Get a buzz going this festive season with Bill Anderson’s Christmas mead

Stir-up Sunday, the traditional day for mixing all the ingredients for your Christmas pudding, fell on 23 November this year. A happy coincidence of the religious and the practical, it’s named after the opening words of the Collect of that day in the Book of Common Prayer, “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people”, and conveniently gives enough time for a secular soaking of all the ingredients, allowing the pudding to fully mature for Christmas Day.

But not everybody likes Christmas pudding. Many find it too stodgy, too rich, and after feasting on traditional Christmas turkey with all the trimmings, too much. Some supermarkets no longer sell family-sized Christmas puddings, and it’s unlikely this is because more families are getting together on Stir-up Sunday to take turns making a wish while they put in the hard work of mixing heavy ingredients, and maybe adding in a coin to be joyously discovered in the lucky one’s portion on Christmas Day.

While Christmas pudding may be going out of fashion, the less Christian phenomenon of Game of Thrones has brought mead back in, and we can easily elevate this gift from the bees into a delicious seasonal treat.

Bill’s Christmas Mead
For puddings there were traditionally 13 ingredients, one each for Jesus and his 12 disciples, but for our mead we won’t be including suet, breadcrumbs or eggs – the stodge – so a more pagan ten should suffice. On Stir-up Sunday gather:

Currants
Sultanas
Chopped prunes
Chopped dried apricots
Chopped dried figs
Chopped dates
Cinnamon stick
Cloves
All spice berries
Whole blade mace

If you don’t have any home-made mead to hand, buy a traditional mead such as Moniack and pour into a large sealable jar. Add all the dry ingredients to taste: if in doubt, refer to your favourite grandmother’s or celebrity chef’s Christmas pudding recipe. Stir with a wooden spoon while making a honeyed wish. Resist the temptation to lick the spoon, and pass it along to your next of kin. No sipping till Christmas Day or Winter Solstice (whichever you prefer), then carefully pour off the infused mead and serve. The “dregs” are delicious with Greek yogurt or double cream.

For purists the real deal would have been started the previous year – honey from your Idle hive would have been fermented for weeks with all ten dry ingredients added to a gallon of spring water with champagne yeast, and only racked off when the brew stopped bubbling away and everything settled: the bottled mead should be left to mature till the following Christmas.

Honeybees pollinate fruit blossoms in return for the nectar they distil down to honey, as the flowers they visited turn into fruits. Christmas mead uniquely combines this symbiosis of stored summer sunshine into a delicious tipple that will warm hearts celebrating the passing of midwinter and the beginning of the return of the sun.

This article is from Idler #106.

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