Get wild with your honey.......honey!

In my fermentation projects that I have been experimenting with for the past few years....Mead (aka- Honey Wine) has been the most intriguing. In my research, I have learned a great deal of the primitive history of this elixir. Human Beings have recognized the magic and power of fermentation since the beginning of time. A Honey Wine called Mead is generally regarded as the MOST ancient and primitive fermented pleasure. Archeologists believe that human collecting of honey predates our cultivation of the soil. Cave paintings in locations as geographically diverse as India, Spain and Africa depict images of people gathering honey in the Paleolithic era, more than 12,000 years ago. When by chance, Honey is mixed with water fermentation begins. Yeasts surfing through the air aboard particles of dust find their way to the sweet and highly nutritive honey-water. When honey is pure it acts as a preservative and inhibits microscopic life. But diluted honey can become a stimulating medium for airborne yeast to land in and feast upon, and reproduce exponentially, bubbling and vividly alive! Its sugars will be converted to alcohol and carbon dioxide by the action of tiny beings invisible to the human eye. According to Maguelonne Toussaint Samats vast survey “A History of Food”—The child of honey, the drink of Gods, mead was universal. Mead is regarded as the ancestor of ALL fermented drinks and foods. Anthropologist and cultural theorist, Claude Strauss suggests that mead-making marks the passage of humanity from nature. He illustrates the hollow of a tree being the source and vessel for the honey creation. We have lost our sense of instinct to cultivate such primitive elixirs in our sterilized, commercialized, anti-bacterialized world. I highly encourage you to experiment with some cultivated Honey Wine at home. Don’t try it until you have read one of my most cherished books…..Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz. You may find it on my Amazon link below or just google search for more details on Mr.Katz and his workshops and DVD’s. Now get a little wild with your honey….just be careful of the buzzzzzz 




Myths/Legends/Lore: It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the honey month or what we know today as the honeymoon.