Mead - Varieties

Varieties

Mead can have a wide range of flavors depending on the source of the honey, additives (also known as "adjuncts" or "gruit") including fruit and spices, the yeast employed during fermentation and the aging procedure. Mead can be difficult to find commercially. Some producers have marketed white wine sweetened and flavored with honey after fermentation as mead, sometimes spelling it "meade." This is closer in style to a Hypocras. Blended varieties of mead may be known by the style represented; for instance, a mead made with cinnamon and apples may be referred to as either a cinnamon cyser or an apple metheglin.

A mead that also contains spices (such as cloves, cinnamon or nutmeg), or herbs (such as meadowsweet, hops, or even lavender or chamomile), is called a metheglin (/mɨˈθɛɡlɪn/).

A mead that contains fruit (such as raspberry, blackberry or strawberry) is called a melomel, which was also used as a means of food preservation, keeping summer produce for the winter. A mead that is fermented with grape juice is called a pyment.

Mulled mead is a popular drink at Christmas time, where mead is flavored with spices (and sometimes various fruits) and warmed, traditionally by having a hot poker plunged into it.

Some meads retain some measure of the sweetness of the original honey, and some may even be considered as dessert wines. Drier meads are also available, and some producers offer sparkling meads. There are a number of faux-meads, which are actually wines with honey added after fermentation as a sweetener and flavoring.

Historically, meads were fermented with wild yeasts and bacteria (as noted in the recipe quoted below) residing on the skins of the fruit or within the honey itself. Because wild yeasts can produce inconsistent results, brewers have isolated the various strains in use today, and these have become associated with individual styles of mead. For the most part, these are the same strains that are used in beer and wine production. However, several commercial labs (such as White Labs, WYeast and Vierka) have developed yeast strains specifically for mead brewing. Mead yeasts are better suited to preserve the delicate honey flavors than are wine or beer yeasts.

Mead can also be distilled to a brandy or liqueur strength. A version called "honey jack" can be made by partly freezing a quantity of mead and straining the ice out of the liquid (a process known as freeze distillation), in the same way that applejack is made from cider.