Weak Honey Drink

Classification: historical, 1600s

Source:

This recipe was taken from the SCA's Known World Handbook in an article written by Michael Tighe (Sir Michael of York).
(My notes on this recipe: play with the flavorings! If you don't likeginger, try using nutmeg instead. This produces a very low alcohol drink,yet well-carbonated and sweet to the taste, though not cloying.) A few other things: Metheglin is fun to make: what I did was used honey/water ratios suggested for a generic mead, then went to the local health-food store and browsed in the spice section ("This smells good - grab a handful") Nothing scientific about this---a little of this and that. DON'T boil these herbs and spices in your wort! Instead, make a "tea" and add that to the wort as you pitch your yeast.
For any spices or herbs you use, never use the powdered stuff outof the jar if you can avoid it. Powdered cloves just don't have the same taste as whole cloves (by the way, for nutmegs: if you don't have a nutmeg grinder, use a hammer!)

Finally: to boil or not to boil. A friend made an unboiled mead and when he bottled it wound up with a wax deposit on the bottom 1/2 inch in his bottles. No harm, but esthetically icky.

Procedure:

Put in a six-quart pot one pint of honey and nine pints of water (spring water is suggested but not necessary). Stir well, dissolving the honey. Boil for about 30 minutes, skimming off the foam as it rises to the surface. About 1 minute before you remove the liquid from the heat, throw in a teaspoon of rinsed, sliced, or broken ginger (powdered will not do the right thing) and about the same amount of the rind of an orange (eat the rest of the orange). Set the mead aside for a few hours till it be lukewarm (5 hours is more than enough) and then add yeast to the mead, stirring well. Mead yeast is the real yeast to use, but any wine yeast will do. Do not use brewer's yeast or ale yeast. Let the mead stand a day or two (you can wait as much as a week if you want); then bottle it in clean bottles. In a few days it is drinkable, I like to wait a week.