Mead. The Sacred Drink of Warriors, Vikings and the Gods. This honey wine that has been with us for millenia and is yet, out of favour, and anchronism, misrepresented and fast becoming more and more misunderstood.
It's Honey! Its made from Honey! - 13th Warrior
Mead is sweet to semi-sweet. It is made from honey water that is fermented and aged. It can contain, fruits, blossoms, herbs and/or spices wich change the balance of sweet against bitter and/or acidic.
We know how the Romans made it. We know it's been made in China, Mesopotamia, and even Australia!?! from ancient times. But our ongoing knowledge of it seems to come from the sagas, those great stories of heroism and battle, of monstors and Vikings.
So,
How did the Vikings make mead?
Short answer?
We don't know. There is little in the archealogical record that indicated how food or drink was made, recipes etc. by the Vikings. We can only infer from eyewitness reports, from findings from similar cultures from around the times of the vikings, and, by drawing a long (a very long) bow from surving nordic traditions.
What we do know is that honey was scarce and valuable. We also know that mead was considered a sacred/ceremonial drink, and not used as a regular quaffer. We know that honey was managed by specialist bee keepers and that the must used for making mead was most likely a byproduct of honey extraction rather than a deliberate mix in fixed ratio of honey and water, e.g. Roman mead was made with an approx. 80% honey water solution. There is some suggestion that with stronger, spiced meads that the must may have been additionally fortified with raw honey to increase the overal strength, but this is not known for sure. However, it doesn't make logical sense that efforts would be restricted to making approx. 1 litre of mead per harvested colony unless beekeepers were managing at least 20 or more active, harvestable colonies at a time.
Viking beekeepers would build hives, skeps, populate them with bees, and then terminate the hive population, the brood, in order to extract the honey. The Housewife would then take the entire hive, or extract the combs and place them into cloth to be hung to drip the honey free. The remaining comb and dross would be squeezed to extract second grade honey, and the remains then soaked in water to extract any last remaining honey into a watery syrup (must). The wax would the be separated from the dross and stored. The concentration of the must would vary depending on temperature of the water, time of year, and efficiency of draining and squeezing the comb. The total yield from a typical skep colony was somewhere in the vacinity of 4-6 kg with the honey water msut accounting for, possibly, 10-15% of the total yield.
We also know that the equipment typicaally used in Viking times for cooking, according to burial findings and compared with later written accounts of equipment recomended for the 'English' household, hadn't changed in style or nature for the better part of 500 years. Basically, wooden utensils for measureing, stiring, ladeling; wooden, ceramic or soapstone pots for cooking, boiling and or storage; iron cauldrons and lifting forks for bulk processing of meat; wooden, ceramic, glass or metal beakers from drinking, and ceremonial decorated horns for secial occasions. Heating was accomplished by direct heating pots on a fire trench, and by plunging hot rocks into liquids.
From surviving Nordic brewing traditions we know that fermentation could be effectively carried out in covered wooden buckets, and that filtration, at least for brewing beer, was carried out using a wooden trough lined with branches and straw. Often these branches were of junper, and the straw could have been from grain, marsh reeds, or other tall, stiff grasses. Dedicated wooden fermentation buckets would naturally accumulate their own yeast colonies, to some extent somewhat like a totem stick, but perhaps less reliably so.
Finnish Bakers Yeast is a special yeast that seems as though it may be directly tracable back to Viking times. It's differentiated from normal brewers yeasts in that it tends to be multi-colony rather than a monoculture. To assist with determining when the mead was ready, raisins would be added to the ferment, which possibly may have introduced an additional source for wild yeasts. The raisins would float to the top when the mead was ready. Various additive may have also been used to modify balance the sweetness of the resulting mead and to promote fermentation. A lot has been made of the use of herbs such as juniper, hops, bog myrtle and the like. some of these may have been used because it was expedient to filtration, others may have been used more deliberately, like the use of flowers, and juices.
We know know that mead fermentation is greatly enhanced by the use of additives such as urea or potassium yet these would not have been available as we know them to Viking mead makers. However, boiled animal urine, a source of urea, and perhaps used as a medicinalmight have found it's way into the fermentation bucket, if but a splash or two. Similarly, the leachings of ash with water, pottash, was a source of potassium and it is not unfeasable to consider that a splash or two of ash water also might have made it into the fermenter. Today, we might use the pure forms of such additives in a tightly controlled and regulated manner.
From all this, we can might surmise that the following process could be one that the Vikings may, very likely, have used to make their Mead: allowing for modern minor variation.
A True, Viking-Stule Mead
(
For extra authenticity, these steps should be supervised and/or conducted by, 'The Lady of the House.')
1. Start with 40kg of good full, dripping, honey comb
2. Wrap in muslin cloth and set aside to drain for 12-24 hr
3. Tranfer the raw honey into a jar and set aside
4. Crush the honey comb in the cloth and squeeze well, place a heavy stone on top to press the cloth
5. In a wooden, soapstone or clay pot, heat an equal amount of fresh spring water, by weight/volume as compared with the squeezed honeycomb and cloth (approx. 5L of water,) to the temperature of a hot drink, by placing fire heated hot rocks into the water to heat the water above the wax melting point (60-65 deg. C)
6. Remove the rock(s) and suspend the cloth with squeezed honeycomb into the water. Wrap the stone or clay pot to keep warm
7. Remove the muslin cloth and spent honeycomb from the must and squeeze dry, set aside to cool then strain through cloth and straw/juniper branches to remove the hard wax
8. Innoculate the strained must must with Finnish Bakers (Sahti yeast) and cover, add a pinch of powdered urea and/or handful of hearth ash
9. When yeast cake has collapsed - 10-40 days, carefully tranfer the must to a clean, wooden, soapstone or clay pot, add a handful of raisins, and cover
10. Taste the mead to check the flavour balance. This can be adjusted to taste using a strong infusion of juniper, hops, and/or common guit herbs. Flowers and/or juices may also be added ath this time.
11. Store in a moderately warm, dark place until the raisins flaot to the surface.
12. Line a clean pot with cloth and carefuly pour, without splashing the mead into the cloth. Raise the cloth out of the pot to strain the mead and remove any last floaty bits.
The mead is now ready to bottle and age.
References
Kitchen & Food
http://viking.no/e/life/food/e-redska.html
http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/food.shtml
http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/vikfood.html
http://www.sffarkiv.no/sffbasar/default.asp?p=result&db=dbatlas_leks&art_id=108103&spraak_id=2&ptype=single
http://www.beaconlearningcenter.com/weblessons/beascientist/default.htm
Alcoholic Beverages
http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/drink.shtml
http://www.hame.fi/default.asp?docId=23064
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mead
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~msbain/elbka/Making%20Magic.htm
Brewing
http://www.brewingtechniques.com/library/styles/6_4style.html
http://www.posbeer.org/oppaat/sahti/history.php
Food Additives
http://www.inchem.org/documents/jecfa/jecmono/v32je16.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potash
Beekeeping
http://outdoorplace.org/beekeeping/history1.htm
http://homepage.mac.com/mreddygbr/skepFAQ/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heath_beekeeping
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeswax
Until next time,
It's Your Shout, Mate!
