It’s making a comeback:

You might know mead from Beowulf—it’s what the characters got soused on.

Mead is so old-school that its advocates claim it as the world’s first alcoholic beverage. (Their line of thinking goes like this: Rain-diluted honey attracted wild yeasts. The fermented liquid then attracted a human, who drank it and felt less unhappy.) But the recent interest in fermented honey has morphed it from an esoteric item that only a few bearded Dungeons & Dragons players indulged in to a small yet legitimate commercial enterprise. There are now more than 100 meaderies in the United States, like Rabbit’s Foot Meadery and Mountain Meadows Mead. For the ambitious, there are DIY mead-making books, complete with archaic spellings (see The Compleat Meadmaker). Is mead, last popular around King Arthur’s table, poised for a comeback?

Apparently so. I considered quitting my job and trying to open a meadery some time ago. Not sure why I didn’t do it. I also want to start my own small apiary in my backyard, but my wife vetoed that idea. Maybe I’ll start making mead again once I get my kitchen redone and things settle down around teh house some.

The article is ok, but concludes with the idea that mead sucks. Take that with a grain of salt. Mead that tries to taste like honey does suck (super-sweet mead), but that’d be like trying to make wine that tastes like Welch’s. Kinda wrong.

Read more here.

Tags: Mead

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