Making mead from maple syrup: fussy druid edition

March 6, 2023 2:54 PM

At the last Druidic ritual one person said "Actually, I'm not that keen on mead" and some other people agreed with him. So we are looking at alternatives to woozy-honey. Googling shows that people have made some kind of mead-like substance from maple syrup but: is it good stuff, tastewise? Ideally (a) not too sweet and (b) not too alcoholic (booze and unclothed pagan rituals aren't always the best combination, especially in wintry weather). If it is, are there any recommended recipes and approaches for making quality maple mead?
posted by Wordshore to Food & Drink (15 answers total)

Best answer: My father-in-law did this with champagne yeast once. The result was delicious, but very sweet and EXTREMELY alcoholic. I will contact him for the recipe, but I think he, an accomplished homebrewer, may have winged it.
posted by mkb at 2:56 PM on March 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: If they don’t like mead, I suspect you aren’t going to really win anyone over with an extremely mead-like drink resulting from fermenting something else sugary. Could you not look into more dry types of meads, or things like wine or beer? Apologies as I don’t quite understand the religious requirements here.
posted by music for skeletons at 3:08 PM on March 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

Best answer: You can make a mead that's half maple syrup -- but in most brews with maple, the maple flavor is very weak, from what I have read. (Someone brought a maple syrup-based dessert wine thing to Christmas dinner a year ago and it was... not detectably maple, in my opinion.)

Search in the r/mead subreddit, it gets mentioned every so often.
posted by wenestvedt at 3:13 PM on March 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I cannot speak to the necessary ritual aspects here, but my first less sweet alternatives to mead would be Ethiopian style honey wine or plain hard cider.
posted by atomicstone at 3:31 PM on March 6, 2023 [6 favorites]

Best answer: I can’t find the brand now but 15 years ago a Polish liquor store owner pressed upon me some Polish honey-flavored vodka that we enjoyed in our house. Sorry not a direct answer to your question but an option to consider if it meets your needs.
posted by rustcellar at 3:44 PM on March 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Maple liqueurs and wines are a thing in my part of the world, albeit not maple mead per se. They are quite sweet, as alcoholic beverages go. Ciders (apple, pear, etc.), as mentioned above, may be a better alternative.
posted by eviemath at 4:50 PM on March 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

Best answer: The end level of sweetness in the mead depends more on the alcohol tolerance of the yeast than the source of the sugar. Yeast with low alcohol tolerance, such as those used for low starting gravity beer, will die off before all of the sugar has been digested. I used to make an extremely dry mead, the yeast I used was called ha1001. But in general you should be looking for high alcohol tolerance strains.
posted by Ardnamurchan at 5:15 PM on March 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I can’t speak to your ritual needs, obviously, but cider seems like a possibility — it can be very dry, various alcohol strengths, and is made from apples, which might be resonant. I can’t imagine that a drink made from maple syrup would be less sweet than one made from honey — both are basically sugars and flavoring. You could also explore Switchel, which is vinegar and water flavored with ginger and sweetened with honey — you could explore mixing mead with cider vinegar and water to cut both the alcohol and the sweetness, and ginger would give a nice winter kick!
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:32 PM on March 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

Best answer: One year I made bochet mead, which involved standing at the stove and stirring for about an hour while the honey caramelized. Same year, different batch, I substituted a jug of maple syrup for an equivalent amount of honey. They both had a great caramel taste and one didn't require an hour of stirring, so I make maple-syrup mead regularly. Mine is both sweet and alcoholic.

Not too sweet and not too alcoholic makes me think of ale mead instead, which (as the name suggests) is made with ale yeast and hops, and honey instead of malts. It's a sweet light beer, which is less sweet and less alcoholic than wine-style mead. The recipe I have is 6 pounds of honey for a 5-gallon batch, cluster hops, British ale yeast. (The place I bought it from is no longer selling that recipe, memail me if you want it.) (I am now wondering what maple syrup would do for it.)
posted by mersen at 7:02 PM on March 6, 2023 [5 favorites]

Best answer: Perry is quite nice, Wordshore. Would your associates be open to that? It comes from pear juice so the flavor is light.
posted by wenestvedt at 4:09 AM on March 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Taking you literally that you'd like an alternative to woozy honey, what about jun? It is fermented green tea with honey and is either non-alcoholic or low alcohol.
posted by acridrabbit at 1:29 PM on March 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I mean, there are a lot of different meads, and they taste completely different to one another - sweet, medium, dry, light, heavy, session, then there's fruit, spices, herbs...

Have you tried a few different meads and they've all fallen flat? If so, nthing cider.
posted by some little punk in a rocket at 2:50 AM on March 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: This is a really good set of replies - a few of which we had thought of (but not explored in detail), and several we hadn't thought of at all. I have collated the responses for Druid Camp next week.

My faith in MetaFilter is, at least partially, restored. While other areas of the site have been making me seriously consider that it's time to move elsewhere, quality responses like in this thread are making me think "no, this is a very useful place, stay at least on AskMe a while".

Thank you, every respondant here.
posted by Wordshore at 2:59 AM on March 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: If the Polish honey vodka situation appeals, you might also consider krupnikas, which is a Lithuanian honey liqueur with a bunch of herbs and spices. It's often homemade and you can find recipes online. It's also often very strong, but if you want something milder, it's extremely good mixed with other drinks (tea, hot cider, lemonade, ginger beer...)
posted by nebulawindphone at 7:35 AM on March 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: From my father-in-law:

I used champagne yeast. I forget the concentration of maple syrup.

It was brewed like mead in that after the first fermentation it was drawn off and put in a second carboy to finish.

Hope this helps.

posted by mkb at 7:58 AM on March 10, 2023 [1 favorite]