From: justcoz@triton.unm.edu
Newsgroups: rec.crafts.brewing
Subject: Mead
Summary: A Treatise on the History of Mead, part 1
Date: 17 Apr 92 10:33:42 GMT
Article-I.D.: lynx.#11j-!l
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque


	Mead, as everyone knows, is a pleasant, alcoholic drink made by 
fermenting honey and water with yeast.  Yet many of the most interesting
facts about mead are not common knowledge.
	Among the multitude of things which constitute the daily life of
mankind through all the ages, certain things have always been accorded a
special place of importance.  Basic elements such as air, fire and water formed the groundwork of primitive science and also of magic, while commodities, 
such things as salt, wine, bread and honey, were woven into the myths, 
folk-lore and religions of every race at every time in history.
	Of all the crafts of mankind, mead-making is almost certainly the 
oldest.  It is likely that mead was made even before the wheel was invented.
Cave paintings of primitive stone-age men depict the collection of honey
from bee colonies, and any addition of water would automatically produce a
mixture which could be fermented by wild yeasts.  The discovery of alcohol
almost certainly occurred in this chance manner and spread to all parts of
the world, remaining almost unchanged for thousands of years.
	The bee is such an amazing creature that it is hardly suprising that
honey (as well as mead) became attributed with the most remarkable properties.
Honey was for thousands of years the principal sweetening agent known to 
mankind; honey and mead were the givers of life, wisdom, courage and strength
from earliest history, through Hindu times, on through Aristotle and Virgil
until they found powerful echoes in the Bible.
        Early Celts made mead and a form of metheglin by mixing honey with 
the juice of the Hazel tree which was to them a magic tree.  St Findian, who 
lived on bread and water all week, ate salmon and drank mead on Sundays
(a precedent if anyone asks what is the best wine to serve with salmon).
And the great Irish saint, St Brigitte, went one step further and merits
consideration as the patron saint of amateur brewers.  Once when the King of
Leinster visited her they ran out of drink, and St Brigitte took a great vat
of water and turned it into mead, thereby emulating Christ's miracle at Cana.
Too bad for us, the modern brewers, that she did not leave her recipe for this
"Instant Mead"!

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