Medsen Fey said:
I am not sure that I made myself clear. I recognize that I have neither made nor tasted any period meads (a problem I hope to correct). The basic meads that I made were just that -basic - using only things found in the hive, water and yeast (modern) and they taste pretty good. My point was that if a mediocre mead maker such as myself can produce good results with such simple ingredients, I believe that gifted mead maker throughout history have been able to produce far superior results using whatever techniques they had available.
Good luck, many of the 'period' meads I've tasted were not so good. But then, some were pretty nice. Oh, excellent meads were indeed made throughout history. Talent is talent, no matter what the age, and the art of brewing has been developing for thousands of years, so I'm very sure that many very tasty meads were created.
Gwir's question was
ive heard period mead will never be as good as modern techniques-- true or false?
I don't see how that can be true. However, if you tell me that meads made from period recipes taste like gack, I cannot argue as you have tasted them and I have not. What I can say with certainty is that human taste buds have not evolved in the last few hundred years. I think, based on this, if the old recipes cannot produce outstanding meads currently, then we probably don't have the really good recipes - perhaps they were too valuable to commit to paper (or parchment) or maybe they are still hidden in someone else's closet.
How do you respond to Gwir's question?
::grin:: I did say *some* of the meads made from the period recipes that have been found taste like gack. There are also good ones. I do dispute, however, the certainty that human tastes (not their taste buds, but taste) have not evolved. You only have to taste some of the drinks and foods they ate in older times to see that tastes have changed *immensely*. Having eaten food and had drinks made from recipes written in the 1600's-1800's, I can assure you that there are foods and drinks they found good would gag most modern people. Case in point Doctajones' spruce beer. Ick. There is a meat roll whose name escapes me at the moment that had a combination of spices that while edible, didn't sit well at all, and as you ate it made you vaguely ill. All who tried it mentioned this, and it was made from a recipe from Hampton Court, from a document from Henry VIII's kitchen receipts.
Here is an example from Digby of what they considered good in the time:
===
WHITE METHEGLIN OF MY LADY HUNGERFORD: WHICH IS EXCEEDINGLY PRAISED
Take your Honey, and mix it with fair water, until the Honey be quite
dissolved. If it will bear an Egge to be above the liquor, the breadth of a
groat, it is strong enough; if not, put more Honey to it, till it be so
strong; Then boil it, till it be clearly and well skimmed; Then put in one
good handful of Strawberry-leaves, and half a handful of Violet leaves; and
half as much Sorrel: a Douzen tops of Rosemary; four or five tops of
Baulme-leaves: a handful of Harts-tongue, and a handful of Liver-worth; a
little Thyme, and a little Red-sage; Let it boil about an hour; then put it
into a Woodden Vessel, where let it stand, till it be quite cold; Then put
it into the Barrel; Then take half an Ounce of Cloves, as much Nutmeg; four
or five Races of Ginger; bruise it, and put it into a fine bag, with a
stone to make it sink, that it may hang below the middle: Then stop it very
close.
===
Strawberry leaves, rosemary, red-sage, an *ounce* of cloves and nutmegs, liver-worth. I can't speak for all modern people of course, but I'm pretty sure that this mixture wouldn't appeal to the average modern person in the U.S. So this is a recipe that probably wouldn't turn out to be something most people would like. But then, there are others like this:
===
TO MAKE EXCELLENT MEATHE
To every quart of Honey, take four quarts of water. Put your water in a
clean Kettle over the fire, and with a stick take the just measure, how
high the water cometh, making a notch, where the superficies toucheth the
stick. As soon as the water is warm, put in your Honey, and let it boil,
skiming it always, till it be very clean; Then put to every Gallon of
water, one pound of the best Blew-raisins of the Sun, first clean picked
from the stalks, and clean washed. Let them remain in the boiling Liquor,
till they be throughly swollen and soft; Then take them out, and put them
into a Hair-bag, and strain all the juice and pulp and substance from them
in an Apothecaries Press; which put back into your liquor, and let it boil,
till it be consumed just to the notch you took at first, for the measure of
your water alone. Then let your Liquor run through a Hair-strainer into an
empty Woodden-fat, which must stand endwise, with the head of the upper-end
out; and there let it remain till the next day, that the liquor be quite
cold. Then Tun it up into a good Barrel, not filled quite full, but within
three or four fingers breadth; (where Sack hath been, is the best) and let
the bung remain open for six weeks with a double bolter-cloth lying upon
it, to keep out any foulness from falling in. Then stop it up close, and
drink not of it till after nine months.
===
With the exception of using a Hair-bag, this would likely make a pretty good mead. It is a basic mead with raisins added, and the techniques used are not dissimilar with those often used today.
The recipes we have found are the result of people like Sir Kenelm Digby, Martha Washington and others who wanted to write things down, and were both able to write and had the means and time to do so. Keep in mind that mead (or beer, for that matter) was a drink often popular to the common folk in a society, and in many civilizations the common folk could not read or write, so their recipes would have been passed down in families or groups verbally, but lost to us because they became lost over time. And I'm sure that a lot that *was* written down has never come to light (what was lost in the destruction of Pompeii that we will never find?) because it was destroyed or lost, or those who discovered them felt them not to be important enough to preserve and let the public see. For example, what more would we know about mead if the recipes popular during
King Midas' time were preserved in writing? We had only the funerary drink placed in his tomb to work from, but possibly there were many kinds of drinks, inferring from the one we have to work with. What others were lost to time because people took it for granted that their descendants would care for the guild or family traditions?
So back to Gwirs question of whether you can make a good period mead: Yeah, it can be done, but I think that the excellence of the mead, good recipe or no, is just like it is today. You can take a great mead recipe and make a bad mead if you don't pay attention to it, follow good mead-making principles or use inferior ingredients. Case in point is the many, *many* bad JAO's that get made and brought to us to look over. I've made this, and can attest that following the directions does indeed produce a very drinkable mead that most of the people I've tried it on like. It is the closest thing we have to a fool-proof recipe that anyone of any skill level can make. Yet we still get folks here telling us that their batch is horrible. We know the recipe is sound, so that leaves the meadmakers, the ingredients they used, and their attention to the details of the recipe and to the mead itself.
Think on it, how many times have you seen in here, "I made it just like you said, but I added ::insert random ingredient here:: to it, and now I can't understand why it tastes horrible!!!".
The best recipe will become gack in the hands of a careless meadmaker. A single mistake, such as not stirring when it is called for, can take a mead from a promising future and take it from a stellar mead to just an ordinary one, or even cause it to taste bad. That being said, making good mead is not hard. All it takes is patience, attention to detail, and a willingness to learn. A knack for seeing how ingredients and honeys will blend doesn't hurt either. I've tasted Gwirs' cordials, she has that knack.
If you want to taste some good period meads, the brewing competition at Pennsic always yields up some good ones, as do the other SCA brewing competitions.
Here are some good reference points for learning about brewing in period:
Medieval/Renaissance Brewing
Aethelmearc's Brewing Guild
List of SCA Brewers Guilds
Notes on brewing Elizabethan-era beer and how to make it period using modern equipment
Sources for Historical Brewing
