VonSchmitt
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Mead, by definition is an alcoholic beverage obtained by the fermentation of honey dissolved in water. No other information makes it more direct without involve techniques of any culture. Mead can not be limited by this information because it is probably the oldest drink in the world having emerged before humans.
Bees appeared on earth millions of years before humans and evolved to turn your food (pollen) in a highly energetic substance with bacteriostatic properties. In the hive the bees work to keep moisture of honey between 13 and 20% so that the honey becomes an inappropriate environment for the growth of bacteria, fungi and yeasts.But in nature some accidents may occur as animal attack or even branches piercing these beehives and ending up destroying them partially.Water then have an opportunity to get into that hive and make honey a favorable environment for fermentation.
The human being in the Stone Age must have found honey by chance as mead at the time was a hunter-gatherer. Imagine finding something full of bugs but with a good aroma and taste Honey! It was delicious,tearing off a piece of the hive and leading the rest for the bunch, the bee hive may have had a chance to ferment.
Mead is so old that almost any language in any culture has a word to describe it. In the oldest language of Europe Proto-Indo-European is médʰu (sweet drink) probably the term is due to the fact that wild yeasts can not consume all the sugar of must, unlike the current yeast where several strains were selected over time to support high concentrations of alcohol allowing a greater assimilation of sugars.
Honey was rare and expensive, even with the advent of beekeeping. So mead was reserved for elite and according to many folklores, mead was the drink of the gods. Along the difficulty of obtaining honey, agriculture has wine production in Southern Europe a substitute for mead beyond the beer that became the drink of the masses in an attempt to replace the honey in the production of alcoholic beverages.
Indeed some ancient times beer recipes tend to be sweet to as maltøl (still in production in the Faroe Islands) of Scandinavia and Alus of Lithuania on the archaic process of production makes many dextrins are formed and the must remain sweet . Another point that proves this are the amounts of ingredients in the drinks of the time. Both mead and for beer, were used about a 1/3 of honey (mead) or a 1/3 of malt (beer) for 2/3 of water. The word in proto-Germanic for beer is "ALU" (magic drink) most likely by the effects of alcohol like mead, but inexpensive.
The wine however is made from the juice of grapes that usually provides somewhere around 16-22 ° Bx something easily assimilated by yeasts and making the wine a dry drink.
The interest in beers with a higher bitterness started in the XVIII century with the Indian Pale Ale (IPA) where the beer needed to keep fresh for British soldiers in India during the long sea voyage starting from England. Then the brewmaster decided to use their preservative (hops) in greater quantities and consequently increased their bitterness. With the guard time the bitter taste of hops it tends to disappear, then the IPA should have been assessed as a high bitter beer still in the UK.
I hope to have contributed exposing a bit of my research, and I am not a fluent English speaker so I apologize for any error.
Bees appeared on earth millions of years before humans and evolved to turn your food (pollen) in a highly energetic substance with bacteriostatic properties. In the hive the bees work to keep moisture of honey between 13 and 20% so that the honey becomes an inappropriate environment for the growth of bacteria, fungi and yeasts.But in nature some accidents may occur as animal attack or even branches piercing these beehives and ending up destroying them partially.Water then have an opportunity to get into that hive and make honey a favorable environment for fermentation.
The human being in the Stone Age must have found honey by chance as mead at the time was a hunter-gatherer. Imagine finding something full of bugs but with a good aroma and taste Honey! It was delicious,tearing off a piece of the hive and leading the rest for the bunch, the bee hive may have had a chance to ferment.
Mead is so old that almost any language in any culture has a word to describe it. In the oldest language of Europe Proto-Indo-European is médʰu (sweet drink) probably the term is due to the fact that wild yeasts can not consume all the sugar of must, unlike the current yeast where several strains were selected over time to support high concentrations of alcohol allowing a greater assimilation of sugars.
Honey was rare and expensive, even with the advent of beekeeping. So mead was reserved for elite and according to many folklores, mead was the drink of the gods. Along the difficulty of obtaining honey, agriculture has wine production in Southern Europe a substitute for mead beyond the beer that became the drink of the masses in an attempt to replace the honey in the production of alcoholic beverages.
Indeed some ancient times beer recipes tend to be sweet to as maltøl (still in production in the Faroe Islands) of Scandinavia and Alus of Lithuania on the archaic process of production makes many dextrins are formed and the must remain sweet . Another point that proves this are the amounts of ingredients in the drinks of the time. Both mead and for beer, were used about a 1/3 of honey (mead) or a 1/3 of malt (beer) for 2/3 of water. The word in proto-Germanic for beer is "ALU" (magic drink) most likely by the effects of alcohol like mead, but inexpensive.
The wine however is made from the juice of grapes that usually provides somewhere around 16-22 ° Bx something easily assimilated by yeasts and making the wine a dry drink.
The interest in beers with a higher bitterness started in the XVIII century with the Indian Pale Ale (IPA) where the beer needed to keep fresh for British soldiers in India during the long sea voyage starting from England. Then the brewmaster decided to use their preservative (hops) in greater quantities and consequently increased their bitterness. With the guard time the bitter taste of hops it tends to disappear, then the IPA should have been assessed as a high bitter beer still in the UK.
I hope to have contributed exposing a bit of my research, and I am not a fluent English speaker so I apologize for any error.
