# Mead wine and honey beer: two paths of honey into the glass

- Link: https://www.samovar-tool.ru/en/2026/10/31/honey-wine-and-honey-beer-two-paths/
- Published: 2026-10-31T10:00:00+03:00
- Author: kosoj.diy

# Mead wine and honey beer: two paths of honey into the glass

## Why honey was added to wine

Good grape wine needs sugar. A lot of sugar. Only then will the must ferment through
and reach a decent strength. But in cool regions or in a cold year the berries come
out sour and watery — not at all what you want for a proper drink. The solution 
was simple: sweeten the must with honey.

We have already covered drinking mead separately — including stavlenny mead (honey
aged with berry juice). Wines too: in our reviews there are a little more of them
than you can shake a stick at. This piece is about honey wine and its relative, 
honey beer.

## Honey wine

The technology is straightforward. Grapes are crushed and pressed. The must goes
one way, the pomace (the pressed skins and solids) the other. Whether to ferment
them together or the juice alone is up to the winemaker.

Honey is added right away to the sour must from sugar-poor berries. On its own, 
honey ferments slowly — insanely slowly. To get a good result, stavlenny mead used
to be buried in the ground for 15–20 years, or even longer. But berry juice speeds
the process up: the yeast works harder and fermentation goes faster.

The fermented grape-and-honey mixture is filtered, pasteurized, corked — and off
it goes. You can add hops or the juice of other berries, but then it is hopped mead
rather than honey wine. Tasty, but a different story.

![Meadery: honey and malt in a copper kettle](https://i0.wp.com/www.samovar-tool.
ru/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/mead_inline1.jpg?w=1200&ssl=1)

Honey wine does not keep long — a couple of months at most. There is no point chasing
an aged rarity: drink it fresh.

## Honey beer — bragget

Honey beer, or **bragget**, is quite another matter. The name comes from Celtic 
words: “brag” — a sprout, a shoot, and “got” — honeycomb. It speaks directly of 
the composition: plant grain + a product of bees.

It is one of the oldest fermented drinks. The first mentions of malted barley with
honey are in Sumerian texts from the **19th century BC**. Bragget was drunk by the
Celts, Picts, Egyptians and Greeks. In medieval Europe it gave way to ale and gruit,
but after the Renaissance it came back — especially in Ireland and Wales.

Classically, bragget is roughly **50/50 honey and malt** by weight of ingredients.
That proportion gives the drink honey sweetness and aroma while keeping the beer’s
bitterness and body.

### How to brew bragget

The process is close to ordinary beer, but with some nuances:

 1. **Mashing.** Pour water at 65–67 °C over the malt and hold for an hour. Sparge 
    at 76 °C to collect the maximum of sugars.
 2. **Boiling.** Boil the wort for ~60 minutes. Hops to taste, 20–25 IBU as a starting
    point. Add the honey **after turning off the heat** — otherwise the aromatic compounds
    will evaporate.
 3. **Cooling.** Fast, very fast. At home, put the pot in a bathtub of ice water. Slow
    cooling = pathogens = spoiled beer instead of bragget.
 4. **Fermentation.** Ale yeast tolerant of high alcohol (Saison, Wyeast 1335, Mangrove
    Jack’s Mead M05). Temperature 18–20 °C. A week at minimum.
 5. **Carbonation.** Bottle it with a teaspoon of honey in each bottle. Let it sit 
    for a week — and it is ready.

![Two glasses: honey wine and bragget](https://i0.wp.com/www.samovar-tool.ru/wp-
content/uploads/2026/05/mead_inline2.jpg?w=1200&ssl=1)

Again: honey beer is a young drink. It does not keep long, so drink it fresh.

## What they have in common

Both honey wine and honey beer are a **way to save the harvest**. Sour berries, 
scanty malt — honey makes up for the lack of sugar and gives the drink its strength.
Both drinks historically appeared in regions where the pure product (wine or beer)
turned out weak or unpalatable.

And both are **not for aging**. Honey wine and bragget live briefly: months, not
years. These are drinks of the moment, not of the collection.

## Bottom line

Honey wine is grapes that got a helping hand. Honey beer is grain that got enriched.
Both drinks are older than most modern alcohol traditions, both are living through
a craft renaissance, and both ask for one thing: drink them fresh, don’t put it 
off.

If you get around to a home experiment — start with bragget. The process is simpler
than it seems, and the result is worth the honey spent.

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