Now i'm actually making two
little bottles out of this gallon, one that I'm going to try you know in in two nights and then
one that i'm gonna hold on to for maybe six months or so i wanna see how the flavor changes. It's not
going to have any more fermentation time from that first fermenting but the aging hopefully might
mellow out the flavor, I don't know we'll see.
So what inspired me to make mead today was actually
because of a video game that's coming out today or the day that this video will air
called Assassin's Creed: Valhalla.
Not associated with them in any way but I'm still super excited because it's
like a history based game of like my favorite time period: Saxons and Vikings, you know fighting it out.
So i'm assuming that there's gonna be mead in there somewhere, though when you think of you know
Saxons and Vikings yes you think of mead, but mead actually got its start way before that.
The earliest evidence for mead making actually comes from pottery found
in northern China dating from about 7000 BC.
There was residue from honey and the compounds associated with fermentation.
And there are mentions of alcoholic drinks made with honey throughout Chinese literature including
The Song of Mead by Su Shi, in the 11th century.
In central Europe similar residues have been found
in the pottery of the Bell Beaker culture which roamed Bronze Age Europe more than 4 000 years ago.
But the earliest written mention of mead actually comes from the ancient Indian 'Rigveda' which says
"I have tasted the sweet drink of life knowing that it inspires good thoughts and joyous
expansiveness to the extreme that all the gods and all mortals seek it together calling it meath."
High praise indeed for this our mead.
Now the drink that they're talking about in the Rigveda is actually
known as soma which is a honey drink that probably also had some hallucinogens or something in it
because it would give visions of the gods um so hopefully not what I'm making today. And while this
is the first mention that we have of mead being associated with the gods it is far from the last.
The Minoan culture produced mead and credited it to their
mother goddess Potnia, whose priestesses were named
Melissa meaning bee.
The love that the Minoans had for this drink passed on to the other Greek civilizations.
They also used these same Melissae as priestesses for Artemis and Demeter,
and the drink eventually made its way to the Roman empire.
Columella gives us a recipe in 'De Re Rustica'
as does Pliny the Elder in 'Naturales Historia'.
"There is a wine also made solely of honey and water.
For this purpose it is recommended that rain water should be kept
for a period of five years.
This beverage is known as 'hydromeli' and with age acquires the flavor of wine.
It is nowhere more highly esteemed than in Phrygia."
Now aren't you glad I said to you spring water
rather than make you go get rain water and wait five years,
you're welcome.
Now after the fall of Rome,
our mead journey takes us north to Britannia or Britain.
In one Welsh poem from around 550 AD
called 'Kanu y med', we hear of that
iconic drinking vessel for mead,
the mead horn.
"May Maelgwn of Mona be affected with mead, and affect us,
from the foaming mead horns with the choicest pure liquor,
which the bees collect, and do not enjoy.
Mead distilled sparkling, its praise is everywhere."
So the mead in that poem is sparkling which is interesting because
based on what I've seen with our mead, ours is also going to be sparkling.
In another Welsh poem "Y Gododdin"
we hear the story of a battle where those fighting were rather hung over from too much mead.
"Men went to Catraeth at morning, their high spirits lessened their life-span.
They drank mead, gold and sweet, ensnaring
for a year the minstrels were merry."
Their high spirits lessened their lifespan,
how Welsh.
Anyway I wanted to actually thank a Welshman, The Welsh Viking here on Youtube
named Jim for helping me with a bunch of the research and the pronunciation as well as letting me know
that the Welsh word for drunk is 'meddwi' which literally means meaded,
I love that.
Now at about the same time that these Welshmen were lessening their lifespan with mead
the Irish were drinking it too just across the water
on the Hill of Tara, where the banquet hall was known as Tech Mid Chuarda,
the mead circling house.
Which I can only imagine is rather similar to Hrothgar's mead hall,
Heorot in Beowulf, where Grendel would rip apart drunken Danes.
"They would willingly wait on their wassailing-benches.
A grapple with Grendel with grimmest of edges.
Then this mead-hall at morning with murder was reeking,
the building was bloody at breaking of daylight.
The bench deals all flooded dripping and bloodied.
Now let us pause right there while I beseech thee if you have never
read Beowulf, or if you only read it under dress in high school or college go get a copy because
it is so great, and it's super quick to read it's not very long i'm going to put my favorite
translation in the description, but really any translation works
(don't watch the movie)
but it's fantastic and whoever wrote it, we don't know, but whoever wrote it really was the greatest of
of poets, or skáld, and must have gotten that
from Odin because
Odin made good skálds,
and that brings us to Norse mythology.
Following a war between two factions of the Norse gods they
decided to call a truce in the same way that we do today
by spitting into a giant cauldron.
Well, out of this godly saliva rose a creature, a man-god not really specific named Kvasir, and he was
all-knowing he was the most brilliant poet, and
and had all of the knowledge that there was to be had.
Even the gods would ask him questions that they needed to know.
Well when Kvasir wasn't busy he liked to go down to Midgard where the humans lived,
and pass on some of his knowledge.
How kind of him.
Well one day he came across two dwarves named Fjalar and Galar who said
"Come on in we'll make you some mead",
and that's what they proceeded to do, they made him some mead.
They slit him open with knives and drained his blood into three vats,
then added honey to it to create mead.
How dark,
but that mead supposedly gave some of his power if you drank it so it was called 'The Mead of Poetry.'
But old Kvasir was of course missed by the gods who were like 'hey dwarves where's our smart guy?'
and the dwarves were like 'oh no, you know what he came over and he was so smart that he choked
on his own knowledge and died'
and they believed him.
Well these two jerk dwarves weren't done with
their little killing spree, because a little while later they killed a couple a husband and wife who
were giants, and the giant son was like 'no'
so he came over and took the dwarves and set them on an island
that was about to flood so they would die,
but the dwarves were like 'Hey if you don't kill us
you can have this Mead of Poetry that we've got', and the the giant was like 'Okay',
and let them go and now their part of the story is completely done, it's kind of weird.
But the giant didn't drink the mead himself he actually just kind of hoarded it and gave
it to somebody else to protect
and when Odin, played by Anthony Hopkins, found out
he decided 'I need this Mead of Poetry' because Odin prided himself on his love of knowledge and poetry.
Anyway after a bunch of scheming and shape-shifting
Odin was allowed to have three sips, one from each vat of the mead,
but joke's on them because an Odin sip is like the sip that I'm gonna take if
you offer me a drink of your cocktail,
he drained it dry.
All three vats in three little sips or huge sips I guess.
Then he turned into an eagle and with the Steve Miller band playing behind him flew home
to Asgard and regurgitated the mead into his own three containers, but he dropped a few drops down
to Midgard where the humans live and those drops are said to be
the beginning of all mediocre poetry in the world,
because to be a great poet or Skáld you have to get your mead directly from Odin himself,
and I'm pretty sure that whoever wrote Beowulf got their mead directly from Odin himself.
Now the mead that I'm making today I'm not going to guess is going to make me into a great poet but
maybe if you drink enough of it and you kind of get a little chatty you'll think you're a great
poet because that has definitely happened to me in the past with mead.
Anyway let's give it a shot .
So once two nights have passed pour the mead into that final clean vessel, and it's ready to drink.
Oh, oh dear, oh no, no, no... okay... :(
Well that was embarrassing
My uh ale horn seems to be leaking, that's not good.
Nobody likes a leaky ale horn.
So instead I'm using a beer mug, that's okay.
So let's go ahead and try this mead
It smells very yeasty still which I guess is to be expected.
*_*
I like it! You know what it's not as - when I poured it it was effervescent
but when you drink it you don't really get it. It's pretty flat um
there's definitely some alcohol in there, though I don't know how much, because I didn't um
you can find out there are ways you can test it and everything, I didn't do it. Definitely
alcoholic though, and definitely super sweet. I think it would mellow if i gave it some more time
which i'm going to do obviously not fermenting but I am going to leave it in that second bottle
maybe six months, maybe in six months we do another episode on something else, and I drink the rest of
the mead and we see how it goes. Anyway go make yourself some mead it's actually not that hard
just take some time, and enjoy life, and enjoy poetry,
and I will see you next time on Tasting History.