What Is Mead?

So what is mead anyway? You may have heard it described as a wine, a light bodied beer, a cider, or even a champagne. While all of these descriptions of different meads could technically be correct, none of them actually tell us what mead is. Confused yet? Hopefully I’ll be able to straighten a few things out for you in this short article.

Mead is arguably the oldest alcoholic beverage known to mankind, dating back 9,000 years, if not more. Almost every human culture with a tradition of brewing alcoholic beverages has made some kind of mead throughout history. In Spain there is even a 7,500 year old cave paining of a human climbing a tree to get to a beehive. While it may be mere speculation that our cave painted honey gatherer was making his trek up that tree in order to make mead as opposed to just eating the honey, it’s fun to imagine.

Mead, in it’s most basic form is the product of mixing together water, honey and yeast and then leaving it to ferment. Anyone, including our more primitive, cave-dwelling ancestors could do that. But it can also be made with the addition of fruit, fruit juice, spices, vegetables, flowers, herbs and even grains. Depending on how it is made and what it is made with it can be sweet or dry, carbonated or still, strong or sessionable, flavorful or easy drinking. As I mentioned in the beginning of this article it can be like a wine, if made with grapes or grape juice (called a pyment) or like a champagne if it is then carbonated. It can be made with apples or apple juice to make something similar to a cider (called a cyser) and if you make it with some malted barley it can be similar to a beer (called a braggot).

So if a friend ever asks you “What’s mead like? A beer, or a wine or a cider?” you can simply reply with the helpful answer of “Yes”.