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A few noteworthy literary passages about Mead

These are all from Robert Gayre's Wassail! In Mazers of Mead! but I have added the footnotes he cites to the source documents. I can see good placement for several of these within this article.

And after that he [King Vortigern] had been entertained at a banquet royal, the damsel stepped forth of her chamber bearing a gold cup filled with wine*, and coming next the King, bended her knee and spake, saying: "Lavered King, wacht heil!". But he, when he beheld the damsel's face, was all amazed at her beauty and his heart was enkindled of delight. Then he asked of his interpreter what it was that the damsel had said, whereupon the interpreter made answer: "She hath called thee "Lord King" and hath greeted thee by wishing thee health. But the answer that thou shouldst make unto her is 'Drinc heil!'." Whereupon Vortigern made answer: "Drinc heil!" and bade the damsel drink. Then he took the cup from her hand and kissed her, and drank; and from that day unto this hath the custom held in Britain that he who drinketh at a feast saith unto another, "Wacht heil!" and he that receiveth the drink after him maketh answer "Drink heil!"[1]

Take of spring water what quantity you please, and make it more than blood-warm, and dissolve honey in it till 'tis strong enough to bear an egg, the breadth of a shilling; then boil it gently near an hour, taking off the scum as it rises; then put to about nine or ten gallons seven or eight large blades of mace, three nutmegs quartered, twenty cloves, three or four sticks of cinnamon, two or three roots of ginger, and a quarter of an ounce of Jamaica pepper; put these spices into the kettle to the honey and water, a whole lemon, with a sprig of sweet-briar and a sprig of rosemary; tie the briar and rosemary together, and when they have boiled a little while take them out and throw them away; but let your liquor stand on the spice in a clean earthen pot till the next day; then strain it into a vessel that is fit for it; put the spice in a bag, and hang it in the vessel, stop it, and at three months draw it into bottles. Be sure that 'tis fine when 'tis bottled; after 'tis bottled six weeks 'tis fit to drink.[2]

  1. ^ Geoffrey of Monmouth, Histories of the Kings of Britain, London, 1920, Book VI, Chap. XII, pp. 106-107, * Gayre notes that the wine in the cup would have been Mead
  2. ^ Edward Spencer. The Flowing Bowl, 1903, pp. 32-33.

BTW, I object to the statement that Yeast Nutrient is required to brew a decent Mead. I used nutrient when I started, but learned quickly that Honey is all the wee little yeasties need to keep them happy. That, and time to age.

A side note. When asked by folks at my brewing workshops what yeast is, I am fond of telling them that "Yeast is a bacteria that consumes sugar, exhales carbon dioxide and pisses alcohol". :)

--Bill W. Smith, Jr. 18:59, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Feel free to add some to the article... — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 02:42, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Comment about Yeast

I had JUST added this comment to an old thread when the whole page got archived, so I am re-adding it here...

Personally, I only use Cotes de Blanc if I am making a Melomel or Cyser. For straight Wassail I use Red Star Pasteur Champaigne. The Pasteur Champaigne produces a decidedly nutty after-taste which I and my friends have become quite fond of. :) --Bill W. Smith, Jr. 18:43, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

  • Interesting. I've never heard such a thing, but it would explain the distinct nutty notes in the last dry sparkling mead I got from a friend. Will have to check and see if he used the Red Star Pasteur yeast (I had put it down to agitation during the shipping process) It was an unusual set of flavors but not unpleasant by any means. In my area people tend to use the Lalvin wine yeasts or liquid yeast from White Labs or Wyeast. -MalkavianX 20:00, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Sourcing & Copyedit Ahoy!

I am going to start doing some major copyedit to the history section directly, and am going to remove anything which I cannot verify or find sources for.

  1. That there is a term in Ancient Greek or even the modern Greek language which correlates being drunk with "honey-intoxicated". I have looked in two different Ancient Greek dictionaries as well as looked at the morphology of every single word for "drunk" and "intoxicated" at the Perseus Tufts database and haven't found anything to substantiate this. Maybe it is a metaphor or kenning, so hopefully someone has the actual source for this.
  2. Another questionable statement is about Leszek I the White's declining to participate in the Crusades because there was no mead or beer in the Holy Land. I cannot find a source for this.
  3. A verifiable etymology of the term honeymoon having anything to do with mead. Etymology online doesn't seem to indicate this.

I am attempting to source every claim in the section, but if I can't find a source I'm removing the statement if it seems particularly outlandish. If I cut to deep or if I remove an important element, please re-add it, albeit sourced if possible.- WeniWidiWiki 01:45, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Over the next couple days I will check my bookshelf and see if I cannot find a source for the Honeymoon claim. I have heard this claim forever, but that don't make it so! :) Wacht Heil! --Bill W. Smith, Jr. (talk/ contribs) 05:14, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

If it is something you are pretty sure is true why not tag it {{cn}} for a few days instead of tossing it? — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 13:12, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Because the claims still exist in the history, and because the section has been tagged with various requests for sources for quite awhile, none of which were provided. Since these aren't really controversial statements, I've erred on the side of removal rather than leaving dozens of unsourced claims in the entry which seem to have found their way all over the internet because people have written articles on mead based on the content in this entry. Our lord and saviour Jimbo Wales has recently been reiterating the WP:V policy:
"I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information...[1]"
While I don't quite agree about "zero content being better than misleading or unsourced content" , so much of this entry is unverified, that I had to remove some of the most sensationalist statements. There are still numerous unsourced statements which I left in , which seem plausible and easily verifiable. - WeniWidiWiki 15:37, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Found it! On page 22 of "Wassail! In Mazers of Mead" by Lt. Colonel Robert Gayre, he says "While among our own Gothic ancestors it was the custom at marriage, and for a month afterwards, to feast upon mead, as a consequence down to the present time we call the period following the wedding, the honeymoon, and the French the lune de miel."
Here is his citation from the References and Notes:
Leon Arnon, Manuel du Confiseur-Liquoriste', Paris, 1905, p. 4. The French consider both honey and the bee-ssting to have a powerful aphrodesiac quality. Beck & Smedley, Honey and Your Health, London, 1947, p. 117.
--Bill W. Smith, Jr. (talk/contribs) 23:32, 5 April 2007 (UTC).
Found another one, although this one doe snot cite sources...
On page 14 of "Making Mead", by Bryan Acton & Peter Duncan, An Amateur Winemaker Publication, SBN 900841 07 9, Standard Press, Andover, Hants. "Most people know that the word honeymoon comes from the practice of drinking honey wines during the month-long celebrations which followed better class weddings..."
--Bill W. Smith, Jr. (talk/contribs) 23:45, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I was talking to a mead maker and he said that the word "Honeymoon" came from medieval times when a man and woman would marry and spend thier first month together drinking mead in order to sweeten the marriage. "Honey" for the mead, and "moon" for the first month (or moon cycle) together. I can't give any proof on this but I thought I'd add it. Ross A. Christensen207.20.178.1 15:36, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

"Honeymoon" etymology here is bogus, whether or not people heard it from mead-makers, so I am removing it. Oxford English Dictionary gives citations as far back as 1552: "Hony mone, a terme prouerbially applied to such as be newe maried, whiche wyll not fall out at the fyrste, but thone loueth the other at the beginnynge excedyngly, the likelyhode of theyr exceadynge loue appearing to aswage, ye which time the vulgar people cal the hony mone." OED explains: "originally having no reference to the period of a month, but comparing the mutual affection of newly-married persons to the changing moon which is no sooner full than it begins to wane; now, usually, the holiday spent together by a newly-married couple, before settling down at home." I think Wikipedia is particularly vulnerable to folk-etymologies. Shrikeangel (talk) 03:07, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Recipes

I just removed this:

An old Cornish recipe for metheglin is:

"To 1 gallon water put 4 pounds honey, boil 1 hour; skim well, add 1oz. hops /gallon; boil 1/2 hour longer then stand till next day, then cask. Add 1 gill brandy/gallon, stop lightly. When worked stop close. Keep 1 year. Aromatic flowers e.g; thyme, sweet-briar rosemary, heather, can be boiled in the water before using. It was never considered good until 3 years old."[1]

Once before a recipe was put in the article; however, they belong in wikibooks instead of here. — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 20:08, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I already left a note on Archolman's userpage about it, but left the material so as not to bite. - WeniWidiWiki 20:22, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
If there were a seperate article on Metheglin this recipe would be placed well there, but only one recipe. As it is Metheglin redirects to Mead. --Bill W. Smith, Jr. (talk/contribs) 14:54, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
I didn't think I bit anybody, I didn't put a big vandal flag on the talk page, just brought it here, explaining why... I surely don't want the information lost either. — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 15:12, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I didn't say you bit anyone, I said *I* didn't remove the material because I didn't want to knee-jerk undo new editor's work and scare them off when they are interested in the same things I am. There is already a huge quoted recipe passage in the article, and I personally think the addition of a short concise recipe is no detriment - especially one so old. I almost inserted one myself by Pliny that is shorter than Archolman's which disproves that "honey-wine" and "mead" are the same thing. - WeniWidiWiki 16:01, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

The mead recipe currently in the article, dated 1905, is nearly identical to the recipe that appears in Dr William Salmon's medical text from 1750. There's a very few minor differences (Dr Salmon's text specifies 60 gallons of spring water, for example) but it's clear it's a direct derivative. Although I'm no great fan of recipes in articles, the one included seems pertinent enough. I'm not really sure what the "correct" format for recipes should be, as a single recipe can belong to multiple family trees, requiring quite complex metadata to usefully describe. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.160.137.100 (talk) 04:02, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Martin, Edith (1929, 1963). Cornish Recipes Ancient & Modern 22nd Ed. Cornwall Federation of Women's Institutes. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

Denver Festival

I just want to put up a note regarding the mead festival that was added, then removed by another editor as linkspam. It could be easily re-added IF you first find an article in a major brewing publication discussing the importance of this festival. As it stood, the paragraph had NO citations and smelled like original research. --Bill W. Smith, Jr. (talk/contribs) 21:12, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Ditto. I removed it because there was nothing in either the text added or the link provided to suggest that it was notable from a global perspective. Gregmg 23:05, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Seems like hydromel isn't mead?

Hydromel redirects to mead but the Oxford English Dictionary says for hydromel "A liquor consisting of a mixture of honey and water, which when fermented is called vinous hydromel or mead." ... Does this need an adjustment? Katewill 20:06, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

A mixture of water and honey fermented is precisely what mead is.Ryandaum 00:55, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

The same goes for hippocras: hippocras redirects to mead, but it certainly isn't mead. It is a spiced wine that doesn't even contain honey, as far as I can tell. Josgeluk 14:25, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Hippocras can be made with and/or have added honey...Case in point, the modern varietal of apperitif known as Hippocras Ariege {HA} includes Honey. Specifically Hippocras refers to a filtering bag used and not a method or a process. However the modern use of the word is different from country to country. Much like the ambiguity in modern English with the use of the word Vermouth for spirits from Catalonia/France vs Italy albeit the word has the same etymological derivation in all language from Vi Mut/Vermut. 81.102.111.206 (talk) 13:43, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

Medovina

I notice the article states that medovina is not brewed for personal consumption and is not available commercially. I'm currently sitting next to a 1L bottle bought at a market in Slovakia and I had no trouble finding medovina commercially packaged in a supermarket, it seems to be quite well available, though it is much more expensive than wine (around 64Sk for wine compared to over 200Sk for the commercial medovina, under €2 vs over €6 equivalent). Does this need to be looked at? I know Slovakia is not among the countries listed but it is just next door to the Czech republic.

Mazery

I will have to look this up, but I believe it is from 'Wassail! In Mazers of Mead'... Anyway, the author says that a brewery that makes mead is a mazery. Mazery comes from the word Mazer, literally 'a tree knot', which leads to the traditional serving bowl or guesting cup which was carved from a single knot of sacred wood. --Bill W. Smith, Jr. (talk/contribs) 21:12, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Restored honeymoon after removal by bloodofox

As it is properly cited and referenced, I have restored the 2 sentences referring to the gift of mead to newlyweds. --Bill W. Smith, Jr. (talk/contribs) 00:30, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

bloodofox did not delete the reference, he moved it. It is now in the article twice. Please pick one and delete it. Webaware talk 00:37, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
I removed the section titled Honeymoon, leaving the original paragraph in the History section. This doesn't seem significant enough to justify having it's own section. Gregmg 05:11, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Right now this trivia is buried in the history section. It should be in a different section to where it is more apparent, in my opinion. This was my attempt to do so. :bloodofox: 02:42, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
And my apologies to bloodofox for implying that he had removed the honeymoon text I searched so hard to cite... I simply did not see that he had moved it. Still, I have to agree with Gregmg that it is too short to stand alone as a section. --Bill W. Smith, Jr. (talk/contribs) 01:27, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I removed the "honeymoon" section again. The tradition of giving a month's supply of mead at a marriage is not real, even if you find it in books--all sorts of false information is in books. The tradition is invented to support the bogus etymology. I will remove it until someone presents an actual historical account of such a tradition: something repeated over and over in mead-making books does not qualify as "sourced". In what culture was this tradition practiced? At what time in history? In what ancient book was it recorded? If your "source" can't give this basic information, then it is merely repeating an "urban legend".Shrikeangel (talk) 03:18, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Problem with History section

Current text states that Mead became less popular due to the german purity laws and such. Every reference I have states that the decline in mead had more to do with a shift in demand as western european politics made wine the court drink of choice. I will have to gather my references before I start repairing this section. --Bill W. Smith, Jr. (talk/contribs) 02:37, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I have removed the reference to a link claiming the first archaeological evidence of mead: The earliest archaeological evidence for the production of mead dates to around 2000 BC.[1]

The article in question does not appear at the link given. Searches for Honey and Jazz at the site yield no results. A search of the Durham Archaeological Society site for "Hugh Jazz" yields no results. Google searching the full title if the article yields no links to such an article. Hugh Jazz is a fictitious individual named for its homonym humor used in a common prank joke. CompleatMeadmaker (talk) 13:27, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Jazz, Hugh (May 25, 2009). "Usage of Honey in Ancient Europe". Durham Archaeological Society.

Historical Reference

I ran into this link http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0407921102v1 (PDF), which talks about honey-based fermented beverages 9,000 years ago in China. I'll leave it to those more qualified to edit this into the article, if appropriate... 69.236.67.246 05:58, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Etymology of "metheglin"

This article seems to offer two different etymologies for "metheglin". In the first section of the article, the origin is given as Old English "medu" tracing back to a Proto-Indo-European root of the same meaning. Later, under "mead variants", it is given as Welsh "meddyg" + "llyn", with "meddyg" - "healing" usually being traced to Latin "medicus". If the first etymology was intended to refer only to the word "mead" (not "metheglin"), then it is confusingly and ambiguously positioned. In any case, it would be valuable to have an authoritative opinion as to whether or not the "med/th" component of "mead" and "metheglin" have a common etymology. FredV 16:04, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

An exclusive drink

The article should point out that mead was a very exclusive product throughout its heyday among the Slavic and Germanic peoples. It was very popular as a ceremonial gift at weddings, baptismal parties and as a gift to foreign diplomats and other rulers and was very expensive. Just like grain is refined into a more expensive product by being turned into beer, so is honey when it's brewed into mead, and honey is very expensive when compared to grain.

Peter Isotalo 10:34, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Mead vs. Meade aka Irish Wine

There is an Irish drink, Meade, that is made with white wine, honey, and spices. I was wondering if there is any connection to Mead as discussed on this page? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.240.247.188 (talk) 06:25, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Risk?

Are there methanol related risks associated with home brewing? Should the article address this issue? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.86.123.210 (talk) 16:05, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

No appreciable amount of methanol is produced in the fermentation process, irrespective what's being fermented. Methanol is produced in distillation, and hundreds, maybe thousands, of people die or go blind each year as a result of drinking illicitly-distilled alcohol, or moonshine.
--Yumegusa (talk) 17:41, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
Actually, methanol is produced during fermentation not distillation. It can be concentrated to toxic levels during distillation if the distiller isn't careful. In any case, this is outside the scope of this article and there is no appreciable risk for home mead making. Gregmg

New intro

I took this out until we have figured out how to deal with it:

Meadhing (ˈmɛ.ðɪŋ) is the practice of brewing mead.[citation needed] Mead is also colloquially known as "honey wine". A brewery that deals specifically in mead is called either a meadery or a mazery.[citation needed]

The article merits my attention as a class-B article without adequate refs that meddles in antiquity and prehistory. Now, these terms here that some astute editor had tagged appear absolutely nowhere in no dictionary or Encyclopedia from Johnson to Skeat. Unfortunately Mazers of mead is only snippet view and the book is otherwise hard to get. But, the Wikipedia editor seems to have misinterpreted the term mazer. Mazers of mead is "cups of mead." A mazer is a type of cup originally maple of general use not just of mead. As for meadhing, well, that is very quaint, but it does not even appear in Old English, which has several words dealing with mead. The Old English were great old mead drinkers. However, that is part of the problem! Mead is so ancient that it is multicultural. The Africans made mead, the Asians made mead, etc. We approach it as good old-fashioned English countryside boozing and lard it with these quaint but unverifiable English country terms. Now, I don't know but that somewhere down east someone's country grandmother or grandfather might have used these terms in cooking up a home brew of mead illegally in a cellar still but they aren't in the dictionary. So, we need adequate refs with page numbers from credible sources. The sales brochure of John Smith's brewery started by his great-grandfather in old Portsmouth is not an encyclopedic reference and his great grandmother's lisping is not evidence of a legitimate English word. But, that is only part of the problem. Don't we want to present mead as international and put the good old English boys in their own subsection of good old English boy meadery (hiccup)? Notice how I just made up a word, meadery, using the productive capability of the English language. You have to demonstrate that meadhing and mazery are not your or your grandmother's word production but are tradional English words of dictionary pedigree! So, for the time being they go here. I'm taking a shot at a definition of more ancient and international scope..Dave (talk) 10:52, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Changes to changes

I'm glad to see there is a live wire here. I can respond to those changes too - gee the article is a lot of work - gradually we will work it out. I'm working on multiple articles in parallel here. I will get back; meanwhile keep the requests for cites and put any others in that you see. Some people don't like these tags but on class B articles like this they seem to me to be needed. We will just tag back and forth until it gets cleaned up. I presume you know how to use Google books and articles, which gives us a lot of information free of charge (except for the cost of the Internet).Dave (talk) 10:16, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

The ambiguous prehistoric mead

Nice try, my friend. It leaves us with a slight problem to be solved. I am sure we can think of something. Archaeologists and archaeological evidence can't always be taken at face value. As your author says, the evidence is always to some degree ambiguous. There is almost never a single "authority" stating the way things are the same way you would state the circumference of a circle is 2 pi r. There is almost always a range of opinions. I approve of your quote, I am glad you did it, I like the argument. I will put it into more formal format. Cite book provides for a quote. But, the thing is, he does not cite all the evidence. There is plenty of evidence a whole lot more unambiguous than that. I am sure he meant well. But, if you think about it - who is he to imply he has looked at all the archaeological evidence and is able to judge it is all ambiguous? I will tell you right now, he is not a professional archaeologist or he would not be making such a rash statement. Maybe the evidence he mentions in passing in a few sentences might be construed as ambiguous. An archaeologist with all the evidence in mind might be able to say, over a large number of sites in various circumstances there is unambigous evidence of a pattern of the use of mead. He might do a statistical study of the occurrence of honey in drink residues. Or he might not. So we cannot just take that statement at face value. Right now I am looking some evidence of honey in funerary drink residues that are interpreted as a mixture of wine, beer and mead left for the deceased in Denmark. I am sure I can find a great deal more along those lines. This is not really ambiguous evidence, now is it? At least, no more so than any other archaeological evidence. Your author's opinion is only your author's opinion and I can find plenty of other opinions. So how do we deal with this? The way it is now you have stated it as a declarative fact, the evidence is ambiguous. I am going to add evidence not mentioned by your author. I suggest rather than confuse the h. out of the poor reader by stating contrary and irreconcilable opinions we just say there is a wide range of evidence and more than one opinion about it and state a couple of people. So for the moment I will fix your ref and when I get time (soon I hope) you will be seeing some compromise language and some of the evidence neglected by your author. The thing is, it really belongs in a section of its own. All we want to do here is introduce it. But I am sure we can work something out. An opinion that the archaeological evidence is ambiguous certainly ought to be in there - in its place. So I am taking it on - when I get more time.Dave (talk) 23:50, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

It would hardly be the first time WP editors have had to deal with contradictory sources, so calling it a "problem" is something of an exaggeration. If you introduce such a situation it would be best to keep it out of the lead section, but please do ensure added statements are actually supported by your citations; the misinterpretations and factual errors I've been cleaning up ("mead is generated by distilling a fermentation", "alcoholic content may range ... to that of brandy", "strained through grain mash and hops") suggest a certain unfamiliarity with the subject matter.
--Yumegusa (talk) 10:10, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Mead technically not a wine? Oh come on, now...

I've refrained from editing the main article because I'm not certain what to do about an innacurate statement in the article's beginning. Given its very presence, I'd rather not embroil myself in correcting it.

The article currently states: "While it is often referred to as 'honey wine', technically mead is no more a honey wine than beer is a malt wine."

As a professional winemaker and hobbyist meadmaker, this gross inaccuracy would cause me to question all information in the rest of this article. A "wine" is simply an alcoholic beverage produced by a particular style of fermentation we call winemaking -- a style differentiated from that of brewing (beer) and distillation (spirits). What you use for you source of sugar does not matter.

Mead *is* technically "honey wine" -- that is the very definition of mead, both culturally and legally, as well as according to every one of the many winemaking books lining my bookshelf. If you produce wine in the United States, you must fill out detailed compliance paperwork for the Tax and Trade Bureau (formerly part of the BATF) stating what it is you've made (wine, beer, spirits, etc), origin of source materials, alcoholic percentage, and much more.

Meads, according to legal structure, are classified strictly as "Wine" while what we normally consider to be wine, made from grapes, are classified "Grape Wine" to set them apart from meads. So at least in the United States, mead has an even stronger legal claim to the title of "wine" than grape wine itself does!

The fermentation process of honey wine and grape wine is identical, mead being treated in the industry as a nutrient-deficient white grape wine. Every style and technique that may be used on grape or other fruit wines may be done to mead; not so with beer.

And while it *is* true that beer is not "malt wine" (again, TTB labels it legally a "beer"), one does have the option in beer brewing of producing "barley wine" which is made with a different process and is higher in alcoholic percentage, generally in the range of alcohol levels in historical wines (9-13%). And, again, barley wine falls in a legal category all of its own.

To state that mead is not technically wine is inaccurate to the point of being a simple lie. Mead is legally defined as wine made from honey. Ancient poets sang their praises of honey *wine*, synonymous with (and the very definition of) mead. And any meadmaker or winemaker will laugh if you try to tell them that mead is not a wine, just as I did.

If the statement is going to stay, someone had better back it up *really* well. I'd love to see such an argument's support.

Xaven (talk) 15:11, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree. To further explain, the main difference between making wine and making beer is this: With wine, you start with sugar, be it grapes, fruit, etc. You then ferment it. No middle steps. With beer you start with starches from grain (barley, wheat, corn, etc.) You first have to perform what is called a mash: the grain is soaked in hot water (generally around 150F). This causes the enzymes in the malted grain to convert the starches into sugars. THEN you ferment it. That is the fundamental difference between wine and beer. So mead, which does not have a mash step, truly is closer to a wine than beer.

I think whoever added that statement is confused between mead and sake. Sake is commonly called 'rice wine', but there is a conversion step from starch to sugar in the process. It is not technically a mash: it uses a mold and much less water. But it is a conversion step nonetheless. So sake is truly more like a beer than a wine. 68.82.93.169 (talk) 20:46, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree as well. As an amateur wine-maker and mead-maker, this has bothered me for a while. Mead is certainly honey wine. It could be called by some a country wine, like most fruit and flower wines are, but the process, the yeast, the alcoholic content, the cultural use, and everything about it matches the definition of a wine. Meads are often made with grape or other fruit juices added before fermentation, too, and the result is certainly as much a wine as one made from grape juice with added sugar. In what way is it NOT a wine? Rosencomet (talk) 20:48, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
so everyone is agreed mead is wine, does anyone have a source? of course a legal definition is different then a technical one. 67.176.160.47 (talk) 07:11, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
For the record, I am mead brewer. I have to disagree. While mead may shares some similarities with wine, it is not wine. Legal definitions are meaningless as they have no basis in fact. The definition of wine is "the fermented juice of fruit" (usually grapes). While it is true that you can put fruit in a mead, it is not a requirement. Honey is. The term "honey" wine may have been used to describe this similarity while at the same time distinguishing it as something of its own. If it was wine, we would simply call it wine. Even Wikipedia's own description of wine would preclude mead. Vampire77 (talk) 01:39, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
As a oenologist and soon-to-be commercial mead producer I have to say that I'm kind of conflicted about this. Here are the things that make mead a wine: same yeast species (saccharomyces cerevisiae/bayanus), same original gravity (1.064-1.194), same tannins as white wine, same fermentation temperature (generally 21-24 deg C), same organic processes during aging, and similar taste to white wine. The difference lies in the fact that honey is used in the fermentation process. Like with any other winemaking process, the must is preferably sterilized initially with potassium metabisulfite rather than boiling. In almost every way the process of making mead and the final product that comes out at the end are similar if not identical to that of making a white wine or fruit wine. I would technically call it a wine. Why is blueberry wine still called wine? I say we call it a wine and be done with it! Meşteşugarul - U 06:31, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Mead as slang for any alcoholic beverage in Australia and New Zealand

I've deleted this, because I can find no support in slang dictionaries of Australian or New Zealand english, or any reference online. Unless a citation is included, I can't see accepting this statement, posted by an unidentified editor with only one other edit. Rosencomet (talk) 18:39, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

External Links

The link to Barat's Mead page appears to be broken. Here is one that works. http://coman.com/barat/index.htm#intro —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.68.80.10 (talk) 21:11, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Reverting the picture?

Hey, this is probably a bit nit-picky, but what do y'all think we could revert back to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Swedish_Mead.JPG image utilized on the page until November 16th? I personally just think the composition of the older image is better than the current image being used, as it highlights the mead against a background whereas in the new image, the mead kind of blinds into the white wall.

67.248.142.134 (talk) 20:23, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree with your comment regarding the composition of the picture, but I think the mead on the current picture is a better representation of mead itself as mead is supposed to be clear like wine. --ZARguy (talk) 21:10, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Someone already reverted as suggested, and I think the Swedish_Mead.JPG is actually a pretty clear mead, but also very cold so that condensation occurred on the bottle and glass. Yummy ;)

Sima/Mead

Isn't Mead and Sima same thing. I am Finnish and I think that Sima is Mead in Finnish, but English Wikipedia has two different pages for Sima and Mead? --Ransewiki (talk) 15:13, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Hops needs removing from the opening.

Mead is Mead & the topic is about Honey based wine and not Beer.

The references to Hops in the opening passage need to be moved to the 'Varieties' section of the article.

Otherwise its inclusion at the opening tends to derail the topic.

In my opinion, all such added fruits and grains (such as hops) should be classified as adulterated / variants and listed accordingly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.151.60.178 (talk) 12:32, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Varieties section needs lots of work

The section on the varieties of mead needs to have some work done. There are too many references to 'made up' varieties of mead and there are numerous references to meads from different countries that re not varieties at all but are simply what mead is called. Mead = Midus = Myod = Medica = Medovina etc

Perhaps that should become a separate section of its own.

Varieties Cyser, Braggot, Melomel etc

Regional Styles Medovina, Myod, Medica etc

I'll create it it others think it is a good idea — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.8.178.225 (talk) 17:18, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Fermentation process

As a producer of mead, I thought it would be nice to include a section on the process of fermentation and how mead is produced. For now, it's a bit of a mess. I tidied up my grammar and polished a few things here and there, but I know I'm missing sources and other such Wikipedia-ish things. If you have any suggestions on how I can spruce this up, I'll be watching this page for changes :) Meşteşugarul - U 13:10, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Remove references to 'brewing' mead

As mead is not a brewed beverage, I feel like references to brewing mead, wort, and home 'brewers' should be changed on this page. It is simply inaccurate otherwise. Gremlyn1 (talk) 16:01, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Needs review

Mead (/ˈmiːd/; archaic and dialectal "medd"; from Old English "meodu",[1])

Medd I do not believe is dialectal. Medd is the word for mead in the Welsh language and comes from their word for honey, Mêl, I believe. It would be worth checking accuracy of the current article for this reason.

Additionally I believe the English word for Honeymoon comes from the Welsh term Mis Mêl. i believe that in pre anglo Britain the tradition of the peoples now identified as Welsh would give mead (Medd) to a newly married coupe who were to drink a bit of mead everyday for one moon cycle, in the celtic calendar there is 13 months - 1 for each lunar cycle, a month in the Welsh language is Mis. Therefore they would essentially drink honey for 1 month/moon - Mis Mêl being 'honey month', translated into English as honeymoon. This tradition came from the importance of honey in their culture as it was used for many medicinal purposes and had important cultural significance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7D:1A32:6F00:223:12FF:FE02:DAB5 (talk) 11:22, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Piment / pyment

I recently removed the entry for pyment from the list of mead variants, and Gremlyn1 asked that it be discussed here first. I've been able to unearth little about this pre–20th century drink, but from what I can tell, it sounds like a spiced and/or honeyed grape-wine more similar to vermouth than to mead. I'm not getting the sense that the honey itself was being fermented to make it. The best resource I can point to is wiktionary's direct lifting of the term from the 1913 M-W dictionary. Other references seem to agree. If there's any evidence that piment/pyment is a true fermented honey product, I'd be excited to see it. Cheers! —jameslucas (" " / +) 16:28, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for coming to talk it over. What we have, I think, is a discrepancy between historical and modern understanding of pyment as modern pyments most definitely are meads. Pyments are judged in the Mazer Cup (world's largest mead competition, judging both commercial and home made) in their own category, and defined in the BJCP 2015 Mead Guidelines under Fruit Meads, Section M2B. Modern pyments are made almost identically to wine, except that instead of adding standard sugar to the grapes, you add honey, so there is a little blurring of the lines between the two and it can be considered grape mead or honeyed wine. You can find many commercial versions of modern pyment, so if that doesn't make the case that it's real, I don't know what else can :)
To shed a little more light on it, the kind of 'piment' you're talking about is also know as Hippocras.
Gremlyn1 (talk) 17:34, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
Well then! I guess the only question is who's going to add these excellent references to the article? Want the honors? —jameslucas (" " / +) 17:47, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
Done! Gremlyn1 (talk) 18:22, 7 December 2016 (UTC)


C-class

I don't think this meets B-class requirements. No section on modern economy, distribution talks about few random countries, mead in Poland (one of the biggest producers and consumers) is just a seel also, this is still below average. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:40, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

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Political Correctness again

NB the use of 'BCE' and 'CE' instead of 'BC' and 'AD'. Political correctness, otherwise known as Cultural Marxism, yet again. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.59.159 (talk) 21:17, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Mead in Norway.

In norway, the expression Mead is well-known. It probably is about perry (pear cider), which is how people behave with regards to "Mead". The article seems to deal with a larger idea of alcoholic drinks, and also contains Saxon influence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:FE0:C700:2:781F:1A82:338:D2B7 (talk) 10:23, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

History - What did Pliny say?

According to my reading what Pliny called "militites" was honey and must (the initial material of wine making). From Book XIV, Chap 11:

"The liquor known as melitites is also one of the sweet wines: it differs from mulsum, in being made of must; to five congii of rough-flavoured must they put one congius of honey, and one cyathus of salt, and they are then brought to a gentle boil: this mixture is of a rough flavour. "

Pliny's term for what relates to mead is "aqua mulsa" See Book XXII Chap 52 in latin.

I am not pretending to know enough about this to be qualified to make the change, but I would welcome someone who does to weigh in and act if appropriate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Droopyfeathers (talk • contribs) 00:33, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

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