I have for some reason been wanting to try some Mead....and never seem to get around to it. The last few days I took pains to search for it locally....and found a specialty shop for wines and other such beverages across town. Well today I picked up a bottle of Mead and to my surprise it seems to be more of a wine than an ale..or beer. I was always under the impression it was more of a beer or ale...but it is 12% by volume. I have not tried it and will wait for the weekend before indulging with a meal. Have any of the members tried it and what to they think.?? Watcherhchris, Not an Ishmaelite.
Never once ever tasted mead. Me, I like ale. Russian, Brit, German, ... top-brewed, most I like; wheated beers / ales, I like. Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier, Newcastle Ale, Baltika #8
I to had been wanting to try mead after reading an article claiming mead is what was distributed to the Roman Soldiers to increase their endurance toting all that heavy armor on those long marches . Likely they were also given mead before going into battle . -- About 3 or 4 weeks ago I bought a bottle of mead for the first time . I liked it . I drunk it all over the course of two or three weeks . I visited a bee keeper about a month ago that brews up mead and sells it . I didn't get the chance to try the bee keepers mead but bought mine from a liquor store . Mead would be one of my top storage items if I was inclined to store an alcoholic drink for the collapse . --- Another item that is on my to try list is hard apple cider as it has medicinal benefits .
I tried a few different brews which come in different strengths both in the UK and in Norway (its suggested that the Vikings introduced mead into the UK). The stronger mead would work as a dessert wine, its quite sweet.
The Viking theory of them using mead does make sense as they needed to not only row across the ocean but row up rivers . Mead in a bug out bag for someone planning to potentially take a long walk makes good logic .
Mead is easy to make but it varies as much as wine, depending on the yeast and amount of honey to water ratio it can be sweet or dry, strong or quite weak. Most brewing yeast will only survive 12-13% alcohol by volume but if you use champagne yeast (as I do in my cider and mead) you can get it up to 18% without getting at all scientific about it. It is difficult to get a perfect recipe because the water/sugar content of honey varies so much so making mead can be a bit empirical. Batches can vary a lot. I prefer a medium/dry mead with a slightly sharp taste and the very slight honey after taste. I don’t add additional flavourings as many recipes call for. Fundamentally mead is just the same as wine which can in fact be made out of most things using yeast and sugar…maybe not fine wine but with enough alcohol to kill bacteria in the absence of safe drinking water.
Jist bought me some decent moonshine ... hit's legal nowadays. Corn likker -- yeeeeeeehiiiiiiii! 100 proof -- dancin' awn th'roof!
Wrong! The sugar in the honey is consumed by the yeast which converts it to alcohol. If you get the amount of honey right then all the sugar is used, creating a dry white mead.
When making mash, some folk use honey even cane sugar. When the mash finishes "working", it is no longer sweet because the yeast finishes it off. Alcohol and carbon dioxide (mash while working bubbles) are the yeast's waste products. The mash will now taste bitter like beer (actually, it kind of IS a beer, first cousin anyway). This is now what one distills to make likker (as liquor is spelled by shiners) -- shooting for over 140 proof (using a thumper between the still and the copper screw will increase the alcohol content). Copper stills improve the flavor due to the copper latching onto some of the bad chemicals before they can get out. Copper stills have to be constantly washed and washed very well. Leftover mash is sour and some can be used to start another run of mash, or it can be fed to the hogs. Actually, the latter is what most folk do. Happy hogs ... until the weather goes cold, then it's hog slaughtering time. .
Maybe it was just that the yeast in the one you tried died before it managed to use up enough of the sugar in the honey. it’s a delicate balance. Some meads are sweet, some are dry…just like wine. I was bought some mead from a guy on Ludlow market that was dry enough to make your toes curl
Try and get hold of some Paul and give it a try; I love wine and would drink Mead if offered but can't see me buying any.
Wine is grape juice that's gone bad. Centuries back, there was no refrigeration. People did what they had to do. Alcohol and vinegar preserve food. Because I was raised with SO much vinegar in food, I came to like it. And then there's the matter of salt. In the Southeastern U.S., food is SALTY. As a kid, it was chicken and salt pork. Again, people did what they had to do. People used a lot of peppers also. Vinegar and pepper was everywhere, I can see a decanter sitting on my grandmother's supper table. You'd pound salt and pepper into the meat of a freshly killed hog, then put that meat in the smokehouse. That's what was going to get you through the winter. One of my great uncles grew peppers out behind his house in the garden, plus and on the sides of the steps up to his front porch. There was no mistaking that house as belonging to that saintly old man. .
Oh dear! If you don’t LIKE the taste of food or drink, then that is fair enough. As for calling wine a Yuppie drink - really? On top of which, nobody says “yuppie “ 35 years after it fell from language fashion. I am a working class chap, but that doesn’t stop me from enjoying what you consider to be ‘upperclass ‘ drinks. As I say, if you don’t like it, great, fair enough. I enjoy beer too, but English’heavy ‘ ale. Not the European lagers, or dare I say? American beers. Just not my taste. Nothing class- based though. I don’t enjoy it.
no, I agree about lagers- "gnat's piss" we used to call it its more of a women's drink. Newcastle Brown Ale was my drink of choice. there is too much snobbery about wine.
While I agree that there can be snobbery about certain brands of alcoholic drinks the actual drink itself isn’t intrinsically posh or upper class, also these things g9 in fashions. Currently gin is trendy with micro distilleries producing low volume batches of expensive gin while in the past gin was seen as cheap and suited to those with weak moral standards. Weak beer was drunk because the water in cities wasn’t safe, later tea became cheaper and more popular so the water was made safer by boiling it for tea, now there is an entire industry built up around expensive teas, craft beer and real ale. It’s just about perceived value and companies being able to charge more for something to drink. The concept of selling one bottled water as being of higher quality and at a significantly higher price than another is actually ridiculous if you really stop and think about what they are. Snobbery is an unattractive trait but it seems to creep in wherever you look.
Yuppies dies twenty years after the hippies LW, ain't no yuppies anymore mate. There is wine to suit every pallet even yours if you'd give it a chance. I love a good beer or lager but really love a robust red, crisp white or champagne. Some of the Cava I've tried in Spain ("méthode champenoise") is as good as many a French champagne but a quarter the price, its an affordable daily drink over here.
Margaritas is the only alcoholic beverage I will drink and that is about one per year, birthday. Never liked beer or wine. Yuppies and hippies maybe an old fashioned term but the same type people are still roaming the planet. They did not go away simply because the term lost favor.
I dont know why Max thinks Hippies dont exist any more, we lived in Glastonbury for 10 years and have visited since we left and I can tell him they indeed do still exist.
Ha ha! Given your signature,I wonder why you see yourself as a hippy? They live(d) in communes. https://www.theguardian.com/society...stagram-not-so-cool-remember-first-time-round
Back to alcohol, woke up at around 06:00, forecast for my area in Spain was 34c (thats 93f for those stuck in ye olde days) come 14:00 my weather station showed 43c/110f (shaded air temp) and still 30c at 21:00 but thankfully I had an ample supply of ice cold Estrella Galicia in the drinks fridge which saved the evening. Bit of radio ham stuff for Chris: This morning I got a full size G5RV up and running via an icom 7300 and this QTH is proving to be fantastic...ham radio, cold beer...life is good