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Question - "Meal in a bottle" Meads

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dogbert

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Apr 6, 2013
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I've often heard about drinks like Guinness or a scotch ale being a "meal in a bottle", and I've also read about stouts and mead being more "nutritious" than other alcoholic beverages. Is this really accurate? I've gone through a few chapters in nutrition and biology textbooks on alcohol and it's effect on metabolism, health, and so on. Not much going for it. I'm assuming there are extra items added to the recipe to enrich or fortify it in a nutritional sense, ie:

http://blog.fitnessforsmartpeople.com/2011/understanding-food-labels-enriched-vs-fortified/

As for the vitamins present in mead, let's consider a variation of JAOM, using EC-1118 champagne yeast instead of bread yeast, since I like stronger meads, and pineapple added as well to add to the taste and acidity. Also, there are the vitamins in the yeast energizer (ie: SuperFood) and di-ammonium phosphate. The nutrients in honey can't be that great in quantity, so far as it sounds on paper. Also, since I pasteurize my honey at a relatively low temperature over an hour, that would likely denature the vitamins or render them useless. The yeast itself would use up the nutrients in the yeast food/energizer/DAP, and it's possible that the alcohol might also kill off more vitamins, but not minerals, obviously.

So, to cut to the chase, has anyone here had any experiences with tasting or making "heartier" meads that pack some extra calories and nutrition? I take part in long multi-day hikes and hunts, and don't have much room to haul extra weight. A couple bottles of 14% ABV homemade mead are often enjoyed amongst friends, and something like this sounds like it would be awesome to enjoy around a camp fire.

Thank you.
 
Calorie per calorie I believe Guinness has less than Budweiser.
1g of alcohol will provide ~4 calories (same as protein and carbohydrates). So an 18% abv mead with an FG >1.020 should provide a ton of calories. As for filling, sugar is quite filling.
 
Bob1016 said:
Calorie per calorie I believe Guinness has less than Budweiser.
1g of alcohol will provide ~4 calories (same as protein and carbohydrates). So an 18% abv mead with an FG >1.020 should provide a ton of calories. As for filling, sugar is quite filling.
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Well, that adds to the calorie count at least. What about adding vitamins and minerals? Won't the yeast just consume what it wants and the rest collects, or is there a benefit to nutritional fortification?
 
Honey has a ton of vitamins (almost all), but they're concentration is small. Ash in honey will have minerals, but again, minimal. The only thing truly nutritional about a straight mead, other than the calories provided, would be vitamin B (from the yeast).
I'd say pack some good cheeses, some nice bread, and some mead. Fruit, cheese, bread and wine are the constituents of my favorite lunches. Packed with healthy vitamins? Maybe not, but it is a nice filling meal.
 
Why do you bother pasteurizing your honey and risk loosing anything from it at the very begining of the process? JAOM doesnt work well with wine yeast, been there, it eats all the honey and leaves the bitter pith behind, better to just design a non ancient mead with EC1118. WVMJ
 
I think if you're trying to pack calories into a mead you'll want it sweet and you'll want to use grains (so, a braggot like barleywine), that's why the "hops shake" (what my hubby calls Guinness) has more calories than say a hydromel at the same alcohol level... it would come from the unfermentable sugars from the grains, plus there are also some proteins and other nutrients you'll get from grains that you'll not get much of from fruit.

Maybe try to look up a nutritional label breakdown (not just the calorie content) for beer and compare it with wine... and you know the difference between wine and beer is grain vs. fruit, just assume honey is straight sugar, since the levels of anything else in there are minimal.
 
just assume honey is straight sugar, since the levels of anything else in there are minimal.
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Aaaah...yes...more or less... but...

Well honey is a misture of sugars, water, vitamins, minerals, acids and enzimes, being vitamins and mineral so low that are almost useless. The nectar is concentrated and modified by the bees that add some ingredients.

The secret is in the relation between sugars. Two main monossacharids - glucose and frutose, one dissacharid - sacarose in a small amout and about 8% of oligossacharids, these last ones acting as pre-biotics, since our bowl doesn´t digest them, or only partialy , so with several biologic effects.

The relationship between glicose and frutose is very special in honey. If it´s true that diets in which more than 20% of the daily intake of sugars is frutose, lead to poor liver metabolism with acumulation of free fatty acids and elevation of both cholesterol and triglycerids, the reverse effect occurs with honey, in doses of 120-150 g / day, lowers these fats, due precisely to the relative amouts of glicose and frutose, and their effect in liver .

Eating honey is the pathway to a better health.
 
If you want to pack your mead with calories, you can make a sweet mead but that's more of a cordial unless you really have a sweet tooth.

All on its own a pint of mead has more calories than a pint of beer. Just the alcohol content (almost triple that of most commercial beer) will probably send mead over the top ounce for ounce.

I second the idea of bringing some bread and cheese to go along with the mead though. Throw in a pound of pre-cooked apple-wood smoked bacon and I won't ever want to go home! Except for the bread, mead, cheese and bacon are dense foods that could keep a person fed for days. Leave the grubs for Bear.


Sent from my galafreyan transdimensional communicator 100 years from now. G
 
joemirando said:
Sugar: A fat-free food!
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Good luck with that :o

antonioh said:
Aaaah...yes...more or less... but...

Well honey is a misture of sugars, water, vitamins, minerals, acids and enzimes, being vitamins and mineral so low that are almost useless. The nectar is concentrated and modified by the bees that add some ingredients.

The secret is in the relation between sugars. Two main monossacharids - glucose and frutose, one dissacharid - sacarose in a small amout and about 8% of oligossacharids, these last ones acting as pre-biotics, since our bowl doesn´t digest them, or only partialy , so with several biologic effects.

The relationship between glicose and frutose is very special in honey. If it´s true that diets in which more than 20% of the daily intake of sugars is frutose, lead to poor liver metabolism with acumulation of free fatty acids and elevation of both cholesterol and triglycerids, the reverse effect occurs with honey, in doses of 120-150 g / day, lowers these fats, due precisely to the relative amouts of glicose and frutose, and their effect in liver .

Eating honey is the pathway to a better health.
Click to expand...
I was under the impression honey was bit more like HFCS, having unbonded fructose, at a slightly higher percentage.

Oligo-saccharides I knew were there, but not at 8%. Has anything been established how yeast handles them? Or if they survive the fermentation/clearing/carbing?
 
mannye said:
If you want to pack your mead with calories, you can make a sweet mead but that's more of a cordial unless you really have a sweet tooth.

All on its own a pint of mead has more calories than a pint of beer. Just the alcohol content (almost triple that of most commercial beer) will probably send mead over the top ounce for ounce.

I second the idea of bringing some bread and cheese to go along with the mead though. Throw in a pound of pre-cooked apple-wood smoked bacon and I won't ever want to go home! Except for the bread, mead, cheese and bacon are dense foods that could keep a person fed for days. Leave the grubs for Bear.


Sent from my galafreyan transdimensional communicator 100 years from now. G
Click to expand...

Mead may have more calories than beer but are you likely to drink 3 or 4 pints of mead at a sitting? It's not simply the caloric count of food but the quantity of that food you might consider consuming as a serving.
 
bernardsmith said:
Mead may have more calories than beer but are you likely to drink 3 or 4 pints of mead at a sitting? It's not simply the caloric count of food but the quantity of that food you might consider consuming as a serving.
Click to expand...


Ummmmm nooooooo of course not. More than a pint would be nuts.
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Oh wait! You meant a pint of MEAD! Let's play the carbonation game and see where we end up! Lol.

Still mead on the other hand, after two, maybe three wine glasses full I'm getting ready to cry uncle. Unless I'm also eating. Then all bets are off.

Of course, I'm also 6'2'' and about 270. So, yeah.


Sent from my galafreyan transdimensional communicator 100 years from now. G
 
I can easily sit down in an afternoon and go through a 750ml bottle of my Black Cherry Melomel and it's running at about 17-18%, I'm not gonna be driving anywhere mind you, but damn, once that cork is pulled it's hard to stop filling the glass, hahahahahaha.
 
Well, if the bottle gets opened, it's done for. I only bottle in 1 liter bottles. I see it as a relationship; you have to commit!
 
Check out this thread. Go to post 23. It has a list of links to Dr. White Jr's honey research. The sugars in honey part tells it all. Quite a bit of oligosaccharides, but also some unusual disaccharides.
 
Thanks Bob. Nice article.

I couldn´t see if he refers only to honey from nectar or also from honeydew. As he refers, enzymes play a role, and nowadays we know, a very important role as most of biological activity of honey has its origin in them. Even the balance between sugars depends on them.

Here is a more recent publication of the composition of honey and its biological effects.

http://www.bee-hexagon.net/files/file/fileE/HealthHoney/Honey_NutritionJACN.pdf

As you can see in table 1, for honeydew, really very high levels of oligosaccharids.
 
Somewhere he does compare honeydew to nectar honeys and there were a number of honeydew honeys sampled. They're vastly different things, but I have yet to make a honeydew mead (can't find a cheap source for the stuff).
Nice article. I glanced through but I'll have to give a deeper read. Thanks. :)
 
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