Love and Hops: Honey, I Love You (Especially in Mead)!
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With Valentine's Day just past, there are sure to be countless new brides and bridegrooms to be popping up all over. The day after Valentine's Day is known for high-pitched squeals from the office water cooler as the glowing bride to be shows off what set back some poor guy two month's pay. With love in the air and up-coming nuptials, I thought it would be interesting to talk about mead this week. Often spoken of as the oldest alcoholic beverage known to man, mead is a fermented drink made from honey. Technically mead is a wine, not a beer. But, it is brewed and is often bittered by the addition or hops or other herbs. So, it sort of fits here.
As is the case with many great discoveries, mead was a happy accident with origins tracing back more than 20,000 years. Early African bushmen discovered that after elephants broke of branches of Baobab and Miombo trees hollows formed at the break points. Bees moved into these hollows, built hives, and produced honey during the dry season. Then, when the rains came the hollows filled with water. Wild yeasts settled in and fermentation began. Given time the water, honey, and yeast produced a natural form of mead. The bushmen figured out that they could drink the liquid and the first hangover was suffered.
Full Article
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2011-feb-love-and-hops-honey-i-love-you-especially-in-mead
Thanks! No I'm going to be thinking about beer until the end of the work day.
Where can you get Chaucer's Mead around here? I've always wanted to try it. I really wanted to get some around christmas so I could do heated thing with the spices they talk about.
It was great meeting you yesterday! Thanks for the IPA tip! :)