One of the great things about getting together with friends for a game is the food and drink shared around the table. Anthropologists tell us that eating and drinking together is one of the very basic activities which have united groups of people for millennia, and is one of the most fundamental ways of expressing social inclusion we have. Well, one of the very earliest alcoholic beverages known to us is Mead and it is very easy to make yourself.Mead is a wonderfully evocative drink. When you think of it, your thoughts immediately turn to vikings, early medieval monasteries and suchlike. But these days it’s a bit of a forgotten drink. It usually takes a keen and practiced eye to pick out mead in the local bottle shop, if it’s there at all. So why not try to brew your own?

Mead is simply fermented honey, water and yeast. There is quite a bit of history involved in mead: it isn’t just a viking drink. There is evidence the ancient Egyptians drank mead. The word “Mead” itself comes from proto-indo-european stock, a name at least 5,000 years old. Some people even think that mead may have been drunk by prehistoric human tribes pre-dating the proto-indo-europeans, as they may have come across “mead trees” – natural bee hives where water had seeped into the hive and the natural yeasts fermented the mix.

I must admit that I’m a bit of a newcomer to this game. Before my first batch of mead this last weekend, I have not brewed anything before. So it was a surprise to me to see just how easy it was.

You will need:

• 1 Carboy or Demijohn (to ferment your drink in)
• 1 big pot
• Stirring implement
• 1 Funnel
• 1 Bung with a hole in the middle
• 1 Airlock
• Some tubing
• Sanitizing solution

That’s the gear to get started. The ingredients for the most simple brew are

• 1 part honey
• 4 parts water
• Wine yeast

All together, I paid under $50 Australian dollars to get all of these things and get started with a 5L (1 gallon) demijohn.

1st step: Sanitize. This is the bit which doesn’t really follow the ancient recipe. Clean everything thoroughly, then use the sanitizing solution to get rid of any little bugs which might be living on it all, and which might give your mead a funky flavour.

There are 2 basic methods of getting it all going. The one I followed is the one mentioned in the 14th century manuscript I was working from. Almost, but not quite, boil the water and honey for a while, skimming off any of the “scum” which rises to the top of the pot. This is just some of the proteins in the honey – I’ve heard this method gives a clearer mix in the end. The other method is to just mix in the honey and water without heat. If you’re concerned about what random bugs might be living in the honey or the water, you can use a crushed up Campden tablet (1 tablet per gallon/5 litres). Wait for 24 hours before pitching the yeast in. Give the whole lot a good shake (probably around 5 minutes of vigorous shaking!) and stopper it up with the bung and airlock, into which you’ve put a bit of water. Within a couple of days you’ll see a heap of gas forming in the bottle, bubbling out of the airlock. That’s the proof that it’s fermenting. Let it sit for a month or two, then rack it off the old yeast into a clean demijohn and let it sit as long as you have the patience.

Now, a word about what’s going on in there. Yeast is actually a whole heap of little critters swimming around in your honey water. They like to eat sugar, turning it into carbon dioxide and alcohol. The carbon dioxide is the gas that’s bubbling up out of your airlock. Unfortunately, yeast shall not live on sugar alone. They also need some other nutrients. The cultured yeast we use is actually the descendant of the natural yeasts which were found in grapes, and they were used to eating all the different nutrients found in that fruit. These don’t exist naturally in honey, and if forced to subsist on just what they can find in the honey water, they’ll get stressed and might give some off flavours. So it’s probably a good idea to pitch in a small amount of yeast nutrient along with the yeast. Yeast also needs oxygen to get started. That’s why you have to give the bottle a good shake. The optimum amount of oxygen for yeast is about 8 parts per million. That takes about 4 minutes of shaking time. Give it 5 to be safe. The oxygen will help the yeast multiply, giving it a great start to the fermentation process.

Once you’ve mastered the basics, there are many different variations you can experiment with which we’ll cover at another time when I have had a chance to try some of them out…

[This recipe was found here, who quoted it from here...]