The Queen’s Mead
He that listeth to know the many and sundry makings of this holsome drink, must learne it of the ancient Britaines: who therein doe paile all other people. One excellent receit I will here recite: and it is of that which our renowned Queene of happie memorie did so well like, that she would everie yeere have a vessell of it.
First gather a bushell of sweet-briar-leaves, and a bushell of Tyme, and halfe a bushell of Rose-marie and a pecke of Bay leaves. Seeth all these, being well washed in a Furnace of faire water: let them boile the space of halfe an houre, or better: and then poure out all the water and herbes into a Vate and let it stand till it be but milk-warme: then straine the water from the herbs, and take to everie six Gallons of water, one Gallon of the finest honie, and put it into the boerne, and labour it together halfe an houre: then let it stand for two daies, stirring it well twice or thrice each day. Then take the liquor and boile it anew and when it does seeth, skim it as long as there remaineth any droile. When it is cleere put it into the Vate as before and there let it be cooled. You must then have in readinesse a Kieve of new Ale or Beere which as soone as you have emptied, suddenly whelme it upside downe, and set it up againe, and presently put in the Methaglen, and let it stand there three daies a working. And then tun it up in Barrels, tying at everie Tap-hole, by a pack thread, a little bag of Cloves and Mace, to the value of an ounce. It must stand halfe a yeare before it be drunke.
– Charles Butler, The Feminine Monarchie (1609)
Mead has a strong history in Britain. Welsh antiquarian Iolo Morganwg claimed the very first name for the island of Great Britain was said to be Y Vel Vyns: The Honey Isle,1 named for the sheer quantity of wild bees buzzing around the dark forests that canopied much of ancient Britain. The Greek explorer Pytheas travelled to Britain in the 4th Century BC and reported the Celtic inhabitants of the time were keen beekeepers and made mead from honey and wheat.2 So mead production on Britain as an island predates Roman settlement, the Viking invasions, the formation of England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and the United Kingdom by over a thousand years.
Last year I was on a bit of meadmaking binge since we were all stuck in the house for a while (mead was my sourdough) and while modern meads were fun I wanted to make something a bit more historical. I saw a reference to a book called The Feminine Monarchie: Or the History of Bees written by the Elizabethan scholar Charles Butler that contained some mead recipes. The book in fact includes three recipes, a lower ABV mead, a heavily spiced metheglin, and the herbal metheglin recipe in the introduction, but the book is so much more than just mead recipes.
The Feminine Monarchie is not just concerned with mead but all aspects of bees and beekeeping. In the introduction to the book, Butler states he spent time researching the nature and properties of bees to do some good for them, as they do such much good for us. He called bees “delightful, profitable and necessary creatures.” He really cared for bees and wanted to write a book to help the bees themselves as much as beekeepers. The book earned Butler the moniker of the “Father of British Bee Keeping.” To try and understand just how important Charles Butler is in this history of honey, beekeeping, and mead I reached out to John Owen, a renowned beekeeper, author, and vicar who wrote the foreword in a recent reprint of The Feminine Monarchie.
John told me that what made The Feminine Monarchie stand out was that it was “scholarly, well organized, and well written.’” Charles’ work was evidence-based and his writing was based on first-hand observations with supporting footnotes. The book “laid out clear procedures for keeping bees in straw skeps.” This book was the manual for beekeepers at the time. Even though the popularity of straw skeps has waned since, in favor of more efficient moveable frame hives, John notes there is a still a lot of practical information in the book of use to professional and amateur beekeepers today.
One of the big advancements in the book is implied by its name; the “feminine monarchy” the title refers to is that of the bees themselves. The queen bee is the only female bee with fully developed reproductive organs and is usually the mother of the entire bee hive. Charles Butler was the man that named the queen bee. Before Butler, observers had noted the larger bee that seemed to be central to the hive but ancient Greek scholar Aristotle named it the king bee, as it was believed at the time the most important bee had to be male. With careful observation, Butler noted the “king” laying eggs and was the first person to crown the monarch correctly as a queen bee. Butler did still think drones laid eggs however, so he didn’t get everything right.
Butler’s desire to right this historical wrong to the queen bee was probably born in at least part because he grew up under the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Queen Elizabeth’s predecessors had seen times of great upheaval and her long 44-year reign was largely one of stability and prosperity for England. She was widely loved by the English and Butler refers to her as the “Queen of happy memory” as she passed away six years before the publication of The Feminine Monarchie.
And so yes, the recipe at the beginning of this article is no ordinary recipe: But a mead enjoyed by none other than Queen Elizabeth I herself. But its historical links go much further back in time. Whilst Butler asserts this is a mead drunk by Queen Elizabeth, he claims it is a much older recipe: One made by the ancient Britons. I asked John Owen what time period Butler was referring to and John said it was almost certainly referencing pre-Roman Britain. So a recipe enjoyed by one of our most famous monarchs, first made by ancient Celts? If I was unconvinced before, I was now extremely excited to recreate this mead.
Deconstructing the Queen’s Mead
I’ve not been able to find any written histories detailing Celtic mead recipes or meadmaking techniques. It is unclear where Butler got this recipe as he does not give a source. Perhaps this recipe was passed down orally over the centuries and this is its only written record. Perhaps this was a drink enjoyed by Queen Elizabeth as well as Queen Boudicca some 1,600 years earlier.
Deconstructing the recipe had a few hurdles from the onset. The first of which is the lexicon Butler uses. Beyond the obvious archaic language, Butler uses modern words but with very different meanings to how they’re used today. A key example is four different words for mead: Mede (mead), methaglen (metheglin), hydromel, and meth.
Meth and hydromel are used interchangeably by Butler to refer to any honey-based alcoholic beverage. These days, “meth” isn’t commonly used to refer to meads and hydromel is used to refer specifically to meads that are lower in alcohol.
Where we would use “mead” as the generic term now for any fermented honey drink, for Butler the word is used to mean a lower ABV mead to be drunk young (within six months of fermentation). Metheglin we’d now understand to mean a mead infused with herbs and spices, but for Butler the term simply means any higher ABV mead, to be aged at least a year before drinking.
So this gives us our first clue about the Queen’s mead — it was a metheglin so it was stronger and was aged. But pinning down the specific strength is trickier than it might at first seem.
Gravity measurement wasn’t a part of brewing or meadmaking until the invention of the hydrometer in 1790 by William Nicholson. Before then to replicate a recipe you just replicated the same ingredients, but every homebrewer knows you can follow a recipe and get a very different starting gravity because of slight differences in ingredients, process, and equipment. The same issue exists here for the honey. We don’t know the sugar content of the honey they were using in the 17th century versus what we have now. In fact, Butler refers to two different classes of honey — coarse and fine — to further complicate matters. So although it’s tempting just to follow Butler’s ratio of 1:6 honey-to-water, the result might be something quite different from what Queen Elizabeth enjoyed.
The good news is that for the earlier mead and metheglin recipes Butler actually leaves us a rudimentary system for checking gravity. Butler didn’t have a hydrometer but he did have eggs!
“For the making of mede, if the must, when it is all together be not strong enough to beare an egge the bredth of a two pence above it, then put in as much of your course honie into it as will give it that strength”
And for the stronger metheglin:
“Methaglen is the more generous or stronger Hydromel: being unto Mede as Vinum to Lora. For it beareth an Egge the breadth of a groat or six pence and is usually made of finer hony, with a lesse proportion of water . . .”
Butler invents the hydrometer 200 years ahead of time, measuring water density by floating an egg. The groat or six pence at the time had a diameter of roughly one inch (23–25 mm), this equates to a small hen’s egg. To take this egg measurement I made one quart (1 L) of sugar water at room temperature and put this in a large bowl. I gently placed an egg in the bowl and it floated. I then slowly added water and at the point the egg sank I took a gravity reading of the liquid. It was 1.072, indicating a starting gravity of 1.073 is the minimum Butler saw as acceptable for a metheglin. This will result in a mead of around 10% ABV when fully fermented. This requires 2.8 lbs. of honey per gallon of water (1.3 kg per 3.8 L).
For the herbs, Butler uses the archaic measurement of a bushel. A bushel is a measurement of volume rather than weight, equal to 9.6 gallons (36.4 L). So two and a half bushels of herbs is a whole lot, to say the least, and certainly not a homebrew-size batch. Annoyingly, Butler does not quantify the amount of water we should mix these herbs in so converting this down to a smaller batch isn’t straightforward.
The other metheglin recipe in the book does, however, specify a quantity of water and includes a ratio of half an ounce of rosemary per 16 gallons of must (1 g per 4.3 L). For a 1-gallon recipe; however, this would equate to 0.03 oz. of herbs (~0.2 g/L), which would be far too low. This recipe however does have a number of other spices: A ratio of six ounces of herbs and spices per 16 gallons. We’re still looking at quite small numbers — 0.375 ounces of herbs per gallon (2.8 g/L).
To add to the confusion, there is a question of what Butler means by a “gallon.” You might assume he means a U.K. gallon (4.5 L) and we need to adjust for U.S. gallons (3.8 L). However this is before a gallon was standardized in Britain and there were in fact three types of “gallon” used in Britain at the time, each with slightly different volumes: A wine gallon, a corn gallon, and an ale gallon. We can’t be absolutely sure which gallon measurement Butler was using here, but a source from 1806 states at least in the early 19th century: “All liquids are measured by wine measure, except beer and ale.”3
Conveniently the wine gallon used in Britain at the time was the basis for the modern U.S. gallon, which means we don’t need to do any math to convert the quantities of herbs to U.S. gallons.
With this knowledge and some assumptions, I believe the most educated guess of herbs we could make for the Queen’s mead would be 0.15 oz. (4.3 g) of sweet briar leaves, 0.15 oz. (4.3 g) of thyme, and 0.075 oz. (2.1 g) of rosemary. The addition of cloves and mace would be 0.037 oz. (1 g) each. A “pecke” of bay leaves is roughly one quarter of a bushel, so I’ve rounded this down to 0.037 oz. (1 g).
Finally, the process itself is really interesting to deconstruct. There was no knowledge of yeast in either Celtic Britain or in Elizabethan England — the cause of fermentation was unknown. Despite this, this recipe is a mixed fermentation. First using the wild yeasts within the honey itself the brew is allowed to develop for three days and then boiled, which will then kill the wild yeasts. Much like a kettle sour beer we might brew today, the effects of these wild yeasts are arrested after a time to limit their influence. Then the mead is transferred onto an ale trub, chock full of ale yeast that would then ferment out the rest of the sugar. This provides a mixture of esters and a more efficient fermentation from putting the mead onto the ale trub. Perhaps the ancient meadmakers just happened upon this method through trial and error. Perhaps an ancient brewer was too lazy to clean his fermentation pot and just poured the mead on top of the ale trub and discovered it lead to a quicker fermentation and carried on this method.
It is worth noting that when recreating this recipe it is recommended to use raw honey, e.g. honey that might still have its own microorganisms living in it after the harvest. A lot of commercially available honeys no longer provide this due to heat treatment in processing/packaging. Without those microorganisms it is unlikely the initial fermentation would take off.
My goal in recreating the Queen’s mead (recipe below) was to make a flavorsome mead similar in taste to what this historic recipe would have tasted like and Queen Elizabeth I may have drunk. I am not trying to replicate the process with ancient equipment and disbanding all modern processes. With this in mind, take gravity readings, use modern cleaning procedures and equipment, and don’t feel the need to build a wood fired vat.
References:
1 Morganwg, lolo. The Triads of Britain. 1807
2 Strabo. Geography. Book IV, Chapter 5
3 Hodson, Thomas. The Accomplished Tutor. 3rd ed., vol. 1, page 137. London: H. D. Symonds and Vernon, Hood and Sharpe. 1806.(1 gallon/4 L)
The Queen’s Mead Recipe
OG = 1.073 FG = 0.998 ABV = 9.8%
Ingredients
2.8 lbs. (1.5 kg) raw wildflower honey
1 gallon (3.8 L) water
0.15 oz. (4.3 g) briar leaves
0.15 oz. (4.3 g) thyme
0.075 oz. (2.1 g) rosemary
0.037 oz. (1 g) bay leaves
0.037 oz. (1 g) powdered mace
0.037 oz. (1 g) powdered cloves
Yeast nutrient (optional)
White Labs WLP013 (London Ale) or Mangrove Jack’s M15 (Empire Ale) yeast
Step by step
Boil the briar leaves, bay leaves, thyme, and rosemary in the water for 30 minutes. Leave the water to cool to 68 °F (20 °C) and then strain out the herbs. Add the honey to the water and mix well. Try to float a small hen’s egg in your must. If it does not float add more honey until it does. Alternatively, ensure gravity is at least 1.073. Decant the must into your fermenting vessel.
At this point, you have the option of adding 1 tsp. of yeast nutrient. This will make the recipe less historically accurate, however will aid the fermentation process greatly.
After three days pour the mead back into a pot and boil for five minutes. Either decant back into a clean fermenting vessel and pitch yeast as per the manufacturer instructions or for a more historically accurate recreation, if you homebrew beer, ensure you have a batch of ale fully fermented and ready for racking. Rack your beer and then decant your mead directly onto the ale trub. If using the trub method, after three days rack the mead back into a clean fermenting vessel. Once in fermenting vessel add the cloves and mace. Wait for the mead to ferment fully and bottle. Bottle age for at least six months before drinking.
Notes
The finished beverage is light and refreshing, dry with herbal and floral notes dancing across the palate. It’s the color of pale straw or a sunrise just before the sun breaks the horizon. I first brewed this recipe a year ago and have still got five bottles stashed away in a corner of my garage — I suspect it will only get better with age.
I can imagine sitting in Butler’s bee garden, sharing a bottle whilst he excitedly tells me some interesting bee-related fact, or perhaps in a wattle and daub roundhouse passing around a horn with some Celtic tribesmen. I’ve become a part of this 1,500 years of history through making this mead, and if you choose to remake it you will be too.
