Making Your Own Mead - by Peter Duncan & Bryan Acton (Paperback)

About the Book

Originally published in the U.K. by Amateur Winemaker Publications, 1968.

Book Synopsis

Once the drink of choice for Viking marauders and medieval kings, mead is enjoying a renaissance in popularity. The "nectar of the gods" is easy to make at home using just honey, water and yeast. This practical guidebook will inspire you to take up the craft, with a basic guide to mead-making techniques plus 43 recipes for brewing the world's oldest alcoholic beverage. Making Your Own Mead shows you how to produce an array of tasty mead variations, by blending honey with herbs, spices, fruits, berries, and more. Just because mead is made from honey doesn't mean it has to be sweet. Versatile mead can be dry as a bone or seductively sweet, sparkling or still, fruity or spicy. Discover how to make different types of mead like fruit-flavored melomels, grape-based pyments, spiced metheglins, and apple cysers. You'll also find recipes for mixing up your mead in classic drinks like a honey bishop or a twelfth night wassail.

From the Back Cover

Fill Your Flagon with a Drink Fit for a King Once the drink of choice for Viking marauders and medieval kings, mead is enjoying a renaissance in popularity. The "nectar of the gods" is easy to make at home using just honey, water and yeast. This practical guidebook will inspire you to take up the craft, with a basic guide to mead-making techniques plus 43 recipes for brewing the world's oldest alcoholic beverage. Making Your Own Mead shows you how to produce an array of tasty mead variations, by blending honey with herbs, spices, fruits, berries, and more. Just because mead is made from honey doesn't mean it has to be sweet. Versatile mead can be dry as a bone or seductively sweet, sparkling or still, fruity or spicy. Discover how to make different types of mead like fruit-flavored melomels, grape-based pyments, spiced metheglins, and apple cysers. You'll also find recipes for mixing up your mead in classic drinks like a honey bishop or a twelfth night wassail. Inside you'll find: - 43 recipes for making both dry and sweet meads - Tips on honey selection, preparation and fermentation - Basic rules that every mead-maker needs to know - Advice on mead-making equipment - How to brew melomel, pyment, hippocras, metheglin, and cyser - Classic mead drinks and mulled drinks with honey Tips on honey selection, preparation and fermentation Practical guide to mead-making equipment and techniques Learn to brew melomel, pyment, hippocras, metheglin, and cyser

Review Quotes

"As close-packed and efficient as a beehive, the compendious Making Your Own Mead: 43 Recipes for Homemade Honey Wines will assuredly quench any aspiring meathier's need for mead."

-- "Vinogirl"

"Making Your Own Mead is a quick concise book about mead and mead making. Those interested in mead can read about the history, connection with honeymoons and the basics of mead making. The home mead makers can read through the book quickly to get a general idea of the mead making process. Then return to the chapters dealing with types of honey, yeasts and meads they are interested in producing. There are many recipes to get you started."

-- "Terry Sullivan, Wine Trail Traveler"

"The techniques are sound, and the recipes are approachable and easy to follow. Whether you want to make mead, melomels, pyments, metheglins, or cysers, this is the book you should get. It will be the book I pick up when I make my next batch of mead."

-- "Jim Rector, Writer, Texas Wine Lover"

"With easy to understand directions, and simple recipes for all types of honey wine, Making Your Own Mead provides a great reference to novice and expert meadmakers alike!"

-- "Robert Rivelle George, Author, "The Umami Factor: Full-spectrum Fermentation for the 21st Century""

As an experimental homebrewer, "Making Your Own Mead," has inspired me to craft my own mead and take my place along with the Greeks, Romans, and Norsemen in the epic of man's oldest drink!

--Matt Brasch "The Brewholder"

About the Author

Bryan Acton was President of the Tunbridge Wells Guild and a member of the Greenhill Wine Guild.
Peter Duncan was educated at Perth Academy and Edinburgh University, graduating in 1959 with a first class honor BS in chemistry. He founded the Huron (Canada) Wine Guild, has been a member of both the Canadian and British National Guilds of Judges and used to write a popular weekly column called The Winemaker's Forum for local and national newspapers.