What is Mead? Part 2

As I have stated before, if you are interested in brewing your own mead, Ken Schramm's The Compleat Meadmaker is your Bible. The styles of Melomel, Pyment, Metheglin, and Braggot are thoroughly discussed in his book, but I want to give a quick run down of some different styles, including the ones previously mentioned. This list is not entirely inclusive of all mead styles, but enough to give you an idea of the myriad of ways people create variations of mead.

Melomel is honey and fruit. There are a wide variety of fruits that people use together or separate. Some people will use concentrate juices, fresh fruit juices, or allow the fruit to ferment, sliced up, in a sack that sits in the mead. This can happen at any stage of the process, and will produce different results.

Cyser is apples and honey. This is probably one of my favorite styles of mead, and I'll be discussing this more in the coming post.

Morat is honey and mulberries.

Pyment is grapes and honey. This style is where the honey is the flavor that shines the most, although, I have never heard of a wine that used honey in the process.

Hippocras is honey, grapes, and spices.

Metheglin is honey and spices. This style can become very interesting at times with the various combination of herbs people put together.

Rhodomel is made with honey and Attar. Attar is just rose oil made from the petals. I have always been intrigued by this style. I have never had a glass of it, but maybe one year a great valentines gift it will make. Sorry, Yoda sometimes, unwittingly, slips in my writing, which does not provide a more sage prose; rather, makes me look like a kindergarten writer.

Braggot, sometimes called bracket, is barley and honey. Hops can be introduced. This is more about the honey, than the barley. This style demands for serious honey flavor and smell. I am currently working on a mead based on this style.

The last two are show and sack mead. Show refers to a traditional mead of water and honey. Sack is a stronger traditional mead. Sack mead is often achieved through the addition of extra honey during the fermentation process.

Within traditional mead, there are dry, semi-sweet, and sweet styles. In a latter post, I'll discuss more about the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP), whose guidelines are used for competition.

There are more styles, but without overloading this post with each one, I have selected some of the more widely created styles. A style that I really want to travel just to experience is Tej.Tej is an Ethiopian mead, fermented with wild yeasts with the addition of gesho. Recipes vary from family to family, with some recipes leaning towards braggot with the inclusion of grains. Gesho is a type of plant that is indigenous to Ethiopia.

I hope these past two post have given you some insight into the exciting world of mead. Next post will begin the log of my Applenoon Delight. If you haven't guessed, it is my Cyser.