Mead can have a wide range of flavors depending on the source of the honey, additives (also known as "adjuncts" or "
gruit") including fruit and spices, the
yeast employed during
fermentation, and the aging procedure. A mead that contains fruit (such as
raspberry,
blackberry or
strawberry) is called a
melomel, which was also used as a means of
food preservation, keeping summer produce for the winter. A mead that is fermented with grape juice is called a
pyment. Some meads retain some measure of the sweetness of the original honey, and some may even be considered as dessert wines. Drier meads are also available, and some producers offer sparkling meads. Historically, meads were fermented with wild
yeasts and
bacteria (as noted in the recipe quoted above) residing on the skins of the fruit or within the honey itself. Wild yeasts can produce inconsistent results. Yeast companies have isolated strains of yeast that produce consistently appealing products. Brewers, winemakers, and mead makers commonly use them for fermentation, including yeast strains identified specifically for mead fermentation. These are strains that have been selected because of their characteristic of preserving delicate honey flavors and aromas. Mead can also be distilled to a
brandy or
liqueur strength, in which case it is sometimes referred to as a
whiskey. A version called "honey jack" can be made by partly freezing a quantity of mead and straining the ice out of the liquid (a process known as
freeze distillation), in the same way that
applejack is made from
cider.
Regional variants In England, mead has been part of a culinary tradition for over a thousand years. Monasteries, monks, and abbeys were key producers, as they kept bees for wax (to make clean-burning candles) and used the honey to produce mead. Mead was a staple beverage for all walks of life, including kings and thanes. It was famously consumed in "mead halls," which served as communal gathering places. English mead is primarily made from honey, water, and yeast. While traditional recipes rely on these three core ingredients, modern or commercial versions may also include fruit, spices, hops, or added sugars like beet sugar. In
Finland, a sweet mead called '''' is connected with the Finnish
vappu festival (although in modern practice,
brown sugar is often used in place of honey). During
secondary fermentation, added-
raisins augment the amount of sugar available to the yeast and indicate readiness for consumption, rising to the top of the bottle when sufficiently depleted. Sima is commonly served with both the pulp and rind of a
lemon. An
Ethiopian mead variant
tej (ጠጅ, ) is usually home-made and flavored with the powdered leaves and bark of
gesho, a
hop-like bittering agent which is a species of
buckthorn. A sweeter, less-alcoholic version (honey-water) called
berz, aged for a shorter time, is also made. In
Kenya, a mead variant called
Muratina is usually home-made which is used during a number of different important religious and social events.
Mead in Poland and
Ireland has been part of culinary tradition for over a thousand years.
In the United States, mead is enjoying a resurgence, starting with small home
meaderies and now with a number of small commercial
meaderies. As mead becomes more widely available, it is seeing increased attention and exposure from the news media. This resurgence can also been seen around the world in the UK and Australia particularly with session (lower alcohol styles) sometimes called hydromel and Mead-Beer Hybrids also known as Braggots. In the
Philippines, local mead makers are also putting mead back into the radar of liquor and alcohol aficionados. In fact, to promote mead in the country, the Philippines had its first International Mead Day celebration for the first time ever on 3 August 2024. Mead is also starting to gain popularity due to artisanal bazaars and trade fairs like
Artefino and
Maarte Fair. Locally produced spirits and liquors including mead from Filipino meaderies such as
La Mesa Mead •
Balché: A native Mexican version of mead. • Bilbemel: A melomel mead made with blueberries, blueberry juice, or sometimes used for a varietal mead that uses blueberry blossom honey. • Black mead: A name was sometimes given to the blend of honey and
blackcurrants. • Blue mead: A type of mead where fungal spores are added during the first fermentation, lending a blue tint to the final product. •
Bochet: A mead where the honey is caramelized or burned separately before adding the water. Yields toffee, caramel, chocolate, and toasted marshmallow flavors. • Bochetomel: A bochet-style mead that also contains fruit such as elderberries, black raspberries and blackberries. •
Braggot: Also called bragot, brackett and bragget. Welsh origin (
bragawd). A mead made from malt in addition to honey. Hops are an optional ingredient. •
Byais: A native mead of the
Mansaka people of the
Philippines made by fermenting
galanga roots with honey. • Capsicumel: A mead flavored with chili peppers; the peppers may be hot or mild. •
Chouchen: A kind of mead made in
Brittany.* Chouchen : a French britton variety called chouchen (pronounced "shooshen") is mead flavoured with fermented fruits or cidar ; the name "chouchen" is protected and can only be used for products from Brittany . •
Coffeemel: Mead made with coffee. • Cyser: A melomel mead made from home honey and
apples. If most of the fermentable sugar comes from honey, you get a cyser. If most of the fermentable sugar comes from apples, you get a honey
cider. •
Czwórniak (
TSG): A Polish mead, made using three units of water for each unit of honey. • Dandaghare: A mead from
Nepal, that combines honey with
Himalayan herbs and spices. It has been produced since 1972 in the city of
Pokhara. •
Dwójniak (
TSG): A Polish mead, made using equal amounts of water and honey. • Gverc or medovina:
Croatian mead prepared in
Samobor and many other places. The word "gverc" or "gvirc' is from the
German "" and refers to various spices added to mead. • Hydromel: Name derived from the
Greek hydromeli, i.e. literally "water-honey" (see also
melikraton and
hydromelon). It is also the
French name for mead. (See also and compare with the
Italian idromele and
Spanish hidromiel and
aguamiel, the
Catalan hidromel and
aiguamel,
Galician augamel, and
Portuguese hidromel). It is also used as a name for light or low-alcohol mead. •
Kabarawan: A pre-colonial alcoholic drink from the
Visayas Islands of the
Philippines made with honey and the pounded bark of the
Neolitsea villosa • Medica/medovica:
Slovenian,
Croatian and
Slovak variety of mead. • Medovina:
Czech,
Croatian,
Serbian,
Montenegrin,
Macedonia,
Bulgarian,
Bosnian and
Slovak for mead. Commercially available in the Czech Republic,
Slovakia and presumably other
Central and
Eastern-European countries. •
Medovukha: Eastern
Slavic variant (honey-based
fermented drink). • Melomel: A type of mead that also contains fruit. • Metheglin: Metheglin is traditional mead with herbs or spices added. Some of the most common metheglins are
ginger,
tea,
orange peel,
nutmeg,
coriander, cinnamon, cloves or
vanilla. Its name indicates that many metheglins were originally employed as
folk medicines. The
Welsh word for mead is '
, and the word "metheglin" derives from ', a compound of '
, "healing" + ', "liquor". In the past, the drink was prepared by mixing honey with a decoction of herbs. •
Midus:
Lithuanian for mead, made of natural bee honey and berry juice. Infused with carnation blossoms, acorns, poplar buds, juniper berries, and other herbs. Generally, between 8% and 17% alcohol, it is also distilled to produce mead nectar or mead balsam, with some of the varieties having as much as 75% of alcohol. • Mõdu: An Estonian traditional fermented drink with a taste of honey and an alcohol content of 4.0% • Morat: a blend of honey and
mulberries. •
Mulsum: Mulsum is not a true mead, but is unfermented honey blended with a high-alcohol wine. • Mungitch: A party drink made in Western Australia, by Indigenous
Noongar using flowers from the
moodjar tree (
Nuytsia floribunda) are traditionally used to make a sweet mead-like beverage during birak (the first summer in the Indigenous Noongar calendar) the moodjar tree is a very sacred tree to the Noongar peoples. • Myod: Traditional Russian mead, historically available in three major varieties: • aged mead: a mixture of honey and water or berry juices, subject to a very slow (12–50 years) anaerobic fermentation in airtight vessels in a process similar to the traditional
balsamic vinegar, creating a rich, complex and high-priced product. • boiled mead: a drink closer to beer, brewed from boiled wort of diluted honey and herbs, very similar to modern
medovukha. • drinking mead: a kind of honey wine made from diluted honey by traditional fermentation. •
Nectars: Typically fermented to below 6%
ABV, they often incorporate other flavours such as
fruits, herbs and
spices. •
Omphacomel: A mead recipe that blends honey with
verjuice; could therefore be considered a variety of pyment (
q.v.). From the Greek
omphakomeli, literally "unripe-grape-honey". •
Oxymel: Another historical mead recipe, blending honey with
wine vinegar. From the Greek
oxymeli, literally "vinegar-honey" (also
oxymelikraton). • Pitarrilla:
Mayan drink made from a fermented mixture of wild honey,
balché-tree bark and fresh water. •
Półtorak (
TSG): A Polish great mead, made using two units of honey for each unit of water. • Pyment: a melomel made from the fermentation of a blend of grapes and honey. If most of the fermentable sugars come from honey, it is considered a pyment. If most of the fermentable sugars come from grapes, it is considered a honeyed wine. In previous centuries
piment was synonymous with
Hippocras, a grape wine with honey added post-fermentation. • Quick mead: A type of mead recipe that is meant to age quickly, for immediate consumption. Because of the techniques used in its creation, short mead shares some qualities found in cider (or even
light ale): primarily that it is
effervescent, and often has a cidery taste. It can also be champagne-like. • Red mead: A form of mead made with
redcurrants. • Rhodomel: made from honey, water and flowers. From the Greek
rhodomeli, literally "rose-honey".
Rose hips, rose petals or
rose attar are most commonly used today, yet historical meads were commonly made with other flowers, such as heather, elderflowers, hibiscus or dandelion. • Rubamel: A specific type of melomel made with raspberries. • Sack mead: This refers to a mead that is made with more honey than is typically used. The finished product contains a higher-than-average ethanol concentration (meads at or above 14% ABV are generally considered to be of
sack strength) and often retains a high
specific gravity and elevated levels of sweetness, although dry sack meads (which have no residual sweetness) can be produced. According to one theory, the name derives from the
fortified dessert wine sherry (which is sometimes sweetened after fermentation) that, in England, once bore the nickname "sack". In Another theory is that the term is a phonetic reduction of "
sake" the name of a Japanese beverage that was introduced to the West by Spanish and Portuguese traders. However, this mead is quite sweet and Shakespeare referenced "sack" in Henry the IV, "If sack and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked!", as well as 18th-century cookbooks that reference "sack mead" by authors unlikely to have known nor tasted "sake". • Short mead: A mead made with less honey than usual and intended for immediate consumption. • Show mead: A term that has come to mean "plain" mead: that which has honey and water as a base, with no fruits, spices, or extra flavorings. Because honey alone often does not provide enough nourishment for the yeast to carry on its life cycle, a mead that is devoid of fruit, etc. sometimes requires a special
yeast nutrient and other
enzymes to produce an acceptable finished product. In most competitions, including all those that subscribe to the
BJCP style guidelines, as well as the
International Mead Fest, the term "traditional mead" refers to this variety (because mead is historically a variable product, these guidelines are a recent expedient, designed to provide a common language for competition judging; style guidelines
per se do not apply to commercial or historical examples of this or any other type of mead). •
Sima: a quick-fermented low-alcoholic Finnish variety, seasoned with lemon and associated with the festival of
vappu. • Tapluchʼi: a Georgian name for mead, especially made of honey but it is also a collective name for any kind of drinkable inebriants. •
Tej/mes: an Ethiopian and Eritrean mead, fermented with wild yeasts and the addition of
gesho. • Traditional mead: synonymous with "show mead," meaning it contains only honey, water, and yeast. •
Trójniak (
TSG): A Polish mead, made using two units of water for each unit of honey. • White mead: A mead that is colored white with herbs, fruit or, sometimes, egg whites. The terms white mead and white metheglin are mentioned in 17th-century cookery books. • Muratina/Kaluvu/Murigi: A native mead made from the
Kikuyu,
Embu,
Meru and
Kamba people of
Kenya. It is made by fermenting honey, water and
Kigelia. ==See also==