Customer Reviews

Making Mead (Honey Wine): History, Recipes, Methods and Equipment

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Unlike many of the mead making books being written today, Roger Morse's book does not spend any amount of time on history. It goes into specific detail on the selection of honeys, the techniques used to bring out the full flavor of each type of honey, and each type of mead. It details the variables in production in a clear and understandable manner, and has one of the best selections of recipes for different types of mead that you will find. It also gives you everything you need to know to create your own recipes as well.

This one is for a serious beginner to intermediate brewer. The author is a professional mead and wine judge with a wealth of experience and a few tricks that surprised me especially for the small size of the book. It skimps out on recipes though. It should be noted that this is written by an experienced mead judge.

If you are looking for a step-by-step instruction guide on the process of making mead, this is not the book for you. While he does not spend much time on history, he spends most of the book telling about the chemicals and make-up of mead and it's components. And the processes that he does give, are quite vague. The recipes that are included (which are few) are all based on chemical components, rather than natural processes. However, the book is well written and very easy to read. Another problem I found with the book, is that it is 20 years old. And being written based on the chemical aspect, this could mean that it is outdated. There are however, a few good points of information throughout the book. But if you are looking for a step-by-step "instruction book", this is perhaps not the best choice.

Written by the late Dr. Morse, formerly head of Cornell University's Apiculture Department, this book is an excellent source of information on PLAIN (aka 'classic') mead. The author gives excellent and precise technical detail on most of the essential additives and techniques needed to make high quality "Classic" Traditional mead ... from honey, water, yeast, a minimum of sulfite, and various essential micronutrients. He gives good information on basic equipment, sanitation, and how to debug various commonly encountered problems.

However, speaking as a meadmaker myself, as well as a past BJCP Judge, I do have a few nits:

1) OVERLY TECHNICAL FOCUS: His biochemical breakdown on yeast nutrients are overly technical for most aspiring amateur meadmakers. Most homebrewers, for instance, prefer to work with just 1 or 2 commonly available nutrient blends (usually a blend of ammonium phospate and urea)**, and perhaps yeast hulls, rather than having to futz around with a high precision gram scale and a half dozen, or more, hard to find and rather technical unblended additives.

2) OVERLY NARROW FOCUS ON SINGLE (PLAIN) STYLE MEAD: Dr. Morse focused exclusively on plain classic (a.k.a. "straight" or "traditional") mead - he largely glosses over most of the other major mead making styles, such as Melomel (made with fruit), Pyment (made with grapes), Cyser (made with apple and/or pear cider), Metheglin (flavored with spices), etc. A primary focus on traditional mead made for a very narrow, and sumewhat unsatisfying, approach in a subject that can, no SHOULD, be ripe for creative pairings of different varietals with additions of other complimentary fermentibles and flavors.

3) VARIETAL HONEYS LARGELY IGNORED: Dr. Morse gives surprisingly little information on the different, delightful and delicate flavor nuances offered by various types of unblended single blossom varietal honeys. He goes into great detail describing the chemical breakdown of honey, but largely ignores discussing the flavor differences between, say, alfalfa honey (which has a light golden color, and a flavor, when fermented, suggestive of white grapefruit), clover honey (slightly deeper color, with post-fermentation flavor nuances of wintergreen and overripe pineapple), heather honey (darker still, and with a stronger and somewhat biting flavor that can take some time to mellow and mature), etc.

4) NARROW SELECTION OF YEAST STRAINS: He seems to have a similar lack of interest in different winemaking yeast strains - and limits himself entirely to sauterne and champagne strains, both of which have their advantages and limitations ... which he neglects to go into.

5) DRY WRITING STYLE: Although highly knowledgeable and respected in his field, Morse's writing in this book is rather dry, and technically oriented. I like writers who are good at relating their sense of enthusiasm, and I missed that in this book ... it reads more like an academic textbook than a labor of love and exploration.

Overall, Morse seemed pleasantly obsessed with the process making mead, but he also came across in this book as a dry, set-in-his-ways techncrat. He also seems inexplicably oblivious to the subtle flavor nuances imparted by various different types of honey and yeast. I haven't read any of his other books (as of this writing), so I don't know if he ever addressed the shortcoming of this book in his later work.

Still, it's a very technically proficient book ... if a bit narrow, dispassionate, and biochemically geeky in places. There are other books out there that approach the subject with quite a bit more zeal, enthusiasm and adventerous creativity.

Recommended, with reservations.

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** Urea: Ok, hold into your hats, folks. Urea crystals are refined from cow's urine. Yes, you read that correctly ... cow pee. Food-grade urea (highly refined & purified), in very tiny amounts, is a vital nutrient needed by yeast cells for growth and propagation. And I bet you though Meadmaking terminology would be dull, right ?

** Ammonium Phosphate: is a common component in fertilizer, which in turn, is sometimes used in the manufacture of solid rocket propellant and commercial explosives ... albeit in vastly larger quantities than the microscopic fractional grams called for in this book.

This is a pretty good mead book. It is 30 years old and a tad aged but still very relevant. Covers all the bases reasonably well including honey, bees, fermentation, yeast and more. It does cover something that a lot of other mead books don't cover and that is troubleshooting. What to look for in a batch going wrong, stuck ferment and other problems that can be encountered. I like this book and it covers a nice spectrum of the subject. But if you just want to make mead this is probably not the first choice you should make. If you are making more batches of mead and want to pursue it further then this book is definitely for you. It has a fair number of black and white pictures and drawings which is good.

Great read about the history of making Mead, with many recipes I will attempt once I have made a simple one gallon batch of the recipe I already had.