Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 June 1892 — Queen Bess’s Mead. [ARTICLE]

Queen Bess’s Mead.

Comparatively few people nowadays know from personal experience what mead is. A sweet, sickly, honey drink, which the concocter called mead, was once proffered to me in a country place as a sovereign remedy for a cold, but of the two the cold seemed the lesser evil. The Russians still make mead secundum artfem, but only in romote purts of England is th-re any of the drink of the Norse divinities yet to be had. The writer 'of an article in the Manchester Quarterly some time ago mentioned with enthusiastic approval some very old bottled mead which he met with in tho course of some rural wunderings, and it is conceivable that a sweet and luscious beverage like mead would gain immeasurably by age. Queen Elizabeth was a mead drinker, and her grace’s recipe for the beverage has been carefully preserved. It seems a fragrant mixture: Take of sweetbrier leaves and thyme eaoh one bushel, rosemary half a bushel, bay leaves one peck. Seethe these ingredients iu a furnace full of water (containing not less than 120 gallons); boil for half an hour, then pour the whole into a vat, and when cooled to a proper temperature of about seventy-five degrees Fahr., strain the liquor. Add to every six gallons of the strained liquor one gallon of fine honey, and work the mixture together for half an hour. Repeat the stirring occasionally for two days; then boil the liquor afresh, skim it until it becomes clear, and return it to the vat to cool; when reduced to a proper temperature, pour it into a vessel, work it for three days and turn. When fit to bo stopped down, tie up a bag of beaten cloves and uiaoe—about half an ounce of eaoh—and suspend it in the liquor from the bunghole. When it has tffeod for six months it is fit for use.—[Gentleman’s Mugazine.