Post by Bonobo on Jan 10, 2016 1:41:25 GMT 1
Jonathan M. Katz January 14, 2013
It’s the drink of Vikings and kings: Mead. A sort of honey-based wine thought to be the oldest alcoholic beverage in history, it’s also one of the most basic — water, yeast and fermented honey are the main ingredients. While it’s a staple in many parts of the world, especially Eastern Europe, its popularity is just beginning to grow in the United States.
Mead has a long history in literature and mythology. While this has preserved the importance of mead, it also spawned the misconception that it’s stuck in the Middle Ages. (Mead has its own Norse legend in which an imbiber becomes a scholar, and is famously consumed by characters in The Canterbury Tales, folktales such as Beowulf and most recently — our favorite — George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series. Game of Thrones dinner party, anyone?)
In Poland, mead is also a great excuse to get out of doing important things. Apparently, Polish Prince Leszek I the White explained to the Pope that Polish knights could not participate in the Crusades because there was no mead in Palestine. While this sounds like a totally acceptable answer to us, we don’t recommend using this excuse on your boss. Its significance in history goes even deeper: the English word “honeymoon” is rumored to come from mead; it was the practice of the bride’s father providing her with enough mead for a month-long celebration. Now that’s a sweet wedding! Unfortunately, and due to much stereotyping, many Americans’ experience with mead (and tights) starts and ends at renaissance fairs.
This would have been my perception, too (the $8 mead + shot special at my last Renaissance Fair experience was not very memorable), if not for a recent trip to Poland to visit my girlfriend’s family. I was well-aware that Poland had good beer — their Baltic porters are worth seeking out — but I took the opportunity to immerse myself in Poland’s rich tradition of mead.
Polish mead dates back to the 10th Century Piast Dynasty. Wine was scarce and too pricy for most people, which led to alternative ways to make wine. Mead consumption continues to flourish as an ode to Polish identity, often prepared hot with added spices during the winter months. It’s recently been given Protected Geographical Status as a national staple and is enjoyed all over the country today.
Other European countries like England, Finland, Croatia and Greece also enjoy mead — in fact, its historical reach extends as far as South America and Africa. Styles vary significantly based on location. In Mexico, the Balche style is brewed with edible tree bark. Tej (Ethiopian mead) is made with an earthy mix of ground aromatics known as gesho, resulting in a bitter flavor similar to hops. But back to Poland for a second, where mead or miód pitny (which translates as “drinkable honey”) is unique for its four different strengths, each with a different proportion of honey to water. Each style is also mixed with additional spices or fruit juices, which helps balance out the honey’s sweetness.
The taste of mead varies by concentration, as well as the addition of spices or fruits. Be prepared for intense sweetness, the honey taste can be overpowering at first, but stick with it, it’s worth a full glass. When drunk hot, it’s reminiscent of dark spirits but without any of the burning sensation. Consumed cold, it can be very refreshing. If you find the concentrated honey taste too much, try using mead as the base for a sweet cocktail (Polish meadery Apis has a cocktail guide on their website).
Be adventurous and try mead both hot and cold. Fair warning: make sure you serve it in a snifter (i.e. drink in small quantities), because after a few hours of heavy mead-drinking I felt like I had a hive of bees buzzing in the middle of my forehead.
Here are five favorites to seek out:
Apis Póltorak Jadwiga: Póltorak is the strongest style Polish mead and also contains the most honey content with raspberry and wild rose fruit added for additional flavor. For traditional mead, it doesn’t get better than this.
Apis Dwójniak Kurpiowski: The Dwójniak style has a much less concentrated honey content, although the ABV is the same as Póltorak. Blackcurrant juice is added for flavor, and it is overall much easier to drink.
www.foodrepublic.com/2013/01/14/vi-king-of-beer-our-5-favorite-bottles-of-mead-from-around-the-world/
Mead making has a long and rich tradition, which started more than one thousand years ago by the Slavic tribes in the Polish lands.
Mead making in Poland has an over 1000-year long tradition. The beginnings and development of bee honey processing for alcoholic beverages - later referred to as the meads, is attributed by historians to the Slavic tribes. As early as in 966, Spanish travelers recorded that in the Mieszko country, apart from food, meat, forests and arable land, there is abundance of honey. The mead making development has been conditioned mainly by the climate in which grapewine was not ripening, and the rich natural environment has abounded in swarms of wild bees. As early as more than ten centuries ago, Ibrahim Ibn Jakub - a diplomat, a merchant and a traveller from Tortosa provided in his records that "Slavic wines and exhilarating beverages of the Mieszko country - are meads." In his chronicle, Gallus Anonymus, at the very beginning, when describing our country, emphasized that it "abounds in gold and silver, bread, meat, fish and honey. For many centuries, the meads have been served only in wealthy houses. Knowledge of practices of their manufacturing in ancient Poland was quite common especially in 16th and 17th c.
Mead is considered to be the oldest alcoholic beverage of the countries of Central and Northern Europe, where, due to climatic reasons, grapevine cultivation and wine production was impossible.
The mead in Poland has been considered as "przedni trunek" being served on royal tables of Piasts and Jagiellons and in wealthier nobility houses and monasteries. The meads were propagated and appreciated by the Sienkiewicz's 17th century knight - Zagłoba who never parted with a bottle of "delicious, old, strong mead", invigorating himself in various situations for "consolation". The mead is a national Polish beverage, an element of our cultural legacy.
In the 2nd half of the 17th century, in Poland, for many reasons, among others owing to economic-political policy of the Partitioners, the mead making fell into decline.
Only after World War II, considerable development of the meads, being produced on the basis of old recipes and ancient technology, is observed. Cultivation of technological traditions at production of the meads is extremely important, therefore the manufacturing process requires special supervision and care.
Poland is the world's only mead manufacturer on the industrial scale and thus it is so strongly identified with our country.
Polish mead making
Since the 15th century, Polish meads have been finding many foreign buyers. Merchants with whole caravans have been carrying them to Gdansk, in the same direction galleries loaded with meads and wax have been sailing down the Vistula river, and from Gdansk, they have been sent out to different European countries. Such demand has caused the need to increasing the production. Thus "miodosytnie" (mead plants) appear in cities, being operated by experienced specialists referred to as "miodowarzy" (mead makers).
Beekeeping and apiculture in ancient Poland
Primary Polish apiculture had a character of beekeeping in which the role of a human has been limited to actuation of a wild hive in a forest and later collection of honey from it. Wild hives were present on the whole area of Polish lands. In the 14th century, next to the beekeeping, apiculture started to develop - wild hive log was utilized which was previously cut out of a tree and was placed near a human settlement. Since that moment, importance of this form of apiary has been gradually growing. Thus it has become a profitable field, which is proved by a great quantity of bee wax being sold in Polish ports and handed over as levies. Good times had continued until the 18th century. Swedish wars resulted in fall of the Polish apiculture and beekeeping.
Mead production process
The mead is a beverage similar in character to wines, being obtained in alcoholic fermentation process from honey wort, namely diluted bee honey. Depending on relation of the bee honey and water in a wort, beverages of different type are being received: półtoraks, dwójniaks, trójniaks, czwórniaks. Thanks to a diversity of bee honey aromas, possibility of adding various fruit juices and herbs and spices to a honey wort, and to modification of conducting fermentation and of mead curing, the whole selection of types, kinds, and varieties of the meads can be obtained. Production of the meads requires special supervision and care. Selection of raw material, of appropriate strains of yeast, wort preparation, the course of fermentation and the musts curing time have a significant effect on the quality of the end product. An important stage of production is the mead curing period. Caring about the quality of meads, the previous methods of manufacturing are mindfully based on traditional recipes and technology. The meads are alcohol beverages attractive in terms of flavor, valuable in terms of nutrition due to the basic raw material from which they are produced and, what has considerable importance, without addition of artificial aromas, colorants, food preservatives.
Tradition and modernity
Since its beginnings in 1932, the APIS Apiculture Cooperative, having its registered office in Lublin, is a continuator of creditable tradition of the mead making in Poland. During post-war years, the cooperative movement undertook the production of the meads. Apiarian cooperatives in Kraków, Poznań, Nidzica, Milejów and Lublin were delivering different types of the meads for a few decades. Today only one of them operates in an unchanged form - the APIS Apiculture Cooperative in Lublin. Thanks to perspective vision of the management in appreciation of the traditional, specific production of the meads, high qualifications of the staff, it has not abandoned the production and it systematically improves the machine park, the storage cellar equipment, the range of assortments with observance of quality conditions, on the basis of requirements contained in obligatorily binding legal regulations. In 2004, the Cooperative launched the most modern in Poland line for meads bottling and currently has an implemented food quality and safety management system according to the latest standards ISO 9001: 2009 and 22000: 2006.
Recipes
All types of meads under the APIS brand are produced on the basis of modified centuries-old recipes, without the addition of artificial aromas and food preservatives, without sulphur dioxide. In the production process, we do not introduce basic changes and enhancements, making any efforts to maintain the traditional character of the products. We are producing the meads of highest quality raw materials in the widest assortment: from heavy - sweet meads, with the highest share of bee nectar honey, with the highest percentage content of alcohol 16% - półtorak and dwójniak; through Trójniak with the content of alcohol 13%; to light meads - dry, Czwórniaks - content of alcohol 11%.
apis.pl/index.php/en/pit/default/category/history,p
Offer by two major Polish producers:
apis.pl/index.php/en/pit/oferta/category/offer,p
www.pasiekajaros.com/products/mead
