Hidden in Plain Sight

Welcome back to this seventh installment in my essay series about fermentation – and what it has to offer you, both in edible and in non-edible ways…

Last time, we had a close look at the starting point of fermentation, i.e. at the base material which is going to be fermented. Today, we’re going to approach things from the other end and have an equally close look at the other side of the equation – at fermentation’s end product, the ferment.

During the course of our exploration, we will poke and prod at the question: “What is the end product of fermentation? What is a ferment, and how does it differ from the starting material?”.

That seems to be a pretty straightforward question, with a pretty straightforward answer. If this really is the case remains to be seen, though… 😉

To add some spice to the mix, today’s essay will also touch on other topics. Like, say, the fourth element which we have ignored so far, and of how it connects to fermentation. And there will be some awesome Homework on top, too!

In order to lay the groundwork for all this, though, we’ll have to take a few steps back in time again…

As you might remember, a little while ago we took a wee trip down history lane, in order to explore some of the roots of beer making. Back then, we didn’t get any further than the Middle Ages, though.

(Which might have been for the better, come to think of. Travelling even further back, and having some more drinks like the one we had back in medieval Nürnberg, and we’d have had quite the hangover the next day! 😀 )

This time, we’re not going to explore the roots of beer, but of some other fermented drink. We’re also going to travel much further back, to a place we can’t even reach with our trusted time capsule. It’s a place way back in time, and also outside of time, shrouded by the veils of spiritual mystery. A place and time when humans shared the earth with dwarves and giants…

Today, we’re going to travel to one of the important stories of Germanic mythology: the Mead of Poetry.

Way back, when the Gods stopped fighting, they sealed their new-found truce by spitting into a big casket. And from the resulting mixture of spittle, they formed a man and named him Kvasir, Fermented Berry Juice.

Kvasir was the wisest human who had ever lived, and there was no question he couldn’t answer. He travelled far and wide, to share his knowledge with other humans, and to counsel them in their affairs.

One day, he visited two dwarves, who killed him and collected his blood in three vessels. Mixing it with honey, they brewed a mead from his blood. This very special mead retained Kvasirs abilities of wisdom, knowledge and poetry: Anybody who drank from it became a scholar or a poet. But of course, the Gods wanted to find out what had happened to Kvasir, and thus the two dwarves told them that he had suffocated from his own wisdom.

(Being a wise person seems to be a dangerous affair, doesn’t it?)

These two dwarves really must have been up to no good, because shortly thereafter, they also killed a giant and his wife. The giant’s son Suttung, though, learned of the murder. He caught the dwarves and threatened to drown them, just like they had drowned his father.

The dwarves, obviously, weren’t much in favour of this outcome, and relinquished the mead which they had brewed with Kvasir’s blood in exchange for their lives. And so Suttung got hold of the three vessels with this very special mead and hid them well underground, in a room beneath a mountain, guarded by his daughter Gunnlod.

This displeased Odin, the chief of the Gods, who in his never-ending quest for wisdom would much rather have had this precious mead for himself and for those he favoured to partake in it. Thus he set out to acquire it.

By a ruse, Odin wormed his way into service as a farmhand at the farm of Suttung’s brother Baugi, and made a deal with him: If Odin, in his disguise as farmhand, would serve Baugi well for the farming season, Baugi would help him to acquire a sip of Suttung’s well-hidden mead.

Both of them held up their end of the deed: Odin by doing the work he had promised, and Baugi by taking Odin to Suttung, and pleading with him for the mead he had promised the God-in-disguise.

Of course, as you might imagine, Suttung wasn’t exactly open to this request, and refused rather distinctly. But since Baugi had given his word to his temporary “farmhand”, after some convincing, he agreed to help Odin gain access to the mead, or rather to the underground chamber in which it was stored.

Baugi led Odin to the mountain in question, and in particular to a place outside which was close to the underground chamber. Odin handed him a drill in order for the giant to drill a hole through the rock, so that Odin could then enter the chamber.

After some back and forth, with Baugi trying to trick Odin with a half-finished hole, but wise and cunning Odin catching on and insisting on the real deal, a hole was properly drilled, leading to the place where Suttung’s daughter Gunnlod still guarded the mead. Odin changed into the form of a snake and slipped through it, narrowly missing the drill with which Baugi tried to kill him.

Inside the underground dwelling, Odin took on the form of a handsome young man and approached Gunnlod. In this attractive outer form, he extracted a promise from Gunnlod, namely that if he’d spend three nights with her, in return she’d grant him three sips of the mead.

Both of them stuck to their end of the promise, and after the third night, Odin took one sip from each of the three vessels with mead. But lo and behold, each of his sips happened to be so drawn-out that he emptied all three vessels.

Changing into the shape of an eagle, Odin flew off towards Asgard, the home of the Gods, with the precious mead stored in his throat. Not surprisingly, Suttung quickly figured out that he (or rather: Baugi and Gunnlod) had been tricked, also changed shape into an eagle, and went off in hot pursuit.

Approaching Asgard, Suttung wasn’t all that far behind Odin, and the other Gods and Goddesses quickly set out some vessels for the mead at the very edge of their fortress, so that Odin could reach them all the faster and get the mead to safety.

And indeed, Odin reached their abode just in time. At the very last moment, he regurgitated the mead into the vessels. But in his haste to protect it from Suttung, Odin accidentally spilled a few drops of the mead which fell down to Midgard, the world inhabited by humans.

These spilled drops of mead are what gives all the bad and mediocre poets and scholars their skills. The true poets and scholars, though, are those to whom Odin carefully meters out the precious Mead of Poetry…

A fascinating story, isn’t it? 🙂

Although those of you who have read it before will have noticed that I have taken the liberty to shorten it somewhat for today’s renarration – telling it in full would have been a bit much for this essay, but if you are at all interested, the story isn’t that hard to find elsewhere… 😉

Still, even in this woefully abbreviated form, it’s a stunning and fascinating tale. And its relation to the topic of fermentation is, I hope, immediately obvious!

Looking back over this story, some interesting things stand out (well, to me – your mileage may vary…):

The first (and rather consoling) insight from this myth is that bad poetry and lousy scholardom seem to be a universal staple of humankind at all ages. If this tale is anything to go by, they aren’t a specific plague of the modern age! 😀

The second, a bit more subtle, but all the more interesting for our topic at hand, is the clear connection between poetry and scholardom – and their relation to fermentation.

Or, to be more precise, it’s not so much their relation to fermentation, but their relation to mead, i.e. to fermentation’s end product…

Let’s have another look at this beautiful and engaging story, then, to see what we can take from it specifically for our purposes, shall we?

(Just for the records, I’m only going to focus on the stuff I find particularly useful for this essay. There is a lot more to the story than this! Also, please keep in mind that how I told it is a much abbreviated version of the tale – and that any renarration is also an interpretation.)

Within this mythical tale, the Mead of Poetry is the source of all good scholarship, of all wonderful poetry. Note that “poetry” in this sense doesn’t only refer to the actual act of writing poems, though!

An old-fashioned “poet” was a communicator and entertainer, a teacher, a preserver of tradition and lore, of stories and social cohesion. He acted as source and guardian of truth, of knowledge and of wisdom, just like Kvasir did.

Similarly, a scholar wasn’t just what we nowadays call by that name, i.e. a person who, usually at university or other officially acknowledged scientific institutions, does what amounts to commonly approved kinds of research in commonly approved areas. By contrast, a scholar used to be somebody who explored the world, and did his best to understand it.

As such, the poet and the scholar are two sides of the same coin. Because in order to speak from a position of truth, knowledge, and wisdom, one has to understand the world and all within it, at least to the extent this is humanly possible.

Kvasir represents the ideal of wisdom and knowledge we might achieve – or rather, which we can’t quite achieve, at least as long as we are human, but which we can certainly strive for!

And interestingly, the name Kvasir seems to denote a fermented berry juice. Kvasir himself, the wisest and most knowledgeable human who ever lived, is associated with a product of fermentation – and, as he was formed from the spittle of the Germanic Gods, he is also a bearer of divine wisdom and knowledge.

I suppose his formation could be seen as a kind of spiritual fermentation, then – and Kvasir, the wisest and most knowledgeable human ever, being the resulting ferment.

But there is another layer of fermentation in this story, and it involves, yet again, Kvasir. Only this time, he (or rather: his blood) isn’t the end product, but the base product of a fermentation.

Mixed with honey as food source for the fermentation critters, it becomes the Mead of Poetry. And this mead, in turn, transforms anybody who drinks from it into a divinely inspired poet or scholar.

There are some interesting parallels between these two fermentative processes, but also some interesting differences – and one of the differences is going to point us right towards the fourth element, the one we have neglected so far.

First though, and just to be clear, the story itself doesn’t actually call the formation of Kvasir a kind of fermentation!

(Well, at least not in the texts I have found. But I’m afraid my Old Norse is a bit rusty, so… 😀)

His name, though, and its potential relation to a kind fermented drink, hint at such a connection. And as you will see shortly, it is well worth comparing and contrasting the two different steps which eventually lead to the Mead of Poetry, first the formation of Kvasir, and secondly the brewing of the mead from his blood.

While in the second step, the dwarves brew their mead the old-fashioned way, i.e. by adding honey, the Gods don’t seem to do so. Kvasir is formed from their spittle, without the addition of any kind of extra “food” for fermentation critters (spiritual fermentation critters, in this case…).

Thus if his formation is indeed a kind of spiritual fermentation, the Gods’ spittle clearly contains enough “food” to be fermented into wisdom and knowledge without adding extra sugar!

The second step, the actual brewing of the Mead of Poetry by the dwarves, happens down here on earth.

And in the material realm we inhabit, despite the divine wisdom inherent in him, Kvasir’s blood won’t ferment without the addition of some booster. No matter how awesome a base matter one wants to ferment, the critters who are supposed to ferment it need to live off something, too…

Of course, there are realms in between the material and the divine. Like, say, the realm of your thoughts, emotions or habits, i.e. the things we aim to ferment throughout this series, too – and we’ll get back to them in today’s Inner Fermentation Homework further down.

There is another aspect to this, though: When the Gods put their spittle into Kvasir, they turned him into the wisest human ever. But his wisdom was confined within him – he had to travel the earth in order to share it with others.

The dwarves, then, by their seemingly cruel act, made this wisdom available to everybody, or at least to everybody who drinks the mead they brewed.

Or, in other words: Seen as the first fermentative step, the formation of Kvasir makes divine knowledge and wisdom available to us humans at all, even if only through select messengers.

The brewing of the mead from his blood as the secondary fermentation in turn makes this knowledge more easily “digestible” to the rest of humanity – by drinking from the Mead of Poetry, we can ingest divine wisdom in a way which is accessible to us.

(On the other hand, Kvasir’s wisdom and knowledge were perfect – he knew everything. Whereas the human poets and scholars whom Odin granted a sip of the Mead of Poetry later on where presumably very much still human, and as such fallible.

Thus the fermentative act of bringing the divine wisdom down to earth, to be ingested by us, dilutes it. Perfect divine wisdom can only ever be dimly reflected in a material ferment…)

As you might have noticed, the parallels to hands-on fermentation are obvious, as it, too, makes things more accessible and more easily digestible for us: Sauerkraut is good for our gut health, as is jogurt with live cultures. And for quite a few people, sourdough bread is much more agreeable than bread made with yeast.

One of the big benefits of fermentation is its ability to unlock the goodies for us – both in terms of nutrition and in terms of knowledge and wisdom!

Thus fermented “food” (of the practical or the abstract kind) nourishes us. And so do fermented drinks – like mead.

They don’t only nourish us, though, but also inspire us. The dwarves, by killing Kvasir and turning his blood (as base material) into mead (i.e. a ferment), made the divine gifts of poetry and scholarship available to everybody who shared into the drink.

(Although, granted, their intention wasn’t exactly to share it with anybody!)

But there is some other, less obvious but no less interesting aspect to the story of Kvasir’s fermentation…

Remember that the wisdom of the Gods is inherent in him, both in his human-bodied form and in his fermented form. This, then, has to be some integral part of the “base material” – something which is retained through the process of fermentation (just like a fermented sourdough is still a dough, and a fermented wine still strongly resembles grape juice!).

Some other things change drastically, though. And again, this becomes more obvious when we compare this second fermentation with the first, “spiritual” sort-of-fermentation of Kvasir from the Gods’ spittle.

For the spittle is a liquid – as is the mead. But Kvasir in his human form, has a physical body and is thus very much solid. So what happens here?

Well, in the first step, in order to bring their divine wisdom down onto material earth at all, the Gods have to make it more “solid”. It needs to have a material basis (Kvasir’s body, in this case), to function in our world in the first place.

The second step then, the brewing of the mead, makes this solidified wisdom drinkable (i.e. more accessible and digestible) to humans, by turning the solid body of divine wisdom into the Mead of Poetry.

As such, it does what fermentation so often does: It turns solids into more easily digestible liquids, by elevating and boiling.

Or, in terms which might by now be familiar: It turns Earth into Water, transformed through Air and Fire. And right there is our fourth element, hiding in plain sight within fermentation!

(And what a nice series of themes this would be for discursive meditation! 😛 )

Now, I admit this was a bit of a tough nut to crack, as our Hands-On Fermentation Homeworks so far have mostly not made things that much more watery!

Quite the contrary, your cream cheese even coagulated and, as a result, turned from liquid into semi-solid – but then remember that this wasn’t fermentation, but a preparatory step to create the base material needed for a fermenation, namely that of coagulated milk into cheese.

(In some way, this was what the Gods made, too, when they created Kvasir – they coagulated their wisdom and knowledge into a solid base material for fermentation – which the dwarves promptly used to brew their mead…)

Throughout the series, though, there will be other Homeworks with a much clearer relation to the element of Water. Some of them are drinks, as today’s (very fitting 😉 ) one. And some will incorporate water in other ways, e.g. as brine, or by turning a rather solid base material into a less solid ferment.

If you have ever eaten sauerkraut, for example, or fermented pickles (i.e. not the storebought variety which nowadays is made with vinegar, but real fermented ones), you will know what I’m talking about. The ferment, the end product of fermentation, is (at least in most cases) less firm than the base material which was fermented.

Of course, there are also other changes during fermentation, besides this shift from Earth to Water which is oftentimes accompanied by a change in texture.

For example, your ferment will usually smell and taste somewhat different from the base material. More sour, and/or more alcoholic. It will, in a lot of cases, look slightly differently, e.g. the colours of fermented vegetables might fade out a bit.

What exactly happens depends on what is being fermented and how.

But as a general rule, the ferment (i.e. the end point of a fermentation, that which has been fermented) is both somewhat different from its base material (i.e. the starting point of the fermentation, that which is being fermented), but also still quite remarkably the same.

That’s exactly what happened with the Mead of Poetry, by the way, i.e. the ferment: On the one hand, it’s somewhat different from the base material (Kvasir in his human form), while on the other hand it’s remarkably similar in its divine wisdom…

We have touched on a lot of things in this essay – and we will get back to quite a few of them in more depth later on in the series.

For starters, the four elements and their role in fermentation will continue to accompany us throughout this series. As will the changes within ferments, e.g. in their consistency or taste.

Also, so far, we’ve only really talked about one end product of fermentation: the actual ferment. But fermentative processes produce other things as well, and they have a lot to teach us, too.

And of course, we’ll explore our share of liquids, i.e. of fermented drinks – in today’s Hands-On Homework, for starters…

Before we move on to the Inner Fermentation Homework, though, I want to apologize again for somewhat mistreating the story of the Mead of Poetry in this essay. I have most certainly not done it justice in its full depth, both by my abbreviated renarration and by my somewhat quirky interpretation, focusing on the specific aspects which fit today’s exploration of the end products of fermentation! If the story tickled your fancy, I thus recommend you’ll explore it some more on your own.

So finally, on we go to your Homework! 🙂

Inner Fermentation Homework

Your Inner Fermentation Homework for the next two weeks is mercifully short (which doesn’t necessarily equate into simple, though! 😉 ). It consists of only two things:

1. Contemplate how you, in your current solidified form, are a product of spiritual fermentation.
2. Contemplate the potential end products you might turn into through the process of Inner Fermentation. Also consider what might change during this process, and what will remain? And what might be the role of the element of Water both during this process of Inner Fermentation and in the resulting ferment(s).

Hands-On Fermentation Homework: Three Kinds of Young Mead

In keeping with the spirit of today’s essay, and in honour of the wonderful story of the Mead of Poetry, your Hands-on Homework today is to ferment some mead. Or to be more precise, the Homework requires you to ferment three kinds of young mead.

What do I mean by “young mead”?

I’m not sure if you have ever tried mead before. Usually, the kinds you can get for sale are well-aged mead, i.e. comparable to the well-aged wine, cider etc which we can usually by. However, that aging has to happen – it’s a process, and a process with different stages.

For mead, as for certain other fermented drinks (we’ll get to some more later on in the series), this process can be split into three stages:

In the first stage, the fermentation gets going. The soon-to-be-mead is kept in the open (i.e. not cut off from the surrounding air), and is even stirred often to add more air.

This stage usually takes a few days, depending on conditions like the environment (e.g. temperature), the amount of fermentation critters within the base material to start with, etc.

At its height, the fermenting liquid is “boiling”, i.e. a lot of gases are produced.

Once this stage subsides and the boiling gets less, the process enters stage two: In order to prevent vinegar cultures or other undesirable things from taking over, the mead-in-progress has to be kept away from air.

In any serious production of mead or other fermented liquids, there are vessels specifically designed for this. At home, big glass jars with air locks are the way to go.

(In case you’re wondering, “air locks” are simple, but ingenious devices in which a bend in a pipe is filled with some water. Gases can bubble out through this water, but the surrounding air won’t bubble in. Thus if the pressure rises in the vessel due to the gases produced through fermentation, they can escape instead of blowing up the vessel).

During this stage, the mead or other liquid will ferment for a few more weeks until the activity subsides somewhat. Then, in order to get it going again, it is usually “racked”, i.e. drawn into a second vessel of the same kind by way of sucking it off via a flexible tube or small hose.

The racking process has two purposes: a. to add more oxygen again, and thus to revive the fermentation critters and the fermentation process, and b. to draw the liquid off from the residue which has been collecting at the bottom of the vessel.

This residue contains yeast which can add a rather yeasty taste to your final ferment, as you know if you’ve ever had e.g. a German-style “yeast beer”. Depending on your base material, there might also be fruit pulp or other leftovers at the bottom which you can get rid of by racking.

After racking, the fermenting process gets going strongly again, until it finally subsides to some extent.

At the third stage, the maturing stage, fermentation is still ongoing, even though the ferment isn’t obviously “boiling” anymore. The taste of the ferment also still develops and “comes together”, with the flavours maturing. (Curiously, a longer maturing process can make the difference between a “meh” tasting ferment and something awesome!) Thus the length of this stage is very variable, and can last months or years.

This third stage can continue to happen in the fermenting vessel the liquid was racked into, or it can happen in bottles, or in a combination thereof (i.e. leaving it in the vessel for a while longer, than drawing into bottles).

By bottling a ferment like mead, more air is added, and thus there might be another spurt of boiling – which means you absolutely have to use sturdy bottles with snap-on lids, as they are more likely to withstand the pressure. Still, it pays to check on your bottles from time to time by popping the lids just a bit, to check how the pressure develops (and to release some pressure if necessary).

(Pro tip: Unless you are sure there isn’t much pressure on it, do any lid-popping over a sink in case things boil up quickly when the pressure is released. And never, ever (!!) try to press a lid back on a bottle with an overfoaming ferment. You’ll just create a big mess all over yourself and the place. Ask me how I know… 😀 Instead, grab a glass, catch what is overflowing and drink it!)

Again, these three stages are roughly what happens for a lot of fermented drinks (think wine or cider, for example), and not just for mead, and thus it pays to understand the background and the differences between them.

For the purpose of this Hands-On Homework, my aim is to keep things simple, doable, and fun for everybody. Thus today’s exercise is to create some young mead. While its flavour will not be as excellent and well-rounded as that of well-aged mead (and it will still be much sweeter), it only needs a very short fermentation time, and is thus easy to create.

The trick in producing young mead is simply to interrupt the process somewhere around stage 2 and to enjoy your resulting ferment, instead of letting it ferment and age for months or years!

Oh, and about the “three kinds of mead” which the headline promised? Read on to find out more about them… 😉

Stuff you need

What you’ll need for some inspiring and tasty mead is

• honey (see notes below) – three pound-jars or less
• water
• a pot or bowl (see notes on honey about size) of glass, stainless steel or suitable ceramics/pottery – don’t use plastics or materials which don’t deal well with acids
• a tea towel or similar (to cover your pot/bowl)
• a fine-meshed sieve
• one or two handfuls of fruit (see notes below)
• a handful of herb(s) (see notes below)
• some bottles (preferably with narrow necks, e.g. empty, clean wine bottles with screw-on lids will do nicely)

What you will end up with? A batch of young plain mead, a batch of young fruit mead, and a batch of young herbal mead…

Honey

Most mead recipes will tell you that you need raw honey in order to ferment mead, as raw honey contains a lot of fermentation critters which have died off in heat-treated honey.

(The difference between raw and heat-treated is easy to tell, at least in Germany: If the lid sits on tightly and is held in place by negative pressure inside the jar, as e.g. in store-bought preserves, the honey has been heat-treated. If it’s a simple one-layer plastic lid which comes off easily, it hasn’t been treated. The latter can be bought from beekeepers over here, but is also sometimes available in stores etc.)

However, this is a case of “life ain’t black and white, but all shades in between”! Or, in other words: You can also ferment a nice mead from store-bought, heat-treated honey, although there is a slightly higher risk of things going off the rails, because it takes longer for the fermentation process to get going.

Since not everybody might have access to raw honey (or might be able to afford it), I took the plunge for you, bought some cheap honey from a discount supermarket, and created my three batches of mead with it.

(The things I do for you!)

And I can happily report that it worked just fine for me, thus don’t let a lack of raw honey keep you from doing your homework! 😉

As to the amount of honey you’ll need, I recommend one pound-jar of honey per batch, i.e. three jars altogether. If honey (or money) is tight, or if you aren’t sure whether you’ll like mead at all, you can certainly make smaller batches, though!

Anything under half a pound-jar of honey (i.e. less than about 250 grams) per batch will require smaller narrow-necked bottles during the second stage of fermentation, though. (Alternatively, you can always drink it as very young mead before even bottling it up.)

Either way, per batch of mead, you’ll need a pot or bowl which holds about ten times the amount of honey you use for that batch, i.e. with a volume of (very roughly) ten jars of honey if you use a jar per batch, to accommodate both the actual liquid and also leave room for stirring and boiling.

My suggestion is to produce the three batches in sequence (see below for the reason), i.e. you’ll only need one pot or bowl.

Fruit

Your second batch of mead is going to be a fruit mead – meaning you’ll need some fruit! 😀

For this, almost any kind is suitable, i.e. pick one whose taste you like. Bonus points if your fruit has seen some real sun, air, rain and earth, as this will increase the amount of fermentation critters on it, and will thus give your mead an extra boost, although this isn’t strictly necessary.

A few rules apply, though:

1. Your fruit of choice can be fresh or frozen. Defrost frozen fruit before adding it to the honey-water mixture, though.
2. It should contain some acid, and not be too sugary. While ripe fruit is preferable (for taste and sugar content), something overly sugary like very ripe bananas or melons will cause your ferment to go off like a rocket.

   What sounds great in theory means that you’ll need to watch your ferment with eagle eyes, several times a day if necessary, in order to prevent it from tipping over into vinegar.

   My recommendation is thus to choose fruit with some acid in it, as this will make it a lot easier to handle the process.

3. And finally, it shouldn’t be too firm. Soft fruit is better, as it’ll allow for the flavour and taste to drain into the ferment. Rather firm fruits like apples make this harder.

   If you absolutely want to try an apple mead or some other mead from very firm fruit, cut them into small bits and pieces. I wouldn’t use fruit pulp, like apple purée, as you won’t be able to sieve it out after the first stage.

Overall, my recommendation for your first batch of fruit mead would be to use something like berries, stone fruit (e.g. cherries, plums, apricots, peaches) or pears. Use the ripest fruit you can get in order to add more flavour.

For the records, for my test batch of fruit mead, I went to our freezer, grabbed the first bag of fruit I found, which happened to be blackcurrant, and dumped two handfuls into the mead after leaving them at room temp to defrost first. And yep, the liquid which drained off during the defrost went in there, too. It tasted great! 🙂

Herbs

Your third batch of mead in this Hands-On Homework is going to be a herbal mead. For this, obviously, you’ll need some herbs (and it better be edible ones 😉 ).

Any herbs you enjoy the taste off will be fine for this. E.g. herbs from your kitchen staples, like rosemary or thyme. Or herbs you gather outside in your garden or while foraging. Or something from your herbal tea cabinet. And if you bought dried nettle for the cream cheese recipe two weeks ago, you could use some of the leftovers for your mead, too.

Whatever you use, it should be something you like to eat or drink. And yep, of course you can mix different herbs for this as well!

How much you need is hard to say in general, as so much depends on the specific herbs, their taste and strength, and their form (Herbs with stems etc are more bulky for the same amount of herbal mass than if you have leaves only, for example).

In general, I’d go with roughly two handfuls of fresh herbs, and one handful of dried ones – although, of course, your hands might be a different size than mine! Just give it a try (and make notes – it’s amazing how fast one forgets what has gone into a batch of ferment…), and if things aren’t perfect at the first try, keep experimenting and improving.

Again for the records, for my test batch of herbal mead, I went outside, picked two generous handfuls of nettle, and dumped them into the mead as they were.

Instructions

For the Homework, you’re going to do one batch of mead at a time (again, the reason will become obvious below). My suggestion is to start with the plain mead, then try a batch of fruit mead, and then a herbal mead – but you can certainly turn this around if you’re so inclined, you just need to adapt the instructions accordingly.

Each batch will go through different stages, but it’s the same stages for each, and the instructions hardly differ between them. Thus I’m going to explain everything in detail for the plain mead first, and then just give some additional notes for fruit mead and herbal mead afterwards.

Stage 1: Boiling Phase

Mix a pound-jar of honey and four times the amount of water in your bowl or pot. The easiest way is to scrape the honey into the vessel first, then fill the jar with water four times, which also gives you a chance to swirl and scrape off any leftover honey in the jar.

Stir everything together well until the honey has dissolved, and cover losely with a tea towel to keep flies etc out. For larger vessels, the cover might tend to hang into the liquid in the middle. You can prevent this by laying a longish object across the pot, e.g. a wooden cooking spoon, to support the towel in the middle.

What happens now depends on whether you use raw or heat-treated honey, and on your environment etc. I’m going to explain the process for heat-treated honey – if you use raw, things are likely to happen faster and more ferociously, especially in warm surroundings. 😉

Since your honey doesn’t contain many fermentation critters anymore, you’ll need to add them from the air by stirring. I.e. put it someplace you come by a lot, e.g. on your kitchen counter, and stir vigorously each time you pass by it.

(Pro tip: Make it a habit of licking the spoon each time you stir a ferment. This will help you gain experience about the ferment’s stages very quickly, and will also help you to gauge when a ferment is ready – or overdue.)

The place also shouldn’t be too cold (a cool basement won’t work well at this stage, as you want the fermentation to get going as soon as possible to prevent your honey-water from spoiling), although I’d probably avoid direct sunlight on a Southern window, just to be on the safe side.

With heat-treated honey, not much will happen at first. This doesn’t matter – keep on stirring diligently.

In fact, it might take some days until you see anything at all, i.e. the first bubbles. Don’t worry, though – it’s a great exercise in learning to trust the process! 😉 Just keep on stirring as much as you can.

After a while, you will see some bubbles. Now, chances are good that this ferment isn’t going to boil ferociously, but will stay rather subtle (as far as the boiling of fermented drinks goes). That’s ok, given that there weren’t any fermentation critters in there to begin with!

Still, you are going to notice how the (somewhat subdued) boiling picks up – and then, a few days later, how it starts to subside again.

For the records, for my very first batch with heat-treated honey, it took about two weeks to reach this stage. That’s a loooong time compared to other fermented drinks – if there is a decent amount of fermentation critters involved right from the start, e.g. on the surface of fruit, things move much faster!

In any case, this marks the end of the first stage – and at this point, you have got three options which I will lay out in a second.

Important: Whatever you end up doing, do not clean, rinse or scrape out the pot or bowl you have been using!

Instead, just pour off your very young mead, and then re-use the vessel as it is, residue and all, for the next batch of mead (see instructions below). This way, you will preserve the precious fermentation critters you have stirred so very hard to introduce into your ferment – which, in turn, will make the going much more smoothly in your second batch! 🙂

(Just in case you should be feeling any reservations about re-using that pot or bowl as it is: Yep, I’m aware it might look gross, but that’s fine. And nope, you won’t poison yourself from this. People have been re-using fermentation critters in very cherished fermentation vessels over generations, for thousands of years, and somehow, magically, humanity survived just fine. So stop being a wuss and just get on with it, will ya? 😛

And if this really should be an issue for you, I suggest you explore the kinds of programming you have picked up about nature, safety, foodstuffs, home production vs. industrial, and whatnot else…)

Anyway, at this point in the fermentation process, the choice is yours:

Option 1: Drink your ferment as very young mead

At this stage, your mead is still very young, and will taste accordingly: Rather sweet, and with a not yet well-rounded and developed flavour.

Still, it can be drunk and enjoyed perfectly well at this stage if you don’t want to store it for any longer, and especially if you enjoy your drinks on the sweeter side, and with less alcohol.

If you won’t drink all of it within a day or two, fill the rest into some bottle or jar, and store it in the fridge to slow down fermentation.

(Do not attempt to keep it in the open vessel for a few more days, though, as it will start to turn into something vinegar-like. Instead, if you won’t drink it right away, proceed with Option 2 below.)

Option 2: Bottle your ferment and let it ripen a bit

This option is less involved than the classical method of glass jar with air lock and isn’t such a good long-term option, but works great if you are after young mead (as we are) without much hassle or effort, and just want to let it age a bit for a couple of weeks or more.

Fill your mead into glass bottles with narrow necks, e.g. wine bottles. Screw-on caps are fine, i.e. you don’t need bottles with snap-on lids for such a short-term storage.

But whichever bottles you use, do not close the lids tightly! Seriously – your bottles might explode on you.

Instead, just screw the lids on very losely, or put the caps on top without closing them.

Bottles which work well for this are e.g. used wine bottles which you simply rinse out.

If you only have wine bottles with cork (i.e. not screw-on caps), you can still use them. Either put the cork losely on top (to prevent flies etc from getting in) – but be prepared to put it back on several times a day, as the developing gases will continue to blow it off. 😉

Or put a small freezer bag or the like over the top. Tie it on with a string or rubber band, and leave room for it to expand. When it fills up, release air as necessary.

Either way, your bottles should be filled up to the neck, if possible, so that the mead has little contact to oxygen. (If you have any left over, enjoy it right away.)

Put your bottles onto a tray, plate or into a bowl, just in case, unless you enjoy cleaning spillover. If you’re using heat-treated honey, the first batch of plain mead will probably not do much. Later batches, with the fermentation culture being present in your pot, will boil more – and if you use ripe fruit, your batch of fruit mead is likely to go off like a rocket…

You can store your young mead in the fridge, which will slow down the fermentation, or somewhere at room temp (but out of direct sunlight), or at any temperature in between.

Leave it to age for at least two weeks until you enjoy it. I test-drank mine between two and roughly six weeks of age, and it’s amazing how much the taste changes even in such a short time.

Your young mead will still be rather sweet at this stage, albeit less so than in Option 1, i.e. only a few weeks ago. To some extent, this can be ameliorated by refrigerating it.

If you prefer your fermented drinks a bit more on the dry or tart side, you can easily turn it into a fancy drink in several different ways, though: Fill your glass up with a dry sparkling wine, for example. Or add some ice, a bit of tonic, and a twig of lemon balm or mint (or a slice of lemon or lime) to create a fancy summer drink with your own home-fermented mead. And I’m sure you can come up with more ideas… 🙂

(And as fermented drink were meant to be shared and enjoyed in company, consider raising a toast on divine inspiration with some beloved family members, or inviting some friends over for a mead taste test. Or, if you’re so inclined, share some of your home-made mead with your God(s) or with nature around you…)

Option 3: Go the full monty

This will require some more equipment. You’ll need glass vessels with air locks in a suitable size (and to adjust your batches of mead accordingly in order to fill them).

After stage 1, pour your mead into such a fermenting vessel and add the air lock. (If the ferment is boiling a lot, only put a lid on losely for a day or two before you add the water-filled air lock, or you might have to clean the air lock again.)

Leave it to ferment in a cooler room (the basement or so) for a few weeks, until the bubbling noticeably subsides. Rack into another vessel, and pop in the airlock again.

At this stage, you can leave it to ferment for as long as you fancy – but don’t forget to refill the airlock with water from time to time!

Batch 2: Fruit Mead

From here on out, things are rinse and repeat. Well, more or less – we always gain more experience, after all, and as fermentation is a living process, no two batches will ever be the same.

Anyway, use your existing vessel with the treasured fermentation critters in it. Fill it, again, with honey and water as before, and add your fruit.

Small and soft fruit can go in whole. Larger fruit should be cut up a bit, and fruit with harder skins (or generally firmer fruit) should be cut up and/or crushed a bit to give more room for the flavours to leek out.

If using stone fruit, you can remove the stones or leave them in. For example, I might de-stone cherries (more to make the juice leak out than to remove the stones), or I might leave them whole if I’m in a hurry and just crush them a bit in the bowl. For plums, I’d probably cut them open and remove the stones while I’m at it anyway to give more room for flavour. Pears I’d cut into some pieces and remove the stones as I go, etc. Berries I’d throw in whole, and maybe crush a bit (or not – not much point in crushing something as soft as raspberries, for example).

The boiling phase is pretty much the same as before (so keep on stirring!) – although you should see things boiling faster now, and also more strongly than before.

Again, once the boiling starts to lessen, you’re ready to move on to any of the three options outlined above – and to re-use the same pot or bowl (again without cleaning, scraping or rinsing!) for your third batch.

However you decide to proceed with your fruit mead, though, at this point you’ll need to sieve out the fruit, as it has done its job of adding flavour to the mead.

You can certainly eat it, although it will have lost a considerable amount of flavour by now. (It might still work fine in some kind of desert, though, so feel free to get creative. 😉 ). You could also compost the fruit leftovers, feed them to chickens if you have any, or simply throw them out.

Batch 3: Herbal Mead

You know the drill by now… 🙂 Simply add your herbs at the beginning, and sieve them out when moving on from stage 1 to any of the three options. That’s it.

Conclusions and Outlook

Phew. We’ve covered a lot of ground today.

I sincerely hope you’ll enjoy your different batches of young mead. To me it’s something very special to have one’s own home-made mead, even if it’s “just” young mead, and to enjoy it for oneself or to share it with others. And it’s also so much fun to experiment with different flavours, timings, combinations of ingredients, and whatnot else! 🙂

But I’d also encourage you not to underestimate today’s Inner Fermentation Homework – it looks so tiny and innocent, but packs a lot of punch.

Finally, the main text also contains a lot of meat which is easy to miss (meat, not mead – although that of course, too! 😂 ). If nothing else, the wonderful story of the Mead of Poetry is well worth exploring for the insights it has to offer about fermentation.

But there were other things as well. We’ve finally added the missing element of Water today, filling some gaps which had been left open so far. And we’ve poked and prodded at fermentation’s end product, at the actual ferment, from different angles which are well worth exploring further.

So there is a lot of food for thought (and for Inner Fermentation) in today’s essay, and I hope some of it will be of good use to you!

And after having now explored both fermentation’s starting point and its end point, this kinda raises the question of how do we get from here to there? And what happens in between?

A very good question indeed, which we’re going to answer it in the next few essays. Next time, we’ll start out by looking at what drives and feeds the process of fermentation in the first place…

The next essay will go up on Sunday, May 10th. And as usual, I’m looking forward to your thoughts, questions and comments below! 🙂

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Image: Steve DiMatteo on Unsplash