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Drink

Simple Mead

A honey wine produced by boiling honey and water, then cooling, settling, and drawing off the liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Simple Mead

Ingredients

Directions

Make the must

  1. Dissolve honey in water and boil over moderate heat until reduced to two-thirds of the original quantity.

  2. Skim the mixture and pour it into a full barrel.

Settle and draw off

  1. Allow it to sit for three to four days to settle.

  2. Draw off the liquid for use.

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

What each ingredient does

Honey
Provides the fermentable sugar that yeast converts into alcohol, and the sweetness of the finished mead.
Water
Dilutes the honey to a workable sugar concentration and forms the bulk of the liquid.

“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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