WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — When you read books like Beowulf, you may have heard of the “mead-hall.”
While wine is made from grapes and beer is derived from grains, mead is created by fermenting the sugars in honey.
To make it, Glenn Lavender of Silver Hand Meadery in Williamsburg first mixes honey with water, then adds yeast.
“Yeast will begin to consume the sugar and as it does, the sugar content drops and the alcohol content goes up,” he details.
Glenn tied his love of music into each of his creations by tying each mead to a song, saying that when “you read the description on the bottle... if you know the song, it’ll make sense to you.”
“Dreamweaver” is one of the new additions to the lineup this spring. It features an orange vanilla flavor that may remind you of a frozen treat.
After adding the yeast, mead makers eventually transfer the mixture to a secondary tank. Silver Hand’s mead maker Andy Flint explains this next step in the process: “It’s done fermenting and we want is to get it off the yeast and eventually we’ll filter that out.”
The secondary tank is where the flavors and spices get added to the batch.
“We like to say it has the elegance of wine, but the creativity of craft beer,” said Lavender.