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Drink

Sack Mead

A fermented beverage made by boiling water and honey, adding hops, then aging with 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 the water with honey for 45 minutes, skimming off any foam.

  2. Add hops and boil for another 30 minutes.

  3. Let the mixture sit overnight.

Cask and age

  1. Transfer to a cask and add the brandy.

  2. Lightly stop the cask until fermentation is complete.

  3. Seal the cask tightly.

  4. 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 sugars that yeast ferments into alcohol, giving the mead its sweetness and body.
Hops
Add bitterness that balances the honey's sweetness and help keep the mead stable.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content, which helps protect the finished mead from spoilage.

The step that matters

Lightly stop the cask until fermentation is complete. Fermentation releases carbon dioxide that needs to escape, so a loose stopper prevents pressure build-up. Sealing tightly too early can trap gas and burst the cask, while leaving it open invites airborne contaminants.

“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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