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Fermented sodas and honey brews
Fermented sodas and honey brews
Did you know that mead -- honey "wine" -- isn't the only historical, fermented beverage made with honey?
Did you know that soda pop and non-alcoholic beers have a history that goes back at least to the 10th century?
People have been making fermented beverages since the dawn of history -- not all of those were the shelf-stable products we expect today.
This is especially true of sodas. Yeast will not begin to make alcohol until they have used every drop of oxygen dissolved in the brew. The trick is to refrigerate these as soon as they get bubbly, to stop the yeast (or drink them fast).
Other beverages, like the "young mead" of the sagas, were served when only SOME of the sugars had been converted to alcohol.
And still others were made after the wine (or cider) had turned to vinegar.
Non-alcoholic fermented beverages
Non-alcoholic fermented beverages
Many recipes for non-alcoholic beverages, some of them fermented, can be found in medieval cookbooks from the Islamic world. Our favorite is the Annals of the Caliph's Kitchens: Ibn Sayya'ar al-Warra'aq’s Tenth-Century Baghdadi Cookbook, English translation by Nawal Nasrallah (2007, ISBN 978 90 04 15867 2).
Soda recipes specifically tell you to ferment the brew for brief periods of time. Medieval interpretations of the religious proscription on alcohol allowed beverages that were fermented "not exceeding three days." With modern yeasts, I keep it to 24 hours or less!
You can also design your own recipes, based on fruit juices, herbs, and spices. You control the amount and type of sugar. Be inspired by historical and modern sources.
Fermented soda is fast and easy to make, so it's a great place for beginning brewers to start out. And it's a great topic for a family-friendly SCA demo.
Is it really that simple? YES!
Here is our class handout on how to make sodas. If you are just starting out, we recommend you start with plastic soda bottles -- you can feel the pressure build up and it's easy to know when to pop them into the fridge. Glass bottles take a bit more finesse.
The handout has detailed instructions and four recipes to start you on your journey: honey-apple soda, crabapple (raspberry, sour cherry, etc.) soda, ginger beer from fresh ginger, and a redaction of fuqa'a al-asal (spiced honey beer) from the Caliph's cookbook.
Homemade Fermented Soda Handout_rev2.pdfLive meads
Live meads
The sagas tell us of "young mead" and "old mead". Some historical recipes for mead describe prolonged fermentation periods, bottling & aging, and produced a shelf-stable bottled product -- but many call for short fermentations and have instructions to drink it fresh, straight from the barrel or vat, within a few weeks. Some are even called out as being a bit effervescent!
We interpret this to mean there were historically two broad categories of alcoholic honey brews: those made like wine, not unlike the mead we buy at the grocery story today, and those made like beer. Like the British "live beer" movement, we recognize the space for "live meads" -- beverages that still have natural yeast in them. A little cloudy, a little bubbly, a little sweet, a little alcoholic.
The most common response we get in tastings? "Wow, that's refreshing!"
What a great party drink for a hall full of warriors! It would have been easy for a village or a lord to make a barrel of live mead for a festival or wedding. And it's easy for us to throw together a couple of gallons for a weekend event. A cooler full of ice, and we're ready to go.
Half-gallons in fermentation
Cold-crashing in the fridge
Ready to drink
Live meads are another great choice for beginning brewers. Yeast only produce "off flavors" when they are metabolically stressed, and these particular yeasts live a charmed life. They are asked to do very little -- not to survive high sugar or high alcohol concentrations, and they never run out of nutrients. (As most meadmakers know, honey alone is a poor nutrient source. Adding whole herbs, fruit juices, or just a dash of yeast nutrient makes all the difference.)
In modern terms, we start out with a hydromel, as you might for a short mead / session mead -- Brix 15-18, SG 1.060-1.070 -- but we don't ferment it until all the sugar is gone!
Cold-crash to stop the yeast when it tastes good to you -- we aim for 5-6% alcohol and 4-5% residual sugar. This gives us a beer-like ABV and a sweetness that's enough to say "honey" without becoming "syrupy."
Other people might filter to remove the yeast or pasteurize / sorbate to stop them, but we just keep these on ice. The traditional solution was "drink it fast!" -- HUZZAH! -- and we enjoy the light fizziness that cold-crashing preserves.
Overall, honey "beers" allow first-time meadmakers to have a successful experience and an immediately drinkable product.
Here is our class handout with some recipes.
Note: Feel free to substitute your favorite yeast strain. I favor Lalvin's D47, a wine yeast with low phenol production, good preservation of the honey "nose", and high flocculation that allows us to pour the brew off most of the lees after just a day in the fridge.
Live Mead Recipes handout.pdfCiders, sack meads, and country wines
Ciders, sack meads, and country wines
Country wines -- fruit wines made with everything except grapes -- apple and pear ciders, and honey wines (made plain, or with fruit or spices added) are also part of our repertoire.
But we haven't taught a class on these! So there isn't a handout (yet?).
With limited storage space to age bottles, we make 1-gallon batches. Small amounts, in a wide variety of flavors. Just enough for home use....
Then Sif came forward and poured mead for Loki in a crystal cup, and said:
"Hail to thee, Loki, | and take thou here / The crystal cup of old mead;
For me at least, | alone of the gods, / Blameless thou knowest to be."
from the Lokasenna
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