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Mead
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MEAD

Mead Day, on the first Saturday in August, increases awareness and fosters camaraderie among mead makers. A long history and rich craft and trade follow mead where ever it is found.

One of the world’s oldest fermented beverages, mead is also called honey wine, ambrosia or nectar. A craftsman combines honey, water, and yeast to make mead. With honey production in high gear, Mead Day shines a spotlight on its key ingredient and the time-honored craft surrounding it.
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Mead Day, on the first Saturday in August, increases awareness and fosters camaraderie among mead makers. A long history and rich craft and trade follow mead where ever it is found. One of the world’s oldest fermented beverages, mead is also called honey wine, ambrosia or nectar. A craftsman combines honey, water, and yeast to make mead. With honey production in high gear, Mead Day shines a spotlight on its key ingredient and the time-honored craft surrounding it.
In Norse mythology, the Poetic Mead or Mead of Poetry,[a] also known as Mead of Suttungr,[b] is a mythical beverage that whoever "drinks becomes a skald or scholar" to recite any information and solve any question. This myth was reported by Snorri Sturluson in Skáldskaparmál. The drink is a vivid metaphor for poetic inspiration, often associated with Odin the god of 'possession' via berserker rage or poetic inspiration.
Historically, distilling was an art, as well as an arcane type of magic, regulated by custom, law, and superstition. Certain individuals were trained in this magic of turning honey into mead, a powerful conjuring that mystified the ignorant. The process by which the juice of the grape, the toil of the bee, or the grain of the field, were turned into mind altering substances was not well understood… Yeast as an entity was not understood at all until Pasteur explained the process of fermentation in 1841. Until then, yeast was known by many other names, including Godisgood, a name which implies the level of knowledge about the process at the time. The addition of yeast was not known to the ancient Jews, and is not a kosher addition to wines but the addition of yeast, especially certain selected strains of this magical fungus, is critical to the character and flavour of even the simplest fermented beverage
They say that knowledge is power. But in the case of Kvasir, wisest man in the world, his knowledge was mead. Or rather, his knowledge (and his very life force) would go on to become mead through some unfortunate circumstances, according to Norse mythology. You see, Kvasir was the wisest man in the world. He was born when the two godly factions (the Æsir, which included the likes of Odin, and the Vanir, made up of Freyja and her ilk) sealed a truce by spitting together into a cauldron. That spit became Kvasir. Which is a pretty gnarly way to be born, generally speaking.
As one of the, if not the, oldest alcoholic beverages in the world, mead has a rich and fascinating history across the globe. From Africa to the Northern European lands of the Vikings, mead seems to have touched every corner of the world, shifting from a drink of commoners to one of the elite and back again. It was the drink of the people, the drink of kings, and even, for the Greeks, the drink of the gods. Considered messengers of the gods, bees feature rather heavily throughout Greek mythology. A tale detailing the birth of Zeus tells of how bees cared for an infant Zeus and fed him sacred honey within a secret cave after his father, Kronos, wished to destroy him. Zeus, upon becoming the king of gods, rewarded bees by making them bright gold and resistant to strong winds and the cold. It’s believed that this myth is behind one of Zeus’s names, “Melissaios” which translates to “bee-man.”
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