Vinous Mead
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Boil water and honey together for 15 minutes.
Skim the mixture and let it cool.
Pour it gently into a cask with crude tartar.
Reserve some liquid for topping up the cask.
Ferment
Seal bottles with muslin or coarse linen.
Expose the cask to sunlight or place it near a constant fire to encourage fermentation.
After 7-8 days, fill the cask from the bottles when froth appears.
Once fermentation ceases, 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 mead's sweetness.
- Crude tartar
- Contributes acidity to the mead.
- Isinglass
- Acts as a fining agent that helps clarify the mead.
The step that matters
Once fermentation ceases, seal the cask and store it in a cellar.. Sealing the cask once fermentation has stopped limits contact with air, which would otherwise let oxygen and spoilage microbes affect the mead's flavour. Cool storage slows further change while it matures.
“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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