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[drinkyourmead-blog]

Honey, Mead, and Many Peer-Reviewed Articles

I promised answers by last night but, alas, I was waylaid by life (in the form of my other summer course).  Here I am though, and I have partial answers to some questions (and, yes, I of course have more questions).  Yesterday I asked: 

How was mold prevented in our focus time period?  A) If overexposure to outside factors is an issue and B) If sanitation is an issue? 

Did everyone make mead, or a select few?

PART I: MOLD AND MEAD 

Sadly, I found no information on this part.  However I flailed around the internet a little more (primarily Gotmead.com) and confirmed that mold in mead is verycommon (especially with those who have never made mead).  Presumably, the mold doesn’t occur once most of the fermentation process is over…but how did early medieval brewers prevent mold growth in the time before that?  In the various forums that send modern brewers in the right direction when their mead grows friends, there are two common replies:

Mild shame on you, you must sanitize your instruments better.

Throw a campden tablet (potassium metabisulphite) in.  

This is fair enough, but clearly this level of sanitation would not be available to early medieval brewers.  So the question remains: what did they do? 

PART II: WHO MADE MEAD?

So far Pollington 2011 implies that we don’t know who was expected to serve mead, (although he recognizes that it was used in special ceremonies).  With this in mind, I have little hope that we have much evidence as to who made mead.  However, his interpretation of a set of Anglo-Saxon terms was interesting: 

‘loaf-ward’: the head of the household conceived as the protector and maintainer of the food supply. The corresponding female term is hlafdige - ‘loaf-dough-maker’ - symbolizing the traditional female role as processor of raw materials into food (Pollington, 2011:21). 

This is interesting because it defines the male role as one that watches overthe food, while the female role turns “raw materials into food”.  Would “raw materials” extend to honey, and “food” extend to mead?  Can this be applied to other cultures (as in, did women make mead in other cultures)?  Dietler argues yes, that women were often brewers, especially in regards to alcohol consumed primarily by men (Dietler 2006:236).

What evidence of this do we have from the early medieval time period?  I feel like not a ton, and most of it (judging from Pollinton’s writing) lies in written sources such as Beowulf.  The problem with this, primarily, is the wall of interpretation that exists between the original state of such written sources, and what we see in the form of the modern Beowulf (which, I learned from my 100-level English class back in 2010, includes interpretation by Christian monks).  

PART III: RESEARCH QUESTIONS (OR, I’M SORRY THIS POST IS SO LONG)

Also, since we’re nearing the end of our project (sadly), I’m going to take a late-night shot at some of the research questions we asked: 

What can this project tell us about the making of mead in early medieval culture and its limitations (why might it have been so important, etc.).

What kind of archaeological evidence might we see preserved/not preserved (through a better understanding of the process of creating mead). 

It is pretty late, and I’m kicking myself for including this part.  However, I’m going to take a stab at where we could take our research from here (although our group will be parting ways to write our papers).  

Mead and Its Limitations: 

So far the main limitation I have seen, with the serendipity of finding mold in our “authentic” sample, is mead seems to grow mold (but so does ale).  This means, I think, that a controlled environment would be necessary (as well as proper sanitation) to successfully produce a long-term batch of mead.  This seems like a pretty significant problem, which was somehow avoided without Easy Clean or campden tablets.  

The second limitation is in the base of mead itself: honey.  We used roughly 1 litre (2.2 Ibs) of honey for each batch (which churned out about 6 litres of mead).  So basically two peanut butter jars (of honey) + three 2 litre cartons of milk (of water) = a lot of honey if you’re making mead for an entire company of men (and maybe some women).

 Where did all this honey come from?  As I understand it, it is assumed that they farmed it (this is reasonable, considering just happening upon enough honey to make mead for more than twenty humans would be very fortunatebasically impossible).  

I’ve done a bit of research, and (let’s be honest, as it’s 1:38 AM, and is there a better time to be honest?) I have read none of the publications about it so far.  However I think it might be a good direction for future research, as the importance of mead may lie in its defining ingredient.  

Archaeological Evidence: Preserving and Not Preserving

Whew.  This is a research question I am both glad and not glad I asked.  

From our experiment’s point of view: there is very little that would preserve in the brewing of mead (certainly not the mead itself).  A question: could we possibly focus on the instruments there were used to brew the mead (i.e. stirring utensils, storage vessels, etc)?  Do we know what these were?  As far as I have read, the only evidence that remains in the archaeological record are drinking horns (and these are few).  

Outside of our experiment: with many situations similar to finding mold in our mead, this experiment in general has created more indirect questions and ideas than direct ones.  I think it is likely that evidence for mead in early medieval culture (and its importance) lies in surrounding factors such as honey production (and resource availability), drinking horns (and the effort put into them), and factors surrounding textual sources.  

For now, I’m out (and it is 1:50 AM).  Wish us luck in our presentation tomorrow! 

- Sarah 

[klickity]

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