Please Settle a Bet

Can someone settle a bet for me? My friend claims that mead is considered a type of beer, and I think not. I always thought mead was a category of its own. There's $5 riding on it.........

No Hops.
No Malt.
No Dice.

not a beer

Main Entry: beer
Pronunciation: \ˈbir\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English ber, from Old English bēor; akin to Old High German bior beer
Date: before 12th century
1 : an alcoholic beverage usually made from malted cereal grain (as barley), flavored with hops, and brewed by slow fermentation
2 : a carbonated nonalcoholic or a fermented slightly alcoholic beverage with flavoring from roots or other plant parts <birch beer>
3 : fermented mash
4 : a drink of beer

http://www.bjcp.org/styles04/mead.html
Mead is made primarily from honey, water and yeast. Some minor adjustments in acidity and tannin can be made with citrus fruits, tea, chemicals, or the use of oak aging; however, these additives should not be readily discernable in flavor or aroma. Yeast nutrients may be used but should not be detected. If citrus, tea, or oak additives result in flavor components above a low, background, balance-adjusting level, the resulting mead should be entered appropriately (e.g., as a metheglin or open category mead, not a traditional).

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olllllo said:

No Hops.
No Malt.
No Dice.

Click to expand...

Hops while appreciated by many isnt a requirement

olllllo said:

No Hops.
No Malt.
No Dice.

Click to expand...

Yeah, that's what I thought, esp coupled with the champagne yeast.

Pumbaa said:

Hops while appreciated by many isnt a requirement

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Agreed, but mines catchier.

olllllo said:

Agreed, but mines catchier.

Click to expand...

good point

Not a beer.

Mead is most assuredly NOT a type of beer. According to the book "Designing Great Beers", the generally accepted limit for the amount of honey which can be fermented while still being "beer" is 30%. Anything above that is generally recognized as a type of mead. But the percentage isn't the important thing, the important thing is that there is a recognition that there is a difference between mead and beer. They are clearly, therefore, different things as far as that author is concerned and I've never heard or read any author suggest anything to the contrary.

Now, they are both fermented beverages, if that's what he means. But if that's his definition of "beer" then wine is beer too.