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Cool As Heck

A mead-making field guide

If you've been following along with my mead-making antics on Mastodon and wondered what the hell is going on, here's a "field guide" of sorts of the different types of mead. My journey in mead making has only started with traditional and melomel. Though one of my melomels is spiced and very cinnamon-forward so it might be considered a fruited metheglin. 

  1. Traditional / Show Mead
    • Honey, water, yeast, and nothing else.
    • Sub-styles are defined by strength: Hydromel (sometimes called a "session" mead) (≤7.5 % ABV), Standard (7.5–14 %), Sack (14–18 %) and “Great” or “Dessert” Mead (>18 %).
  2. Melomel (fruit meads)
    • Cyser - apples or apple juice (tastes like dry cider meets mead).
    • Pyment - grapes or grape juice (red, white or rosé versions exist).
    • Berry, stone-fruit, tropical, etc. Anything from strawberry-rhubarb to mango-habanero.
  3. Metheglin (spiced or herbed)
    • “Metheglin” is Welsh for “healing liquor.” Common spices: cinnamon, clove, ginger, nutmeg, vanilla, rosemary, lavender, tea, chili, cacao nibs.
    • Sub-sub-styles:
     - Hippocras: pyment + spices (fun fact: historically used as medicine!).
     - Capsicumel: chile peppers (my wife likes these).
  4. Braggot
    • A 50/50 marriage of mead and beer. Barley or other grain in the grist, but still honey-forward. Can be hopped or unhopped; ranges from golden ale to dark porter territory.
  5. Bochet
    • Honey is caramelized or “burnt” before dilution, giving it a toffee, marshmallow, coffee or crème-brûlée taste.
  6. Acerglyn
    • Maple syrup replaces a portion of the honey (usually 10-30%). Tastes like Saturday-morning pancakes in liquid form.
  7. Session / Hydromel
    • Deliberately low-alcohol (3-7 %) and often carbonated. An easy-drinker.
  8. Sparkling Mead
    • Carbonated either in-bottle or force-carbonated in kegs. Can be bone-dry or sweet. Dry and carbonated hurts my mouth!
  9. Still Mead
    • No carbonation. Common for traditional sack meads or dessert meads.
  10. Sweetness Spectrum
    • Dry (<1.000 SG), Semi-Sweet (1.000–1.020), Sweet (1.020–1.040), Dessert (>1.040). Any of the styles above can land anywhere on this scale. I prefer semi-sweet and sweet.
  11. Fortified Mead
    • Neutral spirit or brandy added to push the ABV to port/sherry territory (18-22%). Common for “Great Mead” competitions.
  12. Historical & Regional Variants (yoinked from a Kagi search)
    • Tej (Ethiopia) - flavored with gesho root instead of hops.
    • Medovukha (Slavic) - short, bread-yeast ferment; often spiced.
    • Polish Miód Pitny (miód trójniak, dwójniak, półtorak) - based on honey-to-water ratio.
    • Viking/Scandinavian Mjöd - sometimes flavored with juniper or birch sap.
    • Sima (Finland) - a quick, lightly fermented lemon mead for May Day.
    • Chouchen (Brittany) - buckwheat honey + apple juice.
    • Acan (Mayan) - flavored with balché bark and anise.
  13. Specialty & Experimental
    • Morat - mulberry melomel.
    • Rhodomel - rose petals or rose hips.
    • Omphacomel - unripe (verjuice) grapes.
    • Omphacomel-Rhodomel - yes, people blend them.
    • Lactomel - lactose added for sweetness and body.
    • Coffee, peanut-butter, key-lime-pie, bourbon-barrel-aged, smoked-honey, etc. 
If you can dream it, someone has probably tried it.

I've had a bunch of these varities and it's amazing what you can do with just honey, water, and yeast.