One of the few alcoholic beverages I can drink regularly and actually keep in stock.

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mead).


So, anyone else like it? :D

I don't think I have tried. I probable won't like it since I haven't liked any other alcoholic drink I have tried so far.

It's honey based, sweet and smooth. :D

Mmmmm, MEAD! Yum!

My brother & his wife make their own. They had a lovely lemon verbena mead for their wedding. I gave them a half gallon of maple syrup last year that I got from the guy who taps my maple trees & am eagerly awaiting my share of their new batch of maple mead... mmmmmmmm....

Last year I visited Haifa, Israel and went to a beer hall their, and they had over 200 types of beer from around the world and probably the best thing I had was this honey mead from Belgium.
It was yummy.

I brew meade, but its difficult because the process takes so damn long its hard to be paitent while waiting for it to age. I'll share my recipe if any other brewers are interested.

There's a number of good meads out there. With the growth in premium, or at least better crafted, alcoholic beverages there's quite a variety coming out of the woodwork in North America. The local large supermarket (Fred Meyer) has four or five varieties. The specialty beer and wine stores have more.

For the home brewer there's a lot of options. It's like any other fermented beverage. It all depends on the ingredients, the conditions, the yeast and the time you want to take with the process. Use a different honey and flavorings, get a different taste. Change the initial specific gravity and yeast and get a different alcohol content. Amazon and BN have search functions. My local brewing supply store (http://www.fhsteinbart.com/) has quite a few books.

If you don't have the patience for the wine-like meads you can make different ones in beer-time.

As far as pirates go, well, I doubt that they would have seen it very often. The Barbary pirates would be more likely to have wine even though it is forbidden in the Noble Quran. In the Caribbean you'd be more likely to see rum, beer and some wine. The China sea? Not likely. Rice and sometimes millet were the starches of choice for alcohol.

The most likely place to find pirates drinking mead would probably have been off the Horn of Africa. Mead is a traditional drink in the area and was practically the national intoxicant in Ethiopia during much of its history.

Rum seems the traditional Caribbean drink, most likely due to the sugar trade in the area.


NY has some good meads, but the best I ever had was an import from Ireland. Now that was smooooooth!

Rum seems the traditional Caribbean drink, most likely due to the sugar trade in the area.

Absolutely. That was the one third of the triangle trade:
Molasses -> Rum -> Slaves