Vinous Mead
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the must
Boil water and honey together for 15 minutes.
Skim the mixture and let it cool.
Pour it gently into a cask with crude tartar.
Reserve some liquid for topping up the cask.
Ferment
Expose the cask to sunlight or place it near a constant fire to encourage fermentation.
After 7-8 days, fill the cask from the reserved liquid when froth appears.
Once fermentation stops, seal the cask and store it in a cellar.
Bottle
Bottle the mead after 12 months.
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
What each ingredient does
- Honey
- Provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, and the main sweetness.
- Water
- Dissolves the honey and forms the bulk of the liquid that ferments.
- Crude tartar
- Adds acidity, which helps keep the mead stable and tart.
- Yeast
- Converts the sugars in the honey into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
The step that matters
Topping up the cask from the reserved liquid. Fermentation pushes foam and liquid out of the cask, and the level drops as it works. Topping up with reserved liquid keeps air out of the surface, which helps limit spoilage microbes and oxidation while yeast is active.
“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.
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