Another difference between beer, wine, and mead is alcohol content. Meads range between 6 and 20 percent ABV, depending on the fermentation; whereas wine and beer typically come in at a much lower ABV. Mead pre-dates both beer and wine by not hundreds, but thousands of years. According to a recent article by BBC , in Northern China, pottery vessels containing chemical signatures of a mixture of honey, rice, and other fruits, along with organic compounds of fermentation, were dated around 6, and 7, BC.
In Europe, it is first attested in residual samples found in ceramics from 2, to 1, BC. As mead production became popularized across the globe, it was drunk by the likes of Vikings, Mayans, and Egyptians, and factored into early English medicine. More recently, mead is seen consumed by characters on Harry Potter and Game of Thrones , which might explain -at least in part — why it is seeing such a resurgence.
We know that honey is the primary ingredient in mead. With that in mind, go ahead and take a moment to consider that there are as many possible types of honey as there are flowering plants fertilized by bees in the world.
Many other alcohols like gin , mezcal , and beer have seen a renaissance thanks to a new focus on the culinarily diverse and dynamic. Once upon a time, it was everywhere. Virtually every ancient culture drank it at one point: the Greeks, the Romans, the Vikings, the Russians, the Polish, the Ethiopians tej, a type of honey wine, is still the national drink in Ethiopia.
There are references to it in the Bible, in Chaucer, in Aristotle, in Beowulf. Why did it fall out of favor? There were some new tax laws, as well as an increased availability of West Indian sugar in the 17th century that made honey harder and less necessary to obtain. But it was also the rise of other alcohols—namely beer and wine—that really did it in. Like farming in general, honey-making has since modernized, making distribution to meaderies easier.
And as curious consumers look for new drinks to try, it seems mead will offer an endlessly varied option. As to why mead is resurging in popularity at this point after a few centuries on the fringe, there's no one answer, but different mead-makers have their own theories.
Plus, as Thrillist suggests, there's always the hipster factor —- okay, so they didn't use the "h" word, but they did mention that "gentrified Brooklyn" was the site of New York City's first craft meadery, so inferences were drawn. Raphael Lyon, the mead-maker or "mazer" at this Brooklyn-based establishment, has an interesting theory for why craft brewers are becoming more interested in making mead.
So maybe this means if you've never had it, you won't know if it's good or bad? Well, by this point we are now all conditioned to take something in a glass handed to us by an earnest, bearded Brooklynite far more seriously than if it comes in a plastic cup purchased from a cosplayer calling us "m'lord" or "m'lady" in an accent borrowed from a Monty Python movie.
Delish suspects that the craft mead movement might have been quietly bubbling along since the late 20 th century. Although they noted that as a commercial beverage it fell out of favor about years ago, due to changes in tax laws as well as the increasing availability of sugar as opposed to honey, they pinpoint the rise in craft brewing of all types to Charlie Papazian's classic book " The Complete Joy of Homebrewing.
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