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Drink

Sack Mead

A fermented honey beverage flavored with hops and fortified with brandy or sack.

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 ½ ounce of hops and boil for another 30 minutes.

  3. Let the mixture stand until the next day.

Ferment and age

  1. Transfer to a cask and add 1 quart of brandy or sack.

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

  3. If using a large cask, wait a 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
Provides the fermentable sugar that becomes alcohol and gives the mead its sweetness and body.
Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma that balance the honey's sweetness and help preserve the drink.
Brandy or sack
Raises the alcohol content, which helps stop fermentation and stabilizes the mead.

The step that matters

Sealing the cask after fermentation. Sealing too early can trap pressure and stop fermentation, while leaving it open exposes the mead to air and spoilage. Closing it lightly until fermentation finishes lets carbon dioxide escape safely before the cask is sealed 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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