Mead 101: What it is and how to make it

"Have you tried the honey liquor we call mead? It gives a man a halo." - Friar Tuck, in "Robin Hood" (2010)

You drizzle it on biscuits and whisk it into barbecue sauce, but would you ever think about fermenting honey?

Lucas Kluz turns honey into wine at his Westside home. It's a tradition, along with brewing beer, that he brings from his native Poland, where his father and grandfather made their own wine, beer and honeywine, or mead.

Kluz first tried his hand at fermenting as a teenager in Poland, and it has become a hobby. He makes five-gallon batches several times a year to drink at home and share with friends. He's a member of the Cowford Ale Sharing Klub and has won several awards.

Mead is considered a novelty in the United States, but it has a long history. Archaeologists have uncovered evidence of mead as far back as 7000 B.C. and say it is probably the original fermented beverage. It is found in almost all cultures, including Europe, especially northern Europe, where the climate is too cold to grow grapes.

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Americans probably most commonly associate mead with medieval England. Director Ridley Scott used mead in several scenes in last summer's "Robin Hood," with Friar Tuck and Robin sharing a glass.

Will Kalif of stormthecastle.com discovered mead through his interest in all things medieval.

"I'd heard of it but never tasted it. I tried to track it down and couldn't find any."

What he did find were wines flavored with honey that are marketed as "meade." But it's not the real thing.

Several years ago, Kalif and a friend decided to try to make a batch using instructions from a book. The first batch didn't turn out very well, but Kalif said he was hooked, and he continued to experiment, developing his own system that he shares on his website and through an e-book.

Kluz and Kalif are both home brewers, people who make beer or wine for personal consumption. It may be quicker to buy beer or wine in a store, they say, but making a batch from scratch has its own rewards.

Mead takes at least six months to ferment, longer for a smoother, mellower taste. And a batch can go bad - turn sour or be contaminated with microorganisms.

But when the yeast and sugar perform their magic, and the cloudy mixture turns clear, there is a special satisfaction in that first sip. It's a great way to impress friends and family, they say.

"It doesn't necessarily taste like honey, any more than wine necessarily tastes like grapes," Kluz said. "But if someone hands you a glass of mead, you will know it isn't the fruit of the grape."

Like wine, mead runs the full spectrum from dry to sweet, still to sparkling, Kluz said. The addition of fruit or spices makes mead exceptionally versatile. Sweet mead has more of a honey flavor, a heavier consistency and high alcohol content, Kluz said. Dry mead may not have a honey flavor at all.

Making mead isn't difficult. The basic ingredients are honey, water and yeast, though fruit juice and spices can be added. Mead makers search high and low for interesting honeys. The flavor of honey all depends on where the bees have been buzzing - a grove of oranges, a field of berries, a pasture of clover.

Kluz buys raw honey by the gallon from beekeepers. It costs about $25 a gallon and weighs a whopping 12 pounds. Kalif buys high-grade pasteurized honey and can spend up to twice as much.

Both men advise using filtered water and thoroughly sanitizing all equipment.

The ratio of water to honey depends on the type of mead you want to make. For a dry mead, the ratio is 4 parts water to 1 part honey; a sweet mead is 2 to 1.

Kluz likes his mead sweet, so he typically uses 1 3/4 gallons of honey and tops it off with 3 1/4 gallons of water. It produces a mead that is between 13 percent and 14 percent alcohol. He drinks it as an aperitif. For a less potent wine, less honey is used.

Because Kluz uses raw honey that can contain bacteria and other microbes, he heats his honey and water mixture. He uses the pot from a turkey fryer.

"The heat helps dissolve the honey," he said. "But too much heat can kill the flavor."

The mixture is heated to 160 degrees, the pasteurization temperature, for between 20 and 60 minutes and cooled to at least 80 degrees before the yeast is added. He also adds a yeast nutrient.

Kluz pours the mixture into a five-gallon jug and covers the opening with an airlock device that keeps out microbes that could taint the mixture but also lets out the fermenting gases. Without a vent, the gases can cause the bottle to explode. (Every home brewer has at least one horror story about an exploding bottle.)

The jug is put in a cool, dark place for two to three months. At first, the mixture will bubble as the fresh yeast consumes the sugar in the honey, producing alcohol. After a few weeks, the bubbling dissipates and the solids in the honey and the dead yeast settle on the bottom.

After a couple of months, Kluz transfers the liquid to another jug and discards the solids. He lets the mixture sit for another two or three months while the fermentation continues. He separates the liquid and sediment at least two more times.

"When it is clear, it is suitable to drink," Kluz said. "The flavor mellows the longer you let it sit. It becomes more subtle."

A five-gallon batch will make 20 750ml bottles. That's why Kalif advises beginners to start with one-gallon jugs, which produce four bottles and requires only about a quart of honey.

"The thing that separates mead from other beverages is that it is a blank palette," Kalif said. "You can have a plain honey mead or you can add blackberries, peaches, pumpkins, cranberries - really any kind of fruit."

Apple is probably the most common fruit added to mead, but Kluz is aging a batch made with raspberries. Kalif even uses tea leaves and rose petals.

Spices - cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, vanilla, even pepper - can be added to create a mead called metheglyn. Kluz won a state competition this year with his ginger-spiced mead. And mead called braggot is made by adding hops or malt.

Kluz estimates it costs about $40 for the ingredients to make five gallons of mead that will produce 20 12-ounce bottles. That's a little over $3 a bottle that would cost $10 to $12 retail.

"It takes a lot of work," Kluz said. "But it is the time and love you put into it that makes it special."