Talking tonight about how much we’re missing in the modern age of brewing mead:
me: according to Radical Brewing
mead used to be even more awesomer
Chris: O?
me: firstly
the root medhu
means honey, sweet, and drunkenness
Chris: Lol
me: “This buzz is not always simply from alcohol. Many plants with toxic and/or psychoactive components exude them in their nectar, which is then concentrated by the bees into a kind of narcotic honey that Pliney the Elder called meli moenomenon, or ‘mad honey’. Datura, belladonna, cannabis, wild rosemary, rhododendron, and a large number of tropical plants are capable of producing mind-altering honey, and the ethnobotanical connections for many psychoactive honeys are well documented”
Chris: Ooh
me: see also Heather Ales: “It is hard to say whether the mythic status of heather derives from the beautiful carpet of blossoms, the lovely aroma, or the powdery psychoactive fungus – called fog or fogg – that adheres to it. An observer writing about heather honey in 1804 says, ‘I well remember, however, that, for two years that I used it, it almost always rendered me drowsy. Sometimes it composed me to sleep as effectually as a moderate dose of laundanum would have done‘
