Vinous Mead
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the must
Boil the water and honey mixture for 15 minutes.
Skim the mixture and let it cool nearly to room temperature.
Pour it gently into a cask with 1 ounce of crude tartar.
Reserve some liquid in bottles for topping up the cask.
Close the bottles with muslin or coarse linen.
Ferment
Expose the cask to sunlight or place it near a constant fire to encourage fermentation.
After 7 to 8 days, when froth appears, fill the cask from the bottles.
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 body of the mead.
- Water
- Dilutes the honey so the mixture can be boiled, cooled and fermented.
- Crude tartar
- Adds acidity and supplies nutrients that help the fermentation proceed.
The step that matters
Let the mixture cool nearly to room temperature before pouring it into the cask. Adding hot liquid to the cask can harm the yeast and stall fermentation, so the mixture should be cooled before it is combined with the tartar.
“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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