Skip to main content
Drink

To Make Sack Mead

A fermented honey beverage with hops and brandy, brewed from water, honey, hops, and brandy or sack.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Honey and brandy work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 169 recipes. Both carry ethyl benzoate, which smells sweet. The science ↓

To Make Sack Mead

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wort

  1. Boil the water with honey for 45 minutes, skimming off any foam.

  2. Add hops and boil for another 30 minutes.

  3. Let the mixture cool overnight.

Ferment and age

  1. Transfer to a cask and add the brandy or sack.

  2. Lightly close the cask until fermentation is complete, then seal tightly.

  3. If using a large cask, let it age for one year before bottling.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Honey + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (sweet).

  2. Hops + brandytop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-hex-3-en-1-ol (freshly cut grass green and herbaceous notes).

  3. Honey + hopstop 41% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1 recipe

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Honey
Supplies the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, and adds sweetness.
Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma that balance the honey's sweetness.
Brandy or sack
Adds alcohol and body, raising strength and helping preserve the mead.

The step that matters

Lightly close the cask during fermentation. Fermentation gives off carbon dioxide. A tightly sealed cask early on can build up pressure and burst, while a loose seal lets air and contaminants in. Seal fully only once fermentation has finished, so the pressure is released safely and the mead is protected from oxidation.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes