Mead "pyment". Mulled mead is a popular drink at Christmas time, where mead is flavored with spices (and sometimes various fruits) and warmed, traditionally by having a hot poker plunged into it. Some meads retain some measure of the sweetness of the original honey, and some may even be considered as dessert wines. Drier meads are also available, and some producers offer sparkling meads. There are faux-meads, which are actually wines with honey added after fermentation as a sweetener and flavoring. Historically, meads were fermented with wild yeasts and bacteria (as noted in the recipe quoted above) residing on the skins
Sura (alcoholic drink) several spices) and "majja" (maybe equivalent of Sanskrit "madhu", mead or hydromel), and renunciation of its usage constitutes the 5th of the Buddhist precepts (pañca-sīlāni): "I undertake the training rule to abstain from fermented drinks which cause heedlessness" ("Surāmerayamajjapamādaṭṭhānā veramaṇī sikkhāpadaṃ samādiyāmi"). Sura (alcoholic drink) Surāh (Sanskrit and Pāli; Devanāgarī: सुरा) is a strong distilled alcoholic drink. It is referred to as an anaesthetic by Suśruta (a surgeon in India circa 400 BCE). Other ancient medical authorities also mention it; Charaka referred to making a woman with a miscarriage senseless to pain by administering alcoholic drinks like "surā", "sīdhu", "ariṣṭa",