I recently came across a small business in my region that is brewing mead and decided to try their product. They had a rather interesting offering of mead with lime and chilli. It was a sweet mead with around 15% alcohol volume and a slight note of citrus and chilli.
I’ve always had an interest in ancient history and mead of one of those things you hear about in legends. Often attributed to vikings but it was perhaps the oldest known alcohol and common in history across various civilizations and locations.
It’s also, supposedly pretty simple to brew, requiring (traditionally) only honey, water and yeast.
In fact, it’s believed that some cultures would brew mead by flooding beehives and relying on the wild yeasts to ferment and brew into mead.
So, how hard could it be?
I purchased a small 1 gallon fermenting kit from amazon. Enough for a few liters of mead if all went to plan, and I stopped into a local home brewing store to pickup some yeast. They have a small satchel of yeast specifically tailored to brewing mead for a few dollars.
Next up I stopped by a house in my area that normally has plenty of beehives and signs up saying honey for sale. I was greeted in the driveway by a man with a magnificent beard who directed me up to the house where his wife would show me the…
