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Expert: - 2/16/2003


Question
what's mead made of
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Answer
Well, Bob, basically, mead is honey, water, and yeast. The first mead was created thousands of years ago when somebody left an open container of honey out in rain and some wild yeast fell in and got the fermentation going.

These days we complicate the process a bit and add such things as yeast nutrient, tannins, sulfites, bring the whole mixture to a temperature over 170 degrees F for at least 20 minutes to kill all the wild yeasts and bacteria. Then cool it down and add brewers yeast, usually wine yeast. The best meads age for at least a year.

There are lots of variations on mead when other things are added to make the flavor more interesting: cyser has apples, metheglin has herbs and spices, melomel has fruit such as blackberries or pears, pyment has grapes, and braggot uses extract from malted barley.

Cheers,

Chris Bushman
North Hollywood, California

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Chris Bushman

Expertise

I've been homebrewing beer and mead for about 15 years. I've made beer trips to the Netherlands, the UK, France, Germany, and Belgium.

Experience

I've brewed a couple of hundred all-grain beers and a few dozen meads. I'm a member of the Maltose Falcon's Homebrew Society, the oldest homebrew club in the US. I've attended the Homebrewers Fantasy Camp at American Brewers Guild. In real life I am Optical Effects Supervisor and Laboratory Supervisor for a large movie visual effects house in Hollywood. I've been a fireman, a teacher of English in Okinawa, a personal computer tutor. Other hobbies include orchid culture, koi keeping, photography, sausage making, pickling, and ham radio.

BS Zoology, UC Davis

Member, Society of Motion Picture/Television Engineers http://www.smpte.org/ - Member, American Radio Relay League http://www.arrl.org/ - Member, Quarter Century Wireless Assn. http://www.lockport-ny.com/radio.htm - President, Zen Nippon Airinkai, So Cal Chapter http://home.earthlink.net/~filmlabrat/ - Member, Maltose Falcons Homebrewing Society http://www.westval.com/mfalcons/ - Alumni, American Brewers' Guild http://www.abgbrew.com/

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