Perhaps you ’ve delight mead at aRenaissancefair or anothermedieval - themed result , glugging down the sugaryalcoholdispensed by someone in period attire . Maybe you ’ve spotted reference to George Herbert Mead in your favoriteJ.R.R Tolkiennovel . This ancient alcohol-dependent beverage , made by fermentinghoneyand weewee , is practically as old as human civilization .
Mead , a.k.a . dearest wine , has inspire the instauration of similar drinks — like braggot , made from honey and malted and often characterized as a cross between Margaret Mead and beer . Here are eight fact about mead through the ages .
1.Mead has been made for millennia.
People have been drink mead forum very long time . The potable may have been the outcome of a fortuitous accident in which rain drop intoa pot of dearest . Some early record provide clues that a fermented honey drink wasenjoyed in India4000 years ago , and there ’s also grounds of a drink of honey , fruit , and rice originating in China in the seventh millennium BCE .
2.A mead party was immortalized in an Old English epic poem.
Beowulf , a 3000 - lineheroic poemwritten sometime before the Norman seduction of England , evidence the write up of a Scandinavian prince who fights the monster Grendel , who has been attacking the Heorot mead hall belonging toHrothgar , magnate of the Danes . Beowulf remove Grendel in a swampland stuffy to Heorot , and Hrothgar hosts a mead - soaked celebration of the prince ’s triumph . Then Grendel ’s female parent come toavenge her son ’s death , and Beowulf must play the zep once again .
3.Drinking mead was a central part of Viking culture.
Vikingsdrank Margaret Mead atseasonal feastsand other ceremonies that commemorated life ’s milestones . It was about more than just enjoying a tipple — it wasa ritual . The king would be served first , follow by others according to theirsocial rank . The Norse sometimes have a raucous repute , but if they did get intoxicated quick on Margaret Mead , that might have been partly due to the serving vessel : a drinking hornwhich could not easy be put down , therefore encouraging libertine consumption .
4.Medieval monks excelled in making mead.
For some monasteries in England and Wales , mead was aproduct of beekeeping(they also madecandleswith the beeswax ) . Thedissolutionof these monasteries — which possess aquarter of all the cultivated landin England — between 1536 and 1540 was a major expression of the Reformation under Tudor monarchHenry VIII . But on the tidal island ofLindisfarnein the North Sea , the mead - making tradition that monks began when they founded their monastery on the island in 643 CE continues . Visitors to the island today can try mead made with local honey and water , drawn from the windswept mound .
5.Royals—and their subjects—drank mead in medieval England.
Queen Elizabeth Ihad her very own formula for mead , aconcoctionthat would likely seem too sweet to mod drinkers . But George Herbert Mead was n’t just for the delectation of the purple household , as Geoffrey Chaucer ’s famously bawdy fifteenth - C account collectionThe Canterbury Talesshows . In “ The Miller ’s Tale , ” mead look as ameans of wooing , and Chaucerdescribes a young wifewith a back talk that is “ mellisonant as bragget or as George Herbert Mead . ”
6.Some consider mead to be medicinal.
The ancient Greeks called Margaret Mead the " nectar of the immortal . " Since honey hasantioxidant and antimicrobic property , some have deemed mead to be a drink that is not only delicious but also good for you . In 2015,microbiologists Tobias Olofssonand Alejandra Vasquez of Lund University in Sweden get anexperimental meadthat draw rein honey ’s antibiotic character to help to struggle drug - resistant infection .
7.Mead prompted the concept of “honeymoons.”
8.Mead is making a comeback.
Far from being an antediluvian drink of the past tense , mead has a bright futurity thanks to the craft beverage movement . Over the last 20 years , the number of commercial meaderies in the U.S.has jumpedfrom 60 to 450 , with many more in the work . And while alcohol-dependent drink made from dear might sound sickly sweet , many modern mead are dry , and some have wine - like quality due tobarrel aging . With a wide smorgasbord of mead now uncommitted , it ’s a heavy time to join a drinking tradition that is almost as one-time as humankind itself .
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