Polish or Lithuanian Mead with Hops
Olaus Magnus Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus, Rome 1555
Original Recipe:
De modo coquendi medonem Polonico, vel Lithuanico more. Capiatur certa quantitas boni mellis puri et integri,iuxta praemeditatem quantitatem conficientis, hoc scilicet exemplo: Decem librae mellis, & XLlibrae aquae, aut plus aut minus, iuxta fortitudinem desideratem. Calefiat aqua in caldari, seu cacabo cupreo, vel aereo magno, melquae imponatur, ut bene coquator & despumentur. Coquator etiam lupulus seorsum in uno sacculo (modo superius dicto) ad quanitatum unius librae, vel minus, iuxta quantitatem mellis & aquae: quo decoct& aqua Bullita, ac expumata, deponatur usquequo parum tepescat, & imponator saccus lupuli cum aqua sue decocionis, ac fex ceruisie (vel fermentum, ut supra) beneque cooperiatur, ut stet per unum diem, ac noctem; & demum ac sanissimus potus, qui el vino aequiparari poterit, vel in necessitate vineis destructis, voluerit, secundum hoc addat, vel subtrahat mel, in appositione decoctionis. Et haec veraciter relata sunt mihi Rome MD XLIII per venerabilem virum D. Marinum Polonum Poenitentiarium Gnesnensem, qui & sua manu talem medonem gratissimo sappore, & bonitate confecit, atque ita carista vini surgente, in Roma commodissime fieri poterit.(Olaus Magnus 1555, 448)
Translation:
On brewing mead in the Polish or Lithuanian manner. Take a certain amount of good honey, pure and unadulterated, the proportion to be determined by the quantity of mead you intend to brew: for example, ten pounds of honey to five gallons of water, more or less, according to the strength required. Heat the water in a cauldron, or a large copper or bronze cooking pot, and pour the honey in. See that it boils well and skim off the froth. Boil the hops separately in a little bag the way I described above, up to one pound of them, according to the quantity of honey and water. When the hops are fully cooked, the water boiled and the froth skimmed off, lay it on one until it is just warm and place the bag of hops in it, with the the water they were boiled in , together with the dregs of beer, or yeast as above; then cover it completely and let it stand for a day and a night. Finally, pour off the whole of this brew mixture into a clean vessel, and it will turn out to be a most delicious, healthy drink, which will be able to match true wine or, in case of need if the vineyards have been destroyed, serve most conveniently in place of it…If anyone wants to make his mead milder or strongr, he must accordingly increase or decrease the amount of honey that he puts into the mixture. All this was truthfully told to me at Rome in 1543 by that Venerable man, my Lord Martin, a father confessor from Gniezo in Poland, who with his own hands made mead of this quality.(Olaus Magnus 1998, 639)
Redaction:
1. Heat 4.5 gallons of water in a large copper or bronze cauldron2. Pour honey into the water.
3. Boil, skimming the scum from the surface.
4. In a separate pot, Boil the hops in a linen bag until ½ of the water has boiled off.
5. Allow the must to cool.
6. Add hops in their bag, and the water the hops were boiled in to the pot.
7. Add the dregs of beer
8. Cover and allow to stand over night
9. Move to a clean vessel
Ingredients:
9.4 lbs honey*4.5 gallons of water*
2 oz. Hallertau Hops
Lees from another batch of mead
*See Note 2
Process:
1. I boiled the honey and water in a stainless steel pot on the stove, skimming the foam from the top.2. In a separate pot, I boiled 2 oz. of Hallertau hops pellets in 2 quarts of water, until it reduced by half.
3. I allowed both pots to cool.
4. I poured the contents of both pots into a 5 gallon carboy.
5. I added the lees from another batch of short mead, which was brewed using Nottingham ale yeast to the carboy.
6. I placed an airlock on the carboy, and allowed it to brew to completion.
Notes:
1. In the earlier Scandinavian recipe, the hops are boiled in a separate vessel, tied up in a linen bag until half of the water has boiled off.“When this has been done, an appropriate quantity of hops should be boiled in a linen bag inside a covered pot over the same fire until at least half the water has evaporated, so their bitterness may be evident”
(Olaus Magnus 1998, 637-8)
2. The translation calls for 10 lbs of honey to 5 gallons of water. However, the original, Latin recipe measures both honey and water in librae, which is an ancient Roman measure of weight equivalent to 12 oz. It calls for decem librae mellis & XL Librae aquae, or 120oz. (7.5 lbs.) of honey, and 480oz. of water. One gallon of water weighs 8.36 lbs. or 133.76 oz. So, by volume, that is 3.58851674641 gallons of water. Because this recipe needed to ferment in a 5 gallon carboy, I increased the amount of honey and water while keeping the proportion of the original recipe.
3.58851674641 X 1.25=4.48564593301 gallons of water
7.5 X 1.25= 9.375 pounds of honey
(Olaus Magnus 1555, 448)
http://www.tribunesandtriumphs.org/roman-life/roman-weights-and-measures.htm
https://www.unrv.com/culture/roman-weights-measures.php
3. The first documented link that I know of, between hops and brewing comes from Picardy in Northern France, in 822. Abbot Adalhard of the Benedictine monastery of Corbie, in the Somme valley near Amiens, wrote a series of statutes on the proper running of the monastery, including the gathering of wild hops. Around 1150, Abbess Hildegard of Bingen published a book called Physica Sacra, which translates best as “The Natural World”. Book I, Chapter 61, “De Hoppho”, or “Concerning the hop.” In this chapter he discusses the nature and uses of the hop, including its use in brewing. Modern German sources claim that hop gardens appear in records dating from the second half of the ninth century in and around Hallertau, in Bavaria, Southern Germany, which is still the world’s largest single hop-growing area.(Cornell 2009)
The first documented hop cultivation was in 736, in the Hallertau region of present-day Germany. Hop cultivation in period is documented in Germany, France and Holland. (Hornsey 1999)
Because Germany is closest to Poland and Lithuania, I decided to use Hallertau hops. I was unable to acquire fresh hops for this project so I had to use dried hop pellets.
4. The original recipe recommended boiling the wort in a copper or bronze cauldron. Because I am a poor public school teacher, I cannot afford a copper or bronze cauldron. The town I live in frowns on open fires as well. As such, this brew was boiled in a stainless steel stock pot on a gas stove in my kitchen.
5. The original recipe said to cover, and allow the must to stand overnight. However, I have 4 cats and two children. This would not have ended well. For this reason, the must was moved to a carboy once it was cool.
6. I do not brew beer, and as such do not have the lees from a batch of beer available. However, I had just racked a batch of short mead when I started this project. I used some of the lees from that carboy to start this mead. The original mead was a hopped short mead brewed with Nottingham ale yeast.
7. I used clover honey because it was available and affordable. In period, bees would have collected nectar from a wide variety of locally available flowers. Single crop honeys would not have been readily available. A wildflower honey would be more accurate.
Bibliography:
Olaus Magnus Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus. Rome, 1555
Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (History of the Northern People) Originally Published Rome, 1555. Translated by Peter Fisher and Humphrey Higgins. London: The Hakluyt Society 1998
Krupp, Christina M., Gillen, Bill Making Medieval Mead or, Mead Before Digby The Compleat Anachronist #120, 2003
Cornell, Martin, (2009) “A Short History of Hops” Zythophile
http://zythophile.co.uk/2009/11/20/a-short-history-of-hops/
Ian Hornsey. (1999) Brewing. RSC Paperbacks
“Roman Weights and Measures”
http://www.tribunesandtriumphs.org/roman-life/roman-weights-and-measures.htm
“History of Ancient Rome”
https://www.unrv.com/culture/roman-weights-measures.php
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