Mead is a sweet alcoholic beverage. Prepared from bee honey. The strength of mead can be 10-16%. Mead is a traditional Slavic drink; in Russia, monasteries were the main centers of mead brewing. It was forbidden to divulge the constituent ingredients of this sweet drink. Today the recipe for homemade mead is no longer a secret.
Remember, in old Russian fairy tales the phrase is often pronounced at the end: “And I was there, drinking honey and beer. It flowed down the mustache, didn't get into the mouth”? So sweet mead - this is the very "honey-beer" from the fairy tale. From here the famous honeymoon takes its name. It was believed that mead allows you to conceive a strong hero on that very honeymoon.
There are two concepts in history: drinking honey and mead. The first is the progenitor of modern mead. And in terms of properties, it is not far from modern homemade mead. Drinking honey is just as heady and sweet. It was prepared like whiskey in oak barrels, aged for years - up to 20 years. They were treated to guests for the holidays. Mead in the taste familiar to modern people began to be brewed only from the beginning of the 19th century. The mead recipe at this time was simplified as much as possible: boiling, sterilizing, adding hops and fermenting. To make mead at home, 7-14 days will be enough.
The name of the sweet drink "mead" appeared in the Russian language quite recently - at the beginning of the 20th century. Honey beer, or honey beer, was called mead at the time of the emergence of the nationwide love of Russians for vodka and wine. The word "mead" was scorned, as was the name of low-quality beer with the addition of honey to hide the unpleasant taste. But even a few centuries ago this magical intoxicating drink was respectfully called "honey".
How to make Russian mead at home
To prepare Suzdal mead, take 500 g of sugar and 300 g of meadow honey, dissolve in 4 liters of water, boil, constantly removing the foam, for 15 minutes. Cool the future mead to room temperature, pour in 80-100 g of diluted yeast, stir and place the drink in a warm place for fermentation. After two days, strain, drain the first sediment, then transfer the mead to a cool place and leave there for a month. Then the honey should be drained again, dissolve 250 g of honey in it and, tightly corked, put in the cold. When the mead begins to foam, the drink is ready.
