MEAD, a wholesome, agreeable liquor, prepared with honey and water.
One of the best methods of preparing mead is as follows: Into twelve gallons of water put the whites of six eggs; mixing these well together, and to the mixture adding twenty pounds of honey. Let the liquor boil an hour, and when boiled, add cinnamon, ginger, cloves, mace, and rosemary. As soon as it is cold, put a spoonful of yeast to it, and turn it up, keeping the vessel filled as it works; when it has done working, stop it up close; and, when fine, bottle it off for use.
Thorley says, that mead not inferior to the best of foreign wines may be made in the following manner: Put three pounds of the finest honey to one gallon of water, and two lemon peels to each gallon; boil it half an hour, well scummed; then put in, while boiling, lemon peel: work it with yeast; then put it in your vessel with the peel, to stand five or six months, and bottle it off for use. If it is to be kept for several years, put four pounds to a gallon of water.
The author of the Dictionary of Chemistry directs to choose the whitest, purest, and best tasted honey, and to put it into a kettle with more than its weight of water: a part of this liquor must be evaporated by boiling, and the liquor scummed, till its consistency is such, that a fresh egg shall be supported on its surface without sinking more than half its thickness into the liquor; then the liquor is to be strained, and poured through a funnel into a barrel; this barrel, which ought to be nearly full, must be exposed to a heat as equable as possible, from 20 to 27 or 28 degrees of Mr Reaumur's thermometer, taking care that the bung-hole be slightly covered, but not closed. The phenomena of the spirituous fermentation will appear in this liquor, and will subsist during two or three months, according to the degree of heat; after which they will diminish and cease. During this fermentation, the barrel must be filled up occasionally with more of the same kind of liquor of honey, some of which ought to be kept apart, on purpose to replace the liquor which flows out of the barrel in froth. When the fermentation ceases, and the liquor has become very vinous, the barrel is then to be put into a cellar, and well closed; a year afterwards the mead will be fit to be put into bottles.
Mead is a liquor of very ancient use in Britain. See FEAST.