Mead in Medieval Russia

[beninak]

I was reading about the history of mead in Russia and thought this was rather interesting. Forgive my rough translation, this info is from the russian Wikipedia site and unfortunately doesn't cite any references so take it for what it is...

"Stavleniy" Mead
First mentioned in Russian chronicles in the year 880

The production techniques for "Stavleniy" mead were somewhat similiar to the methods used to make wine: Two-thirds or more of honey and one-third of fruit juice (usually used cranberries, cherries or raspberries) were used, without adding water. The mixture was subjected to the natural turmoil in barrels or open vats, followed by multiple decantations and kept in a barrel buried in the earth for a long time - about 15-20 (sometimes up to 40 years). Minimum period before it could be drank was 5-8 years, although this mead was considered undermatured.

The disadvantage this technique was the very long period of production, so in the 10th century, a technique was developed to incorporate the use of hops in the production of mead.


"Hopped" Mead
First Mentioned in Russian chronicles in the year 920.

Recipe preparation was the same as that of "Stavleniy" mead, but before the start of fermentation honey-vinegar and hops were added to the mixture of honey and berry juice. The result was a more robust mead, and was drinkable after only three years. The ideal aging period for Hopped mead was considered to be 10 years.


"Boiled" Mead
First mentioned in Russian chronicles in the year 996.

Despite a two-fold decrease in production time, Hopped mead still took a very long time to make and, therefore, in the 11th century, the technique of boiling mead was developed. This technique more closely resembled the technology used to make beer, required fewer raw materials and resulted in much less waste. By using this method of production, the drink was ready in two to three weeks.

Often during the production of Boiled mead, additional additives were used which reinforced intoxication such as hops, tobacco, elder, beladonna (nightshade) and others.

All three of these variations really caused me to do a double take

First of all, imagine the gravity reading of a must that was 1 part berry juice to 2 parts honey! And then waiting 40 years to drink it!!!

Secondly, adding vinegar to your must...

And most of all that final paragraph - lol - tobacco metheglyn, anybody? 8) Granted, tobacco wouldn't have been available in Russia until after 1500, but I'd never heard of it being used in beverages before. Deadly nightshade, however, was also a common adjunct used in beer during the middle ages and from what I've heard its toxicity and widespread use was one of the contributing factors to the passage of the German Purity Laws.

 

[DaleP]

First of all, imagine the gravity reading of a must that was 1 part berry juice to 2 parts honey! And then waiting 40 years to drink it!!!

.

I've made many a mead with 1 part honey to 3 parts juice, perhaps this was inverted in translation?

 

[beninak]

Nope, its definitely "two-thirds or more of honey" and a web search for Ставленый мёд or "Stavleniy mead" brings up a bunch of other sites that tell the same story. It sounds like they added the fruit juice to dilute the honey enough to allow fermentation, but the resulting super-high gravity of the must is the reason that it took several years to ferment and a few decades to mellow out. This is also similiar to the Polish Półtorak which is made using 2 parts honey to one part water.

Eventually, vodka came to dominate Russia as the drink of choice because it is much stronger, cheaper, and easier to make. In modern times, it seems like there isn't much in the way of commercially available mead produced in Russia - most of the "mead-flavored" alchoholic drinks just add a little honey for flavor and are fortified with vodka. But from the websites I've read ther seems to be an interest in reviving "traditional 10th century mead-making practices."

Any gotmeaders out there that hail from Russia or eastern Europe?

 

[Syme]

My wife is friends with a Russian girl named Lana (from Svetlana). I was trying to explain that I make mead. Lana didn't understand what mead was. I told her the national drink of Poland, and that didn't help. Finally, I got on Wikipedia and found the term "Medovukha". She looked at the actual Russian spelling and then the conversation went like this:

Lana: Nods and says "Oh yes I've heard of this."

Me: "Have you tried it?"

Lana: "Oh no! This is something that people in the Ukraine make in their back-yards."

Me: "Ok"

That's pretty much where the conversation ended.

 

[wildoates]

I make it in my kitchen, but to each his own.

 

[Noe Palacios]

I studied in the former USSR and thanks to the internet I have contacted almost all of my coursemates. From all of them only one told me that her grandma made some beverage from honey, but it has to be a short kind of mead (Medovuha -(Медовуха) because it was always ready for hollydays, she said that she like it a lot because after some cups all adults were happy and sang songs. And no, she doesn't have the babushka (Grandma) recept.

Regards,

Noé

 

[Meriadoc]

miód, Медовуха, etc...

To my experience, what you buy in Poland as "miód" or Ukraine (or Russia) as "Медовуха" isn't mead -- its an 80-100 proof honey liqueur. It's very good (and warms you up nicely, too!), but it's not mead!

Now, when your Russian friend said that "Ukrainians make it in their backyards", what she was saying is akin to saying "hillbillies make moonshine"; it's as much an ethnic slur as a description, I'm betting. (And, to tell the truth, the folks who distill at home in Ukraine, inasmuch as I've experienced it, generally do cherry liqueur moreso than honey liqueur). For Lyana to understand, you might want to explain it as "honey wine" -- wine made from honey and water instead of grape juice. That should suffice.

Now, I speak some Ukrainian, and not a lot of Russian, but to my ear, "Ставленый" doesn't sound like a proper name; I think it sounds like "representative" or maybe, in the way we say it in English, "traditional" or "show" mead...?

What was the web page? What was the word for "honey-vinegar"? Something like "мед-уксус" or "мед-оцет"?

 

[wayneb]

Meriadoc, I have to beg to differ with you. All the Polish miody pitne made for export are indeed fermented honey beverages, not fortified liqueurs. There is a honey-flavored fortified spirit called Krupnik that is made in Poland, that is available here in North America. There may also be cheap branded "miody" in parts of Europe that are honey flavored alcohol, but I have not heard of any in Poland. Krupnik is made by mixing honey with neutral spirits, but a fortified drink called Medovukha (Медовуха in the cyrillic spelling) is essentially a distilled mead, (but sometimes made with additional grain alcohol added in lieu of the distillation). That was traditionally made by fermenting weak solutions of honey and water (to yield on the order of 6-7% ABV) with wild yeasts and then distilled (or fortified) to give it "staying power." That is probably the babushka-made product of those Ukrainian backyards!

That said, I am a US citizen, so I'm not familiar with everything that is sold in Poland. I am aware, however, that there is a thriving mead industry in that country and they sell the fermented honey-water product (often with fruit or herbal adjuncts).

 

[afdoty]

I make it in my kitchen, but to each his own.

And I make my Honey-Moon-Shine in a valley, not on a hill......

 

[Meriadoc]

Meriadoc, I have to beg to differ with you. All the Polish miody pitne made for export are indeed fermented honey beverages, not fortified liqueurs.

Hmm... sorry 'bout that; I didn't mean to imply that -- blame my spelling! I meant to infer that the Russian chick was thinking "liquor" when she should have been thinking "wine". And, yes, in fact, I have a bottle of Krupnik in my liquor cabinet. Good stuff, and the closest I've had to the miod that I drank in the town square in Krakow one chilly spring evening!

 

[Oldonehundredth]

So, I was curious and went and looked up the page on mead (myod/medovukha) in the Russian-language Wikipedia myself.

I would guess that "stavlenniy" mead comes from Russian stavit' tr. verb, meaning "to put or stand" [something]; so that stavlenniy mead would have to mean something like a mead that had to be "put up" or "reserved" for a long time before it was ready to drink.

What Beninak failed to include a translation of, is what appears on the rest of the Wikipedia page, -- quite astonishing. It comes out really clearly there how decidedly different the mead-brew prized by the medieval Slavs must have been from its "modern" counterpart medovukha ("small mead"), or what is more accurately labeled medovoe vino ("honey-wine"), the broad category descriptor that can be pretty much everthing that has ever been made, drunk, or encountered on the Gotmead site, including the quickly-fermented and easily consumed beverages that used to be made by Ukrainian village babushkas in their back yard.

All this makes the sound of the stavlenniy stuff all the more intriguing. How in the world did the medieval mazers ever get the stavlenniy mead to ferment, I wonder, in a ratio of 1 part berry juice to 2 parts honey, and no water!? I mean, even if you did have 100 kg of honey and 40 years to throw at this project (According to the description on the Russian Wikipedia page, you cannot make mead unless you start with 100 kg of honey ... This reminds me of a famous anecdote about what the chef at the Russian Team Room in New York had to do before he got a satisfactory recipe for truly authentic Russian borscht, but that story will have to wait for another time! ...)

And when they talk about "multiple decantations" over the 40 years' process, does that mean you would drink the stuff decanted off the top, or was that the waste product you would throw away, while waiting for the stuff down below that to turn into the real liquid gold?

Whatever, if it took that much trouble and patience, this mead must have been pretty darn worth it. I'd sure like to try it!

What are the zymurgists able to tell about this historical mead production? Is there such a thing as a non-yeast based fermentation that would be capable of producing something incredibly good using pretty slightly diluted wild honey, a barrel sealed underground at Russian prevailing geothermal temperatures (ah ... cool to cold), and infinite patience and ... who knows what else? Are the results worth waiting for?

If so, I think it might turn everything I have learned about mead production methods, up side down!

 

[Medsen Fey]

It would probably be a fermentation comparable to Tokay Essencia. Slow and low alcohol.

Some interesting pictures of old bottles here. If you were fermenting medieval batches before glass bottles and corks, a batch such as this could be aged in a cask nearly forever. The sugar/alcohol combination would prevent spoilage. It would probably be very dark due to gradual oxidative browning.

That's my guess for what you'd be looking at.

 

[wildoates]

That's a fascinating website, Medsen! Thanks!

 

[afdoty]

That is very interesting.....I think I'll want mine without the "distinctive black mold".

 

[wayneb]

I'm not sure that you want to forego the mold. It might add flavor elements that would otherwise be missing.

I had an opportunity to taste some Tokaji Aszu that had been bottled in 1955, from a bottle owned by a college buddy of mine who had escaped from Hungary with his family after the 1956 revolution failed. He'd had this bottle given to him on the promise that he wouldn't open it until his 21st birthday (actually our, since we coincidentally were born on the same date).

Wow! I have never tasted a more incredibly rich and complex sweet wine. At the time I had very little wine tasting experience overall, and I had no idea how special was the product I was tasting. The last pre-soviet crackdown vintage, it was an incredible tasting experience - one that I'd like to repeat some day, if I can ever afford it!

 

[fatbloke]

Well, seeing as how I know "the square root of bog all" about non-wine like meads, this has been a brilliant thread to read.

Bit of a shame that whoever wrote the page that Medsen linked with the interesting bottles didn't bother to do a bit of "cross browser testing" (it views very poorly in Firefox........ damn the MS software nazis).....

I've been arranging some honey from Poland, but that's about it....

regards

fatbloke

p.s. and unfortunately, the only bit of Russian I can come up with is yob tvoyu mat (and yes, I do know what it means.......)

 

[Noe Palacios]

p.s. and unfortunately, the only bit of Russian I can come up with is yob tvoyu mat (and yes, I do know what it means.......)

Well, the Cold War is over and thanks God for it.

 

[Seth8530]

Great thread with some very interesting reading! отличнйы новост это очен очен хорошо. я люблю читать о рускким медом! (;

 

[maykal]

Interesting thread.

Any gotmeaders out there that hail from Russia or eastern Europe?

The Roman naturalist Aelian mentions, in the 4th century, that the Dacians (ancient tribe inhabiting Romania before the Roman conquest) used to make 'melikraton' instead of wine. The process is described as being a way the get rid of the old wickerwork hives, which only lasted a year or two. The old honeycomb was put into large vats and covered with water and left to ferment - residual honey, wax, pollen, all together - for about a month. The resulting drink was described as bitter and weak. He notes that the locals called it 'mied'.

In 1564 Gratianii described the Moldovians (North East Romanian border) as "not being without wine, but also using a lot of mead, honey being abundant"

No it's pretty much unheard of here, even though honey production is still popular, both commercially and on thousands of smallholdings.