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Drink

Sack Mead

A fermented honey beverage made with water, hops, and brandy.

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

Sack Mead

Ingredients

Directions

Make the must

  1. Boil 1 gallon of water with 4 pounds of honey for 45 minutes, skimming regularly.

  2. Add 1 ounce of hops and boil for an additional 30 minutes.

  3. Let the mixture stand overnight.

Cask and age

  1. Transfer to a cask and add 1 quart of brandy for every 13 gallons of liquid.

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

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

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
Provides the fermentable sugar that becomes alcohol, and most of the sweetness and body.
Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the honey.
Brandy
Added to the cask to raise the alcohol content and help preserve the mead.

The step that matters

Lightly stop the cask until fermentation is complete. Sealing too early can trap carbon dioxide and cause pressure buildup, while a loose stopper lets air in. Wait until fermentation has finished before sealing tightly.

“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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