A recipe for mead using dried medjool dates. A quick tip: use a mesh bag.
Originally Posted: Sept. 30, 2020
Table of Contents
Quick Specs
- OG = ~1.105
- ABV: ~12-13%
- Taste Profile: Rich and semi-sweet
- Time: ~3 months
- Yield: 21 bottles (lost some fluid to dried fruit sediment)
Intro
Around the time I was reading Ancient Brews by Patrick McGovern, I became interested in brewing an Ancient Egyptian style wheat beer using traditional methods. While searching through The Google I came upon a fun and informative video of several women who work at the British Museum discussing exactly that process.
One of their test brews involved the use of dried dates, both as a flavoring and as a source of wild yeast. The idea of a date-flavored brew intrigued me, and since I was still mostly on a mead-making kick at the time, I decided to design a medjool date mead recipe.
Brief History
While palm wine is still produced around the world by tapping sap from various species of palm trees, wine made from dates is comparatively rare. Still, historical references to using dates in both beer and wine go back into early history, at least as far back as the Predynastic Period.
Name & Ancient Egyptian Culture
When deciding what to name this batch of mead, I wanted to go for an Ancient Egyptian or Ancient Near Eastern theme. I leaned towards an Egyptian theme early on, mainly because my mom was an Egyptology major. I was also a big fan of how Egyptian life and art were portrayed in 2017’s Assassin’s Creed: Origins.
Looking up the hieroglyph for date palm during my research, I hoped to add it to the label for this mead if it looked aesthetically pleasing. The Ancient Egyptian word for date palm turned out to be transliterated into something sounding like “benu” or “bnr/bnri“.
The term “benu/bnr/bnri” jumped out at me, because the name for the Egyptian phoenix—which the later Greek one was based on—was the bennu bird. The scientific name for the date palm is Phoenix dactylifera, which possibly suggests an early etymological association between the legendary bird and the fruit-bearing tree. I decided to call this mead simply “Bennu” as a result.
Ingredients
- 5 lb. bag of Anna & Sarah brand medjool dates (unlike many brands, this brand doesn’t coat their dates with oil to prevent sticking. I generally avoid oils in my brews, though this applies more to beers because oil will destroy head retention)
- 15 lbs. Happy Belly wildflower honey
- Spring water
- 2 lbs. Ha Gee’s Farm dried Turkish jumbo figs (will omit these in the future, but you’re welcome to experiment with them if you think you can extract some fig flavor)
- Yeast nutrient
- Glucoamylase (optional)
- 1 pack Omega Yeast Hornindal kveik yeast (OYL-091). Hornindal is supposed to be able to handle an ABV of 18% in some cases, but it’s a beer yeast optimized for malt sugars. I chose to experiment with Hornindal because it was supposed to yield some tropical fruity flavors as well. I plan to do a full article about kveik in the future, and this is the one I often buy and then dehydrate myself for storage.
- Lalvin D-47 or Lalvin EC-1118 yeast on secondary (if you need your mead to be dryer)
Equipment
- Sanitizer
- Fermenter
- Airlock and stopper
- DIY temperature control system
- Sous vide circulator (optional) or hot water heater to warm the honey for easy pouring
- Mesh bag or hop sock to contain dried fruits
Instructions
- Remove pits from your dates. This step took me a while, so I put on season 2 of Blackadder as background noise while I worked.
- Warm your honey via your preferred method. I use my Anova sous vide circulator to heat the honey to 94°F (34°C) for at least two hours.
- Simmer dates in warm water to rehydrate and to extract fermentables into a sort of homemade date syrup. I believe I simmered my dates for about an hour or so, but I didn’t write down a specific temperature. It’s best if you place dates in a mesh bag or hop sock at this stage (I didn’t, but wish I had).
- Place hydrated dates in fermenter and add your warmed honey.
- Top off fermenter with spring water until you get 6 gallons. You may lose fluid to fruit pulp, but this shouldn’t be as much of an issue if you’ve put your dates into a mesh bag.
- I added dried figs on secondary, but they didn’t really add any flavor and soaked up more of my mead, so I recommend skipping this step.
- If your mead seems to be having trouble drying out or reaching a final gravity you like, I have two recommendations. If you think the date sugars may have caramelized a bit during simmering, try some glucoamylase (this helped in my case). Otherwise, throw a champagne yeast like Lalvin D-47 or EC-1118 in there and see if that helps.
Variations
Next time I’m going to omit the dried figs. They didn’t really add much to this brew.
I’ve also read about brews using more of a slurry of blended dates or raisins in beers, so that might be worth some experimentation. Sugar and flavor extraction would improve due to the surface area. However, I’m not sure if siphon clogging issues would be better or worse, especially with 5 lbs. of dates.
Tips & Tricks
Working with Dried Fruit
When working with dried fruit, I recommend keeping it in some sort of mesh bag like a hop sock before adding it to your brew. This will help keep the dried fruit from taking over your fermenter and clogging your auto-siphon. I found this out the hard way when it was already too late.
Possible Culinary Uses
Chicken Marbella recipe from The Silver Palate cookbook. I think a date mead would compliment the prunes and brown sugar used in this dish.
