A complete guide to using the best ingredients and minimal equipment to create fun and flavorful brews Ancient societies brewed flavorful and healing meads, ales, and wines for millennia using only intuition, storytelling, and knowledge passed down through generations—no fancy, expensive equipment or degrees in chemistry needed. In Make Mead Like a Viking, homesteader, fermentation enthusiast, and self-described “Appalachian Yeti Viking” Jereme Zimmerman summons the bryggjemann of the ancient Norse to demonstrate how homebrewing mead—arguably the world’s oldest fermented alcoholic beverage—can be not only uncomplicated but fun. Armed with wild-yeast-bearing totem sticks, readers will learn techniques for brewing sweet, semi-sweet, and dry meads, melomels (fruit meads), metheglins (spiced meads), Ethiopian t’ej, flower and herbal meads, braggots, honey beers, country wines, and even Viking grog, opening the Mead Hall doors to further experimentation in fermentation and flavor. In addition, aspiring Vikings will explore: • The importance of local and unpasteurized honey for both flavor and health benefits; • Why modern homebrewing practices, materials, and chemicals work but aren’t necessary; • How to grow and harvest herbs and collect wild botanicals for use in healing, nutritious, and magical meads, beers, and wines; • Hops’ recent monopoly as a primary brewing ingredient and how to use botanicals other than hops for flavoring and preserving mead, ancient ales, and gruits; • The rituals, mysticism, and communion with nature that were integral components of ancient brewing and can be for modern homebrewers, as well; • Recommendations for starting a mead circle to share your wild meads with other brewers as part of the growing mead-movement subculture; and more! Whether you’ve been intimidated by modern homebrewing’s cost or seeming complexity in the past—and its focus on the use of unnatural chemicals—or are boldly looking to expand your current brewing and fermentation practices, Zimmerman’s welcoming style and spirit will usher you into exciting new territory. Grounded in history and mythology, but—like Odin’s ever-seeking eye—focusing continually on the future of self-sufficient food culture, Make Mead Like a Viking is a practical and entertaining guide for the ages.

A complete guide to using the best ingredients and minimal equipment to create fun and flavorful brews Ancient societies brewed flavorful and healing meads, ales, and wines for millennia using only intuition, storytelling, and knowledge passed down through generations--no fancy, expensive equipment or degrees in chemistry needed. In Make Mead Like a Viking, homesteader, fermentation enthusiast, and self-described "Appalachian Yeti Viking" Jereme Zimmerman summons the bryggjemann of the ancient Norse to demonstrate how homebrewing mead--arguably the world's oldest fermented alcoholic beverage--can be not only uncomplicated but fun. Armed with wild-yeast-bearing totem sticks, readers will learn techniques for brewing sweet, semi-sweet, and dry meads, melomels (fruit meads), metheglins (spiced meads), Ethiopian t'ej, flower and herbal meads, braggots, honey beers, country wines, and even Viking grog, opening the Mead Hall doors to further experimentation in fermentation and flavor. In addition, aspiring Vikings will explore: - The importance of local and unpasteurized honey for both flavor and health benefits; - Why modern homebrewing practices, materials, and chemicals work but aren't necessary; - How to grow and harvest herbs and collect wild botanicals for use in healing, nutritious, and magical meads, beers, and wines; - Hops' recent monopoly as a primary brewing ingredient and how to use botanicals other than hops for flavoring and preserving mead, ancient ales, and gruits; - The rituals, mysticism, and communion with nature that were integral components of ancient brewing and can be for modern homebrewers, as well; - Recommendations for starting a mead circle to share your wild meads with other brewers as part of the growing mead-movement subculture; and more Whether you've been intimidated by modern homebrewing's cost or seeming complexity in the past--and its focus on the use of unnatural chemicals--or are boldly looking to expand your current brewing and fermentation practices, Zimmerman's welcoming style and spirit will usher you into exciting new territory. Grounded in history and mythology, but--like Odin's ever-seeking eye--focusing continually on the future of self-sufficient food culture, Make Mead Like a Viking is a practical and entertaining guide for the ages.

Experimentation, mystery, resourcefulness, and above all, fun—these are the hallmarks of brewing beer like a Yeti. Since the craft beer and homebrewing boom of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, beer lovers have enjoyed drinking and brewing a vast array of beer styles. However, most are brewed to accentuate a single ingredient—hops—and few contain the myriad herbs and spices that were standard in beer and gruit recipes from medieval times back to ancient people’s discovery that grain could be malted and fermented into beer. Like his first book, Make Mead Like a Viking, Jereme Zimmerman’s Brew Beer Like a Yeti returns to ancient practices and ingredients and brings storytelling, mysticism, and folklore back to the brewing process, including a broad range of ales, gruits, bragots, and other styles that have undeservingly taken a backseat to the IPA. Recipes inspired by traditions around the globe include sahti, gotlandsdricka, oak bark and mushroom ale, wassail, pawpaw wheat, chicha de muko, and even Neolithic “stone” beers. More importantly, under the guidance of “the world’s only peace-loving, green-living Appalachian Yeti Viking,” readers will learn about the many ways to go beyond the pale ale, utilizing alternatives to standard grains, hops, and commercial yeasts to defy the strictures of style and design their own brews.

Since The Compleat Meadmakerwas first published, mead has continued to grow in popularity as crafted beverages have become an established part of the beverage market in America. In 2003 there were roughly 60 commercial meaderies in the US, but by 2020 this number stood at 450. Naturally, many hobbyists are also discovering the delights of making this “nectar of the gods” themselves. Thanks to the global distribution of bees and, therefore, honey, you will find mead-like drinks in virtually every corner of the world. No wonder historians recognize it as one of humankind’s oldest fermented beverages. Mead production never really ceased in Europe and Africa, but its star was eclipsed with the increasing production and distribution of wine, beer, and distilled spirits from the 1600s onward. With the rebirth of brewing and the establishment of world-class wine producing regions in the US, it is time for mead in the twenty-first century to be brought back into the limelight. Mead needs to establish a vocabulary of its own and find a place in the hearts of homebrewers and home winemakers. In The Compleat Meadmaker, veteran meadmaker Ken Schramm—one of the founders of the Mazer Cup Mead Competition, North America’s oldest mead-only competition—introduces the novice to the wonders of mead. With easy-to-follow procedures and simple recipes, he shows how you can quickly and painlessly make your own mead at home. In later chapters, Schramm introduces flavorful variations on the basic theme that lead to meads flavored with spice, fruits, grapes, and malt. The author covers the many aspects of meadmaking in a comprehensive but easy-to-read fashion, with something for novices and experienced brewers and vintners alike from basic equipment for meadmaking, creating your first must, and on through the basics of fermentation, racking, and bottling. Once the first steps have been taken Schramm goes into more detail, involving balancing for taste using acid, priming for sparkling mead, corking practices, and strategies for clarifying. He also covers aspects of fermentation, such as selecting the right yeast strain, aerating and managing the pH of your must during the critical early phase of fermentation, and adjusting nutrient levels to suit mead fermentation. The author also troubleshoots common problems and processes, such as stuck fermentations, fermentations that will not start, slow or prolonged fermentations, measuring total acidity via acid titrations, and on balancing residual sugars through sweetening, malo-lactic fermentation, increasing acidity, and drying out the mead further. The fine-tuning process does not stop after fermentation is finished. Perhaps the finest characteristic of mead is that it seems to improve with age almost indefinitely. As well as advice on how long to store it, Schramm also offers up his experience with the many different approaches to conditioning and maturing mead, focusing on the use of oak chips, blocks, and barrels to age mead on wood. As one of the oldest fermented drinks and using the oldest sweetener known to humankind, mead and honey are inextricable. Schramm delves into a brief natural history of honey production and the bees that make it possible, with fascinating insights into the profession of beekeepers. He explores sources of nectar and pollen and the benefits of honey varietals explored, with a section devoted entirely to varietal honey based on floral variety. Along the way Schramm delves into the concept of honey “vintage”, grades of honey, sugar, moisture, organic acids, mineral content, color terminology, and how you should not judge a honey’s flavor by its color. There is also a discussion of aroma compounds, absolutely essential if wishing to understand the organoleptic qualities of honey. While mead can be a charmingly simple drink to make, home meadmakers can easily indulge in a host of different flavors to make unique and delicious meads. The author provides you with an understanding of the role quality ingredients play in creating a really pleasing mead. There are several ingredients-focused chapters that look at making sack mead, melomel, cyser, pyment, hippocras, metheglin, and braggot. At the end, Schramm puts it all together in a section devoted entirely to recipes. As one of the most ancient of human beverages, mead arose in part because it was easy to make. Despite this, mead is a surprisingly complex, diverse, and romantic drink that can range from bone dry to profoundly sweet, and can be crafted to complement any type of food. With The Compleat Meadmaker, you can see just how simple, fun, and rewarding meadmaking is.

Fermentation is an ancient way of preserving food as an aid to digestion, but the centralization of modern foods has made it less popular. Katz introduces a new generation to the flavors and health benefits of fermented foods. Since the first publication of the title in 2003 he has offered a fresh perspective through a continued exploration of world food traditions, and this revised edition benefits from his enthusiasm and travels.

From basics to braggots, this is the ultimate guide to making mead at home, complete with history, types, equipment, techniques, and recipes.