Mead is an alcoholic drink made by fermenting honey with water — which is why it’s so often called honey wine. It is one of the oldest crafted beverages on Earth, older than both beer and grape wine. At its simplest, mead is just honey, water, and time: wild yeast and patience turn liquid gold into something remarkable.
A drink older than history
Long before written records, people across the world were drinking fermented honey. The Norse raised horns of mead in their halls; it flowed through the myths of Greece, Africa, China, and the British Isles. Mead wasn’t a niche — for thousands of years it was the drink. What you pour today is a direct line back to the very first toast.
How mead actually tastes
There is no single flavor of mead, and that’s the joy of it. The honey decides almost everything. A wildflower honey brings bright, floral notes; a darker honey turns warm and almost caramelized. From there, the maker chooses: dry or sweet, still or sparkling, light or strong. One mead might taste like a crisp white wine on a summer evening; another like a slow, golden nightcap.
Mead vs. beer vs. wine
The difference comes down to the sugar that feeds the yeast. Beer ferments grain. Wine ferments grapes. Mead ferments honey. That single ingredient is why mead can be naturally gluten-free, and why no two honeys — and no two meads — are ever quite the same.
Forged from Oklahoma honey
At Berserker Brewery in Broken Arrow, we craft small-batch mead with honey from local Oklahoma producers — fermented slow, the way it’s been done for a thousand years. If you’re curious where to start, take the palate quiz or explore the mead styles that have carried this drink across the ages.