Congratulations to Bobby for the winning caption! 
And thanks to our runners up:
"My beard? You could grow one too if you drank mead instead of squid juice." - Sue
"Okay mate, let's seal the deal with this great mead you hooked us up with..." - Steven

So, the year is 600 BCE and you walk into a bar in the Achaemenid Empire or Athens or Britannia or Delhi or Germania or pretty much anywhere that speaks a language in the Indo-European Language Family and you order a glass of Mead…

This is either the setup of a really, really bad joke, or great linguistics lecture… maybe both.

It’s interesting because it appears that you really could walk into a pub in almost any of these places and ask for “Med” or “Medu” and be handed a glass of mead. The word for this heavenly beverage has apparently gone nearly unchanged for 4500 years in the Indo-European world…

This language family includes Hindi, English, German, Greek, Yiddish, Bulgarian, and Polish to name but a few, and if there’s anything I want to be able to ask for in India, Britain, Germany, Greece, my Nana’s House, Bulgaria or Poland, it’s a glass of mead.

Now, the word Mead was not above a few standard applications of Grimm’s Law, so it became “Meth-” in parts of the world and the root “Mel-” in others, but this just serves to expand our repertoire of great words related to honey and mead!

Methyl alcohol can trace its roots through the Greek word for wine right back to mead.

The name Melissa means one who is sweet like honey.

Mellifluous is anything that has a smooth, sweet flow (literally meaning honey + fluent).

Caramel even has its root in honey, though exactly how is a bit fuzzy.

Oddly enough, amethyst (the stone) comes in a roundabout way from mead because the ancient world had the strange notion that this particular stone, when worn against the skin, served to prevent drunkenness. In extensive testing at Groennfell Meadery in triple blinded tests, we have conclusively proven this to be false.

Unfortunately the root “Mel-” also means a lot of other things, so the word “ameliorate” does not mean to “make more mead like” which is a damn shame, and also reminds me of the punch line to that joke…

So a guy walks into a bar in 12th Century BCE Hattusa and says to the bartender, “Hey, got mead?” The bartender looks confused. So he gets it by pointing to the jug. It’s so good he wants another glass, so he yells “Mead! I want another mead.” At which point he receives an aged prostitute. (You see, the bartender heard, “mihyahwan annas mead” which means “get me an old mother” in Nesite, the language of the Hittite Empire.) 

It's Skillful Saturday! This week we're having a contest. 
Submit your caption to the cartoon below by posting it in the comments section of this post.  
The winning caption will be selected Monday evening, and the best caption wins a Groennfell keychain!

It's time for your weekly Thursday Fun Fact!

“You know, I’ve never actually had mead before.” We hear this all the time. We hear it while we’re out at social functions, when we’re visiting family members, and even in our own tasting area. 

Oh... people have heard of it, or have some impression of it, or think they learned about it in Game of Thrones, but they’ve never actually consumed Mead.

We are being told, essentially, that we are being presented a unique opportunity: We are in charge of somebody’s first impression of mead.

This is a terrifying and awesome burden. What an opportunity! What a risk!

The first question is, of course: what do you pick? Do you go for the light and quaffable hydromel? Something big and bold like a winter warmer? Do you ask them what they normally drink, or do you just grab your personal favorite?

The second question is: what do you tell them about it? How much information should you burden them with? Some people hold that the mead should speak for itself; others that without a vocabulary you can’t know what you’re consuming. (Don’t forget, there’s a reason a lot of small wineries have tasting notes on a cheat sheet for the tyro: It increases sales and customer satisfaction.)

If you have the stock, perhaps the best way to introduce the novice meadiac to this heavenly nectar is with five or six different varieties in rapid succession. This prevents the rookie error of believing that: 
“Mead = __________” 
While nothing is more exciting than the absolute neophyte, perhaps nothing is worse than the person who has “tried mead once, and it was way too sweet” or, slightly less common, “it was way too alcoholic.”

As meadmakers, we feel that it is our sworn duty to introduce our guests to the idea of mead, rather than to any one particular mead we produce. We have no right to say that one style, technique, or variety is better than any other, even if it’s our style, technique, or variety. We do our fellow meadmakers, our customers, and ourselves a disservice if we function as anything but the gateway to the world of mead.

So, be knowledgeable, be helpful, and be kind. But most importantly, go out there and get some converts for the cause! The world needs more Meadiacs. 

Mead has a long and storied history. Test your knowledge with this quiz from Groennfell Meadery!

If flash player does not work on your device, you can take the quiz here: 
http://www.quibblo.com/quiz/iJ-9rTO/Skillful-Saturday-Pop-Quiz-Mead-History

It's time for your weekly Thursday Fun Fact!

Now that you’re an accomplished meadmaker you can whip up a batch, keg it, and serve it with no more trouble than making Raman Noodles. Your sanitization technique is down and you have a great honey supplier. You don’t get bottle bombs or batch infections. Every recipe is a winner.

You have a dozen meads ranging from a Viking’s Blood to a hydromel. You have a gooseberry mead, a blackberry mead, a strawberry mead, and a sack. All of them could (and probably will) win medals at your local homebrew competition.

But you’re sick of hearing, “Wow, this is incredible! Did you really make this?” or “Can I take a bottle home with me?” or “My Nana would really like this!” You want real excitement. You want your friends jumping out of their seats, knocking over potted plants, and stumbling over the dog. You might not even mind if someone fainted.

Let’s face it: You’re Bored.

When did the thrill die? It used to be exciting just to get the yeast to start bubbling away. Now… what’s the point? Don’t worry, friend. There is hope.

Did you know that anything with esculent properties can be added to a mead? Should it be? Probably not. But can it be? Oh heck to the yes.

Years ago, Meadmaker Ricky was on Basic Brewing Radio talking about Freestyle Homebrewing. His idea was that anything found in a spice cabinet could potentially go into a batch of beer or mead. It’s really only in the last century that we narrowed down the field of ingredients to about a dozen “acceptable” additions. Just take a look at our article The Metheglin Magnate to get an idea of what used to go into mead.

Some meadmakers think of themselves as brave because they made a melomel with a new fruit that they’ve never used before. We ask: What about tomatoes and clam juice? You could call it a Clameado!

Some meadmakers watch their pulse jump when they reach for the vanilla extract. We ask: What would happen if we added allspice berries? Or cumin? Or Both?

Some meadmakers are happy to rest on their laurels. We ask: What the hell is laurel and is it toxic?

People regularly ask us, “Why do it? Why not just stick to recipes from a book? Or at least experiment with flavors you know people like.”

Why? Because variety is the spice of life. And you know what else is the spice of life? Wasabi. (Image Above)

It's time for your weekly Thursday Fun Fact!