The 5 Best Meads To Drink In 2022

Despite being one of the more recent additions to the list of popular alcoholic beverages, mead existed long before your favorite mulled wine and beer was developed. If you’re seeking the top meads to drink in the US this summer, we’ve put together the ideal list for the best mead 2022 that you can get from the best mead brands in the market. First, let us begin by understanding what mead is and how it is made.

What Is Mead?

Mead (honey wine) is an alcoholic beverage made of fermented honey. A clever brew can craft a mead with a variety of savory components, including fruits, herbs, barks, spices, and more. Although numerous unique cocktail recipes may be concocted with honey mead, mead is typically consumed alone.

Making mead

It is said to have been discovered thousands of years ago, dating back to 7000BC when rainwater was found collected at the bottom of a beehive, naturally fermented with pure honey. The result was a sweet elixir with intoxicating properties, also known as the nectar of the Gods.

Now, mead is made by fermenting honey with flavors for over 24 or more months, as per the recipe. Although some meads are fairly dry and sapid, most meads are sweet due to honey fermentation. The amount of water used to dilute the honey before it ferments to become mead will determine all of this.

The 5 Best Meads to Drink in 2022

Braggot

Braggot is a malt-based mead. It can be best described as a beer-mead hybrid. A mead and beer hybrid with distinguishable mead as well as beer qualities. Based on the honey variety, base beer style, and overall sweetness and strength, a huge spectrum of mead is possible. It is different from other meads as in these other meads, beer flavors tend to overpower the more traditional honey flavors.

Berry Mead

Melomels produced with berries, like blueberries, raspberries, currants (red, black, and white), blackberries, boysenberries, strawberries, marionberries, elderberries, lingonberries, mulberries, cranberries, huckleberries, and so on, are called Berry Meads.

In a broad sense, any fruit with the word “berry” in the name qualifies to be a part of this type of mead. Berries that have seeds but no stones/pits are used. It can be created using a combination of berries.

Cyser

A Cyser is an apple-based Melomel (generally cider apples). The fruit is both distinguishable and well-integrated into the honey sweet-acid-tannin-alcohol proportion of a well-made mead.

Among the strong Cyser meads are ones that taste and smell like aged Calvados (a northern French apple brandy). The subtle, dry versions of this type of mead can taste like fine white wine. The fruit and honey flavors should be enticing but not necessarily in equal measure. A good tannin-sweetness balance is preferred in general, though very parched and very sweet meads do exist.

Fruit & Spiced Meads

Fruit and Spiced mead is a unique take on honey, water, and yeast. Making spiced mead seems to be very similar to making base mead. The only thing that is different is the spices added to it. It, therefore, has a significant impact on the flavor, deliciousness, and color of the mead. Spiced mead is referred to as metheglin.

Fruit and spiced mead can be made by combining herbs, spices, flowers, fruits, or vegetables with regular mead. You can also add chocolate, nuts, and coffee to your favorite drink to give it a new twist.

Stone Fruit Mead

Melomels created with stone fruit, like plums, cherries, apricots, peaches, and mangoes, are known as Stone Fruit Mead. A stone fruit is a bulbous fruit with a single massive pit or stone in the center.

The taste and feel of fruit in these types of meads are both recognizable and well-integrated into the honey-sweet-acid-tannin-alcohol mix of the mead. Various sorts of stone fruit can be used to create this.

How Is Mead Made

These are just five of the most popular meads found worldwide. If you are curious to know how it’s made, here is a quick overview.

To start creating mead that suits different flavor profiles, there are certain necessary tools and ingredients that are acquired. Some of these could include mead bottles or vials to store the product, a bucket/container for fermentation, high-quality pure honey, sterilizers, water, a pouch of wild yeast (or any other yeasts), and some fruit. There are several different recipes that professionals follow to get the right flavor and texture in their mead.

The most straightforward method to make the best meads would be to combine water and honey in a closed vessel. The honey water mixture is then mixed with mead yeast and other fruit mead ingredients. The airlock is fastened to the vessel in which all of the ingredients have been mixed, and then mead makers wait for the bubbling to stop. That means the initial fermentation has finished. They can also perform a second fermentation if desired.

Good To Know

Which mead is the strongest?

Apis Póltorak Jadwiga: Póltorak is the strongest Polish mead and contains wildflower honey content with a delicious taste of raspberries and wild rose fruit. If you want to try a traditional mead, this is the best option for you.

What is the most expensive mead?

As of 2022, Moonlight Meadery serves the most expensive meads. However, there are other expensive meads, too, priced over $99 a bottle. Manuka honey-based mead has also been known to be extremely pricey over the years.

Why is mead not popular anymore?

Mead or honey wine is gaining back its popularity. Most people do not know what mead is. The reason for this could be the lack of awareness or advertisement. Even in the tasting rooms, most conversations are around fermentation from grapes, forgetting that it can also be done with sugar in honey.

Another reason could be the scarcity of good-quality honey as compared to grape juice or such sweet fruits.

Conclusion

Meads are not as popular. It’s incredibly tasty and has been around for thousands of years, but most individuals don’t prefer it. That can be an issue for mead because its lack of popularity as wine can make it appear that it isn’t as decent as other drinks, though anyone who has tried it knows that isn’t the case. Anything can become popular in today’s world if enough money is poured into advertising. Due to a lack of promotion, often these people have never heard of Mead, or if they have heard of it online or on television, believe it is no longer available.