Beer is an open and inclusive cultural product, and people who love beer are also curious. Craft beer lovers will explore other interesting flavored beverages, and most brewers will also brew other types of wine, and even combine them with beer to mix interesting cross-border products.
Dilution of honey with water and fermentation with yeast will make mead. Like beer, mead has a very ancient brewing history. Archaeologists discovered at the Jiahu site in Henan that between 7000 and 5500 BC, the ancestors here began to use honey, rice and fruits as raw materials to mix and ferment alcoholic beverages.
Mead is also a fermented flavored beverage. Due to the rise of the craft beer movement, ancient mead is also experiencing a "Renaissance". In the 10 years from 2012 to 2021, the number of mead factories in the United States increased from 150 to 600. BJCP There is a classification guide for not only beer but also mead (and cider).
According to the sweetness, mead can be divided into dry, sweet, and semi-dry types. In addition to using different types of honey and yeast, you can also add various fruits to brew fruit mead (such as apples, grapes, berries, and stone fruits); add spices, herbs, and even vegetables to brew spiced mead; add malt to brew malt mead.
Cider is an alcoholic beverage fermented from apple juice. Cider can be fermented naturally with the help of yeast in the brewery environment, or it can be artificially fermented with ale yeast and bay yeast (Saccharomyces Bayanus). Cider has a lower fermentation temperature (4℃~16℃℃) and a longer fermentation time (more than 3 months) than most beers. Some cider will be aged in wooden barrels (such as rum barrels and whiskey barrels) for a longer time to obtain a more complex flavor.
There are many different types of cider, and the main differences are the type of apples and yeast, fermentation containers, fermentation environment, and methods. 《BJCP The "Guide to the Classification of Cider" divides standard cider into English cider, French cider and New World cider. Of course, flavoring ingredients can also be added to cider to brew various flavored cider. Common flavoring ingredients include spices (such as cinnamon, cardamom), fruits (such as pears, berries), plants (such as hops) and sweet substances (such as brown sugar, honey). Cider with a higher alcohol content after deep fermentation of a large amount of sugar is called apple spirits (Applewine); Cider brewed by removing some water from frozen apples or frozen juice is called ice cider (Ice Cider).
