"Man's oldest drink."

This is a great little book.  Making Mead was first published in the United Kingdom in 1968.  This expanded edition, Making Your Own Mead, was updated in 2013 by Dan Vallish.  It's a very welcome addition to my little wine-library.  Thanks to Fox Chapel Publishing.
The book begins with a quick, but comprehensive, romp through the history of mead, putting Bacchus right back into Bacchanalia.  It seems that the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Vikings, the Elizabethans, even British soldiers of the Napoleonic era, and others, were all enthusiastic mead drinkers.  Included in the book are 43 recipes for making mead, a list of the equipment needed to make homemade honey wine and the basic techniques to get started.  And now, one eureka moment later, I finally understand the difference between the ale-like meads and the wine-like meads that I have tasted in the past.  It's the yeast, stupid.
I'm feeling the need for mead.  The recipe for 'Ale Mead' calls for just one pound of honey.  I may have to have a go at making mead myself.  Move over, Vinomaker.

Mead indeed.

Honestly, I cannot even think the word mead without my head being filled with visions of warty peasants in dimly lit, smokey taverns - full of wenches and wolfhounds - rambunctiously sloshing around mead-filled pewter tankards. Mead, sometimes referred to as 'nectar of the Gods', is made from fermented honey and is perhaps the oldest alcoholic drink known to man.  (I daresay Saint Bede drank mead.)
Traditional mead, simply honey, water and yeast, can be dry, sweet, still or sparkling.  With the addition of fruits, grains, herbs and spices mead is known by some other names.  For example; Braggot is made from honey and malt; Cyser is made from honey and apple juice; Pyment is made from honey and grapes and, germane to this post, Metheglin is made from honey, herbs and spices.  (Shakespeare refers to metheglin, along with malmsey, in Love's Labour's Lost.)
All the meads I have ever tried have been quite wine-like and have been packaged in wine-like bottles.  Nectar Creek, a mead produced in Corvallis, Oregon, is packaged in beer-like bottles which had me wondering if the contents would be more beer-like.  (Now, where did I put my pewter tankard?)  Chicory and Sting were two very different meads - the first a traditional mead, the second a metheglin, I suppose. They drank more wine-like, but with beer-like alcohol (ABVs of 5% and 6.2% respectively).  The Chicory was extremely honey-ish on the nose, with a little floral component mixed in, and felt like it had a bit more mouthfeel than the other. The decidedly-ginger-ale-reminiscent Sting had subtle, earthy undertones of honey.  Both meads were ever so slightly effervescent, and both were lacking in acid (for my taste).  I couldn't drink a lot of this stuff.  But, (not unlike the fad for the so-called, in the USA, hard ciders), mead is very trendy right now, so I reckon a fair amount of folks are drinking it: the creed of mead.