The Honey-Brew List: Can Ale Yeast Yield Great Mead?

This article originally appeared in the May/June 2016 issue of Zymurgy Magazine

By Billy Beltz

By Billy Beltz

Growing numbers of people are discovering mead, an ancient beverage that creative commercial and home meadmakers continue to reinvent today. But unlike beer brewers and winemakers, who benefit from a wealth of documented research, meadmakers often encounter large gaps in the data concerning ingredient selection and other factors.

To compensate, meadmakers explore the boundaries of traditional methods through experimentation, a process that can be as frustrating as it is exciting. Yeast selection is a great example. It is common for meadmakers to rely almost exclusively on wine yeasts for fermentation, but recent experiments by commercial and home meadmakers have demonstrated that ale yeasts can provide unique aroma and flavor profiles with shorter aging requirements. Unfortunately, the results of these ale yeast trials have been insufficiently documented. Thus, I designed an experiment to investigate relationships between mead must and ale yeast, and to document the results for the benefit of other mead enthusiasts…