The Triumph of Bacchus

Mead is the oldest alcoholic beverage in the world. This is because mead can occur naturally in the wild: if wild yeasts and rainwater mix with honey, mead happens. If rain and some stupid bees can make mead by accident, I guarantee that you can make it on purpose. This primer gives you some basics about brewing the world’s oldest booze. The Basics When you tell somebody that you make mead, fifty percent of the time they’ll just stare at you blankly. Forty percent of the time they’ll think you said “meat,” and start asking you awkward questions about sausage. Roughly ten percent of the time they’ve watched enough Vikings to know that mead is a wine-like drink made out of honey. If you’ve had mead before, you probably had something golden, smooth, and pretty sweet, like a dessert wine. The truth is, mead is an underrepresented but extremely versatile drink. If the only wine you’ve ever had was, say, a sweet Moscato, you might not imagine the breadth of tastes that wine has t