Mead Spotlight!

Dansk Mjød Ribe Mjød

$28.99 for the 750ml bottle
Cyser / Metheglin with Hops and Myrica Gale (Bog Myrtle)

Terms:
”Cyser” — a mead made with apples (a sub-category of melomels — mead made with fruit)

”Metheglin” — a mead made with spices and/or herbs

According to the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, the oldest evidence we have of an alcoholic beverage comes from residue found in pottery from a Chinese Neolithic village that was in the Yellow River Valley — ca. 7000-6600 BCE. (Old fans of Dogfish Head Brewing Company will know about this ancient drink, as Dogfish used to brew their interpretation of it.) That residue predates the earliest evidence of wine production in the Middle East by more than 500 years.

So for all we know, people have been fermenting honey for as long as people have been fermenting. According to our Penn people, the Danes were fermenting a grog made of honey, grains (like barley, wheat, and rye), and various botanicals as early as ca. 1500-1300 BCE. These experiments in inebriation would evolve into the mead that stretches throughout the norse tales.* According to Dansk Mjød Meadery, who makes this week’s spotlighted mead, the oldest Norse recipe for a more modern take on mead using just honey, water, hops, and brewer’s yeast can be found in the 1555 ACE papers of Swedish Archbishop Olaus Magnus. Dansk Mjød bases their mead recipes on a 1700 ACE Danish recipe that follows Archbishop Olaus’ brewing methods. (*No god-spat wise men were killed by dwarves in the creation of this mead.)

Dansk Mjød originally brewed the Ribe (pronounced “ri-buh,” like “river” if you’re from 1950s Brooklyn) to celebrate the town of Ribe, known as the oldest town in Denmark. (They were having their 1300th jubilee … 1300th!!)

For the Ribe Mjød, Dansk Mjød starts with the same sweet mead base that they use for most of their meads. They then add unfiltered apple juice from local Danish apples, first, for the fruit taste, and, second, to give the final cyser some acidity for structure. They then bitter the mead by adding Danish hops and myrica gale, also known as “bog myrtle” — an old European pre-hops bittering agent for both beer and mead brewing.

Not only does the apple juice provide a tasty, fruity dimension on top of the Ribe’s core sweet honey taste, it also gives this cyser a lighter body than Dansk Mjød’s straight meads. On top of it all, the bittering agents add a fun touch of spiciness around the edges. It makes sense that the Ribe Mjød was originally made for a celebration, as its lighter body and refreshing apple taste make it the easiest to drink of the Dansk Mjød meads.

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