Mint Mead

This is documentation that I wrote for an entry in the 1994 Ice Dragon Pentathalon.

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Mint Mead

In searching for a quick mead recipe that did not contain the usual ginger, clove, mace, nutmeg and cinnamon, I found inspiration. I wanted to try something new. It was then that I came into possession of a large amount of fresh mint leaves. Searching through my resources I found the mint was used mead, but I could not find any mention of it being used alone. I could not see why it wouldn't be: there are period non-alcohol drinks made of honey and mint from both Europe and the Middle East. But was there a reason why it wouldn't be used alone in mead? I started with Digby's "Mr. Webbes Meath" recipe to start off with:

Then skim them clean off, and all the froth, or whatever rifeth of the water. Then dissolve in it warm, about one part of honey to six of water: Lave and beat it, till all of the Honey be perfectly dissolved; Then boil it, beginning gentle, till all the scum be risen, and scummed away. It must boil in all about two hours. Half an hour, before you end your boiling, put into it some Rosemary-tops, Thyme, Sweet-marjorame, one Sprig of Minth, in all about half a handful, and as much as all these; in all, about a handful of herbs, and two Ounces of sliced Ginger, and one Ounce of bruised Cinamon. He did use to put in a few Cloves and Mace; But the King did not care for them.

It was nice to see that I was not the only person to tire of cloves and mace in my mead. I did not follow the proportions of the recipe: "one part honey to six of water." While that ratio of honey to water would make mead, it would be drinkable right away. Towards the end of the recipe Digby wrote:

All which will be mellowed ... in the space of a year or two. For this is to be kept so long before it be drunk.

As my plan was for a quick mead, I changed the ratio to 1.4 parts of honey to one part of water. This I did not think too much out of the ordinary, as Digby, writing about the same recipe, said that the brewer himself used an almost one to one ratio of honey to water:

The first of Septemb. 1663. Mr. Webbe came to my House to make some for Me. He took fourty three Gallons of water, and fourty two pounds of Norfolk honey.

Ingredients:

4 Pounds, Clover Honey
3 Pounds, Wildflower Honey
1 Cup, Mint Leaves, chopped fine
5 Gallons, Water
2 Packets, Champagne Yeast

Procedure:

I mixed the honey with one gallon of water and simmered. While the must was simmering, and between skimming the scum off, I steeped the mint leaves in a soup stock ball and made a strong mint tea out of a half gallon of water. When the scum stopped forming on the must, I poured it and the mint tea into the fermenter along with the remaining water. When it cooled I added the yeast.

Primary Fermentation: 1 week
Secondary Fermentation: 1 week
Bottle Aged: 3 1/2 Months

Sources:

Digbie, Sir Kenelme. The Closet of the Eminently Learned Digbie Kt Opened: Whereby is Discovered Several ways for making of Metheglin, Sider, Cherry-Wine, &c. together with Excellent Directions for Cookery: As also for Preserving, Conserving, Candying, &c. First edition, London, 1669. Transcribed by Joyce Miller

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Observations from 2015:

I really should brew this mead, again. It was very tasty and got high marks, and nice comments, from the judges. I have discovered since 1994 that the mint works best with a sack or sweet mead. The flavor is nice with a dry mead, but the flavor is kind of ephemeral: on the tongue and forgotten in the next moment. With a sweeter mead, the mint flavor lingers longer. Thinking with 20 years of brewing experience, I wonder if I should make this with a bit of vinegar or wine added to the mead. The acid will crank up the taste buds and allow the drinker to taste more of the flavor of the honey.

See, honey, and the mead that is fermented from it, is pretty much neutral: slightly off from water's pH of 7. This is one of the reasons why mead consumption has dropped since the middle ages. Fermented honey on its own is flat. Wine is acidic and since acids crank up the taste buds, we are able to pick up more of the wine's flavor. The additional flavor, coupled with the aroma, allows the drinker to pick up very subtle tastes. Read the descriptions of wine and you will find descriptions of blackberries, oak, apples, lemons and other things that are not physically present in the wine. Read description of most commercial meads and all you will get is sweet or dry. Most period mead recipes call for other ingredients to offset honey's one dimensional flavor. Read Digby's recipe again: rosemary, thyme, cinnamon, ginger, cloves. These herbs and spices add layers of additional flavors to the mead to offset the blandness of plain honey. 

While there are period recipes for spiced wines, the fast majority of wine produced was made with nothing more than grapes, water and yeast. The high acid content of the wine was enough to heighten the existing flavors so that the drinker could distinguish the subtle flavors of not only the grapes, but the nature of the land that the grapes grew upon. An expert can tell the difference between the grapes from one region and another. Try this experiment: Get a couple of bottles of wine from two different countries, it doesn't matter which ones just as long as they are both white or red wines. Pour a glass from each bottle and set aside. Then pour a second glass from each bottle and mix in some baking soda. Baking soda is a alkaline and will neutralize the acid in the wine. If you get some litmus paper from the Internet, you can balance out the wine's pH. Once you've balanced out the pH, sample each glass and try to tell them apart. Compared to the control samples, the altered wine might as well have been chemically created in a lab. All body and no flavor. Much like plain mead. 

So, herbs, spices, acids such as wine, vinegar or fruit juice and even other sugars such as barley malt can be used to give mead more dimensions in its flavor.