Dick Kreck: Brewers Seek Revival Of Mead
There were 377 breweries at this year's Great American Beer Festival.
And one meadery.
Which is just fine with David Myers, founder and "Chairman of the Mead" for Redstone Meadery in Boulder. It's his kind of crowd - potential lovers of mead.
Myers, whose grandfather was founder of London Fog coats, has made it his mission to revive from obscurity what is generally regarded as the world's oldest fermented beverage. "I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel, I'm trying to refine it. We're trying to create demand." At this point, he admitted, "We're pushing the rock up the hill."
To date, there are four commercial meaderies in Colorado - Rocky Mountain Meadery in Palisade, Medovina in Niwot, Spruce Mountain Meadery in Larkspur and Redstone - and about 60 across the United States.
Mead is simplicity itself, a honey-water mix fermented with yeast, producing alcohol. The basic recipe can be broadened with the addition of spices, fruit and herbs, including juniper, vanilla, orange blossom and black raspberry. There is evidence that the Celts were drinking mead as early as 500 B.C. and that such luminaries as Plato, Thor and Queen Elizabeth I brightened their lives with the ancient drink.
Mead, classified by the government as wine because it is fermented rather than brewed, is generally given short shrift by beer enthusiasts. The exception is Charlie Papazian in his best-selling book, "Joy of Home Brewing," in which the president of the Boulder-based Brewers Association devotes 12 pages to mead's history, lore and production.
Some early cultures believed mead to be an aphrodisiac. What most people know about mead, if they know anything at all, is that it is the beverage alcohol from which the word "honeymoon" is derived. According to some historians, a father in ancient Babylonia would supply his daughter and her new husband with mead for a month, assuring fertility and the birth of a son. Without a calendar, a month covered full moon to full moon, leading to the term, yep, honeymoon.
And one meadery.
Which is just fine with David Myers, founder and "Chairman of the Mead" for Redstone Meadery in Boulder. It's his kind of crowd - potential lovers of mead.
Myers, whose grandfather was founder of London Fog coats, has made it his mission to revive from obscurity what is generally regarded as the world's oldest fermented beverage. "I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel, I'm trying to refine it. We're trying to create demand." At this point, he admitted, "We're pushing the rock up the hill."
To date, there are four commercial meaderies in Colorado - Rocky Mountain Meadery in Palisade, Medovina in Niwot, Spruce Mountain Meadery in Larkspur and Redstone - and about 60 across the United States.
Mead is simplicity itself, a honey-water mix fermented with yeast, producing alcohol. The basic recipe can be broadened with the addition of spices, fruit and herbs, including juniper, vanilla, orange blossom and black raspberry. There is evidence that the Celts were drinking mead as early as 500 B.C. and that such luminaries as Plato, Thor and Queen Elizabeth I brightened their lives with the ancient drink.
Mead, classified by the government as wine because it is fermented rather than brewed, is generally given short shrift by beer enthusiasts. The exception is Charlie Papazian in his best-selling book, "Joy of Home Brewing," in which the president of the Boulder-based Brewers Association devotes 12 pages to mead's history, lore and production.
Some early cultures believed mead to be an aphrodisiac. What most people know about mead, if they know anything at all, is that it is the beverage alcohol from which the word "honeymoon" is derived. According to some historians, a father in ancient Babylonia would supply his daughter and her new husband with mead for a month, assuring fertility and the birth of a son. Without a calendar, a month covered full moon to full moon, leading to the term, yep, honeymoon.