53-532: Tonelero is a Spanish word meaning barrel builder ( tonel meaning barrel) or Cooper . Tonelero may also refer to: Cooper (profession) A cooper is a craftsman who produces wooden casks, barrels , vats, buckets, tubs , troughs , and other similar containers from timber staves that were usually heated or steamed to make them pliable. Journeymen coopers also traditionally made wooden implements, such as rakes and wooden-bladed shovels. In addition to wood, other materials, such as iron, were used in
106-507: A brandy or liqueur strength, in which case it is sometimes referred to as a whiskey . A version called "honey jack" can be made by partly freezing a quantity of mead and straining the ice out of the liquid (a process known as freeze distillation ), in the same way that applejack is made from cider . In Finland , a sweet mead called sima is connected with the Finnish vappu festival (although in modern practice, brown sugar
159-399: A cloudy look. The cloudiness can be cleared up by either "cold breaking", which is leaving the mead in a cold environment overnight, or using a fining material, such as sparkolloid, bentonite, egg white, or isinglass. If the mead-maker wishes to backsweeten the product (add supplementary sweetener) or prevent it from oxidizing, potassium metabisulfite and potassium sorbate are added. After
212-515: A common misconception that mead is exclusively sweet, it can also be dry or semi-sweet. Mead that also contains spices is called metheglin ( / m ɪ ˈ θ ɛ ɡ l ɪ n / ), and mead that contains fruit is called melomel . The term honey wine is sometimes used as a synonym for mead, although wine is typically defined to be the product of fermented grapes or certain other fruits, and some cultures have honey wines that are distinct from mead. The honey wine of Hungary , for example,
265-524: A contemporary of Taliesin. In the Old English epic poem Beowulf , the Danish warriors drank mead. In both Insular Celtic and Germanic poetry, mead was the primary heroic or divine drink, see Mead of poetry . Mead ( Old Irish mid ) was a popular drink in medieval Ireland . Beekeeping was brought around the 5th century, traditionally attributed to Modomnoc , and mead came with it. A banquet hall on
318-545: A cooper and tubs made of staves in use at the grape harvest. Palm-wood casks were reported in use in ancient Babylon . In Europe, buckets and casks dating to 200 BC have been found preserved in the mud of lake villages. A lake village near Glastonbury dating to the late Iron Age has yielded one complete tub and a number of wooden staves. The Roman historian Pliny the Elder reports that cooperage in Europe originated with
371-487: A cooper on board, to assemble shooks (disassembled barrels) and maintain casks. In the 19th century, coopers who crafted barrels on ships were often called groggers (or jolly jack tars ), as when a barrel of rum had been emptied, they would fill it up with boiling water and roll it around, creating a drink which was called grog. Coopers in Britain started to organise as early as 1298. The Worshipful Company of Coopers
424-414: A cooperage. Traditionally, a cooper is someone who makes wooden, staved vessels, held together with wooden or metal hoops and possessing flat ends or heads. Examples of a cooper's work include casks , barrels , buckets , tubs, butter churns , vats, hogsheads , firkins , tierces , rundlets , puncheons , pipes, tuns , butts , troughs , pins and breakers. A hooper was the man who fitted
477-566: A grain and honey drink similar to mead that he encountered while travelling in Thule . According to James Henry Ramsay this was an earlier version of Welsh metheglin . When 12-year-old Prince Charles II visited Wales in 1642 Welsh metheglin was served at the feast as a symbol of Welsh presence in the emerging British identity in the years between the Union of the Crowns in 1603 and the creation of
530-504: A half inches thick and featured grooves where the heads fitted. They had Roman numerals scratched on the surface of each stave to help with reassembly. In Anglo-Saxon Britain, wooden barrels were used to store ale, butter, honey, and mead . Drinking vessels were also made from small staves of oak , yew or pine . These items required considerable craftsmanship to hold liquids and might be bound with finely worked precious metals. They were highly valued items and were sometimes buried with
583-462: A recipe for mead in De re rustica , about 60 CE. Take rainwater kept for several years, and mix a sextarius of this water with a [Roman] pound of honey. For a weaker mead, mix a sextarius of water with nine ounces of honey. The whole is exposed to the sun for 40 days and then left on a shelf near the fire. If you have no rain water, then boil spring water. Ancient Greek writer Pytheas described
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#1732776683992636-594: A thousand years. In the United States, mead is enjoying a resurgence, starting with small home meaderies and now with a number of small commercial meaderies . As mead becomes more widely available, it is seeing increased attention and exposure from the news media. This resurgence can also been seen around the world in the UK and Australia particularly with session (lower alcohol styles) sometimes called hydromel and Mead-Beer Hybrids also known as Braggots. In
689-457: Is an alcoholic beverage made by fermenting honey mixed with water, and sometimes with added ingredients such as fruits , spices , grains , or hops . The alcoholic content ranges from about 3.5% ABV to more than 20%. Possibly the most ancient alcoholic drink, the defining characteristic of mead is that the majority of the beverage's fermentable sugar is derived from honey. It may be still, carbonated, or naturally sparkling, and despite
742-404: Is called a melomel , which was also used as a means of food preservation , keeping summer produce for the winter. A mead that is fermented with grape juice is called a 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
795-406: Is often used in place of honey ). During secondary fermentation , added- raisins augment the amount of sugar available to the yeast and indicate readiness for consumption, rising to the top of the bottle when sufficiently depleted. Sima is commonly served with both the pulp and rind of a lemon . An Ethiopian mead variant tej (ጠጅ, [ˈtʼədʒ] ) is usually home-made and flavored with
848-596: Is one of the oldest Livery Companies in London. It still survives today although it is now largely a charitable organisation. In the 16th century, the company won the right for coopers to be independent from breweries. Many coopers worked for breweries, making the large wooden vats in which beer was brewed, such as Guinness in Ireland. They also made the wooden kegs in which the beer was shipped to liquor retailers. Beer kegs had to be particularly strong in order to contain
901-535: Is over 250 years old. In the United States, there are also few master coopers left. Ramiro Herrera, Master Cooper for Caldwell Vineyard in the Napa Valley , was sent to France to learn his trade, where only two out of 40 starters completed the four-year training course. It takes him around 11 hours to build a barrel, before it is ready to be toasted. Recycling casks is common in the trade, and wine casks may be converted to contain beer. Centuries-old tools remain
954-633: Is possibly the soma mentioned in the hymns of the Rigveda , one of the sacred books of the historical Vedic religion and (later) Hinduism dated around 1700–1100 BCE. The Rigveda predates the Indo-Iranian separation, dated to roughly 2000 BCE, so this mention may originate from the Western Steppe or Eastern Europe . The Abri , a northern subgroup of the Taulantii , were known to
1007-487: Is the fermentation of honey-sweetened pomace of grapes or other fruits. Mead was produced in ancient times throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia, and has played an important role in the mythology of some peoples. In Norse mythology , for example, the Mead of Poetry , crafted from the blood of Kvasir , would turn anyone who drank it into a poet or scholar. Mead is a drink widely considered to have been discovered prior to
1060-402: Is the most common size for an ale cask. As part of the barrel-making process , the cask needs to be steamed to soften and loosen lignin in the wood, and it is then toasted. Toasting develops the flavours of the sugars in the wood, that is the cellulose and hemicellulose . Then the barrel is charred, which involves exposing it to 1,300 °F (704 °C) for 45 seconds. A wine barrel
1113-406: Is toasted for around 35 minutes with a low fire, while for whiskey it is usual to toast for just 45 seconds on a high fire, to burn the surface. In the 21st century, coopers mostly operate barrel-making machinery and assemble casks for the wine and spirits industry. Traditionally, the staves were heated to make them easier to bend. This is still done, but now because the slightly toasted interior of
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#17327766839921166-612: The Gauls in Alpine villages where they stored their beverages in wooden casks bound with hoops. Pliny identified three types of coopers: ordinary coopers, wine coopers and coopers who made large casks. Large casks contained more and longer staves and were correspondingly more difficult to assemble. Roman coopers tended to be independent tradesmen, passing their skills on to their sons. The Greek geographer Strabo records wooden pithoi (casks) were lined with pitch to stop leakage and preserve
1219-530: The Hill of Tara was known as Tech Mid Chuarda ("house of the circling of mead"). Mead was often infused with hazelnuts . Many other legends of saints mention mead, as does that of the Children of Lir . Later, mead was increasingly displaced by other alcoholic beverages for which the fermentable sugars required were less expensive and more readily available, which combined with taxation and regulations governing
1272-474: The Industrial Revolution at the turn of the 19th century and prohibition in the United States in the early 20th century, there was less demand for barrels, and over time, various other containers were manufactured for shipping goods, including shipping containers , metal drums, and corrugated cardboard . Storing, shipping, and fermenting alcohol became the main uses for wooden barrels. In
1325-627: The Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. There is a poem attributed to the Welsh bard Taliesin , who lived around 550 CE, called the Kanu y med or "Song of Mead" (Cân y medd). The legendary drinking, feasting, and boasting of warriors in the mead hall is echoed in the mead hall Din Eidyn (modern-day Edinburgh ) as depicted in the poem Y Gododdin , attributed to the poet Aneirin who would have been
1378-427: The yeast employed during fermentation , and the aging procedure. Some producers have erroneously marketed white wine sweetened and flavored with honey after fermentation as mead, sometimes spelling it "meade." Some producers ferment a blend of honey and other sugars, such as white refined sugar, again, mislabeling the product as mead. This is closer in style to a hypocras . Blended varieties of mead may be known by
1431-642: The 21st century, and, while there is a need for new coopers, there has been no pathway to the trade via apprenticeships since 1996, when the Howard government reformed the apprenticeship scheme to focus particularly on construction, food and hospitality, and hairdressing . In January 2024, it was reported that there was only one winery left in Australia still making its own barrels for storing wine, and there were fewer than 100 people still making barrels at small cooperages for other purposes. Some cooperages, such as
1484-643: The Margaret River Cooperage in Margaret River , Western Australia , do not make new barrels, but recooper imported barrels for use by small wineries. The 2015 film In the Heart of the Sea featured master cooper Alastair Simms, who made 200 barrels for the film. Mead Mead ( / m iː d / ), also called honey wine , and hydromel (particularly when low in alcohol content),
1537-468: The advent of both agriculture and ceramic pottery in the Neolithic , due to the prevalence of naturally occurring fermentation and the distribution of eusocial honey-producing insects worldwide; as a result, it is hard to pinpoint the exact historical origin of mead given the possibility of multiple discovery or potential knowledge transfer between early humans prior to recorded history. With
1590-586: The ancient Greek writers for their technique of preparing mead from honey . During the Golden Age of ancient Greece , mead was said to be the preferred drink. Aristotle (384–322 BCE) discussed mead made in Illiria in his Meteorologica and elsewhere, while Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE) called mead militites in his Naturalis Historia and differentiated wine sweetened with honey or "honey-wine" from mead. The Hispanic-Roman naturalist Columella gave
1643-457: The ancient Irish queen Medb , among others. The Chinese word for honey, mì (蜜) was borrowed from the extinct Indo-European Tocharian word mit – also a cognate with the English word mead . Meads will often ferment well at the same temperatures at which wine is fermented, and the yeast used in mead making is often identical to that used in wine making (particularly those used in
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1696-428: The contents of which sustained crew and passengers on long voyages. They also made barrels to contain high-value commodities, such as wine and sugar. The proper stowage of casks on ships about to sail was an important stevedoring skill. Casks of various sizes were used to accommodate the sloping walls of the hull and make maximum use of limited space. Casks also had to be tightly packed, to ensure they did not move during
1749-644: The dead as grave goods . After the Battle of Hastings in 1066, when the Normans started settling in England, much wine was shipped over the English Channel from France. Wherever and whatever goods were traded, casks were used, in the same way as cardboard boxes later became common storage containers. Ships, in the age of sail , provided much work for coopers. They made water and provision casks,
1802-453: The early days, Guinness employed its own team of up to 300 highly-paid coopers in the brewery, making barrels which would be shipped around the world, and wooden casks were used by the brewery for nearly two centuries. In 1946 aluminium kegs were introduced, and over time gradually replaced the wooden barrels, until these in turn were replaced by stainless steel in the late 1980s. By 1961 there were only 70 coopers still employed by Guinness, and
1855-475: The eventual rise of ceramic pottery and increasing use of fermentation in food processing to preserve surplus agricultural crops, evidence of mead begins to show up in the archaeological record more clearly, with pottery vessels from northern China dating from at least 7000 BCE discovered containing chemical signatures consistent with the presence of honey, rice, and organic compounds associated with fermentation. The earliest surviving written record of mead
1908-545: The fermentation process has been halted prematurely by dormant or dried yeast. With many different styles of mead possible, there are many different processes employed, although many producers will use techniques recognizable from wine-making. One such example is to rack the product into a second container, once fermentation slows down significantly. These are known as a primary and a secondary fermentation, respectively. Some larger commercial fermenters are designed to allow both primary and secondary fermentation to happen inside
1961-455: The government's insistence that trainees should attend a university killed off a lot of the interest. Subsequently, there has been a resurgence of craft breweries and English winemakers employing coopers. In 2015 Simms was at Theakston Brewery in Masham , North Yorkshire . Simms had an apprentice by November 2015. He still uses the traditional tools, including a croze which he estimates
2014-621: The ingredients of alcoholic beverages led to commercial mead becoming a relatively obscure beverage until recently. Some monasteries kept up the traditions of mead-making as a by-product of beekeeping , especially in areas where grapes could not be grown. The English mead – "fermented honey drink" – derives from the Old English meodu or medu , and Proto-Indo-European language , * médʰu . Its cognates include Old Norse mjǫðr , Proto-Slavic medъ , Middle Dutch mede , and Old High German metu , Sanskrit madhu and
2067-624: The last wooden cask was used in March 1963. Barrels intended for wine storage are made predominantly with either French common oak ( Quercus robur ), French white oak ( Quercus petraea ) or American white oak ( Quercus alba ), or Quercus sessilifolia , an Asian species that grows in Japan, Taiwan, and much of south-eastern China . There are three main categories of coopering: In wet coopering, wooden casks were traditionally made in several sizes in England and Ireland, including: The firkin
2120-447: The manufacturing process. The trade is the origin of the surname Cooper . The word "cooper" is derived from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German kūper 'cooper' from kūpe 'cask', in turn from Latin cupa 'tun, barrel'. The word was adopted in England as an occupational surname , Cooper . The art and skill of coopering refers to the manufacture of wooden casks, or barrels. The facility in which casks are made referred to as
2173-527: The mead clears, it is bottled and distributed. Primary fermentation usually takes 28 to 56 days, after which the must is placed in a secondary fermentation vessel for 6 to 9 months of aging . Durations of primary and secondary fermentation producing satisfactory mead may vary considerably according to numerous factors, such as floral origin of the honey and its natural sugar and microorganism contents, must water percentage, pH , additives used, and strain of yeast, among others. Although supplementation of
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2226-432: The must with non-nitrogen based salts, or vitamins has been tested to improve mead qualities, no evidence suggests that adding micronutrients reduced fermentation time or improved quality. Cell immobilization methods, however, proved effective for enhancing mead quality. Mead can have a wide range of flavors depending on the source of the honey, additives (also known as "adjuncts" or " gruit ") including fruit and spices,
2279-493: The powdered leaves and bark of gesho , a hop-like bittering agent which is a species of buckthorn . A sweeter, less-alcoholic version (honey-water) called berz , aged for a shorter time, is also made. In Kenya a mead variant called Muratina is usually home-made which is used during a number of different important religious and social events. Mead in Poland and Ireland has been part of culinary tradition for over
2332-487: The preferred tool of the master cooper. By 2021, very few of the 30-odd coopers left in the United States still used traditional methods. The number of coopers has declined in Australia. A 1959 photograph held in the National Library of Australia is captioned "The cooper Harry Mahlo (one of the last coopers) Yalumba wineries, Angaston, Barossa Valley, South Australia, 1959". Several cooperages have closed in
2385-419: The preparation of white wines). Many home mead makers choose to use wine yeasts to make their meads. By measuring the specific gravity of the mead once before fermentation and throughout the fermentation process using a hydrometer or refractometer , mead makers can determine the proportion of alcohol by volume that will appear in the final product. This also serves to troubleshoot a "stuck" batch, one where
2438-538: The pressure of the fermenting liquid, and the rough handling they received when transported, sometime over long distances, to pubs where they were rolled into tap-rooms or were lowered into cellars. Prior to the mid-20th century, the cooper's trade flourished in the United States; a dedicated trade journal was published, the National Cooper's Journal , with advertisements from firms that supplied everything from barrel staves to purpose-built machinery. After
2491-400: The same vessel. Racking is done for two reasons: it lets the mead sit away from the remains of the yeast cells ( lees ) that have died during the fermentation process. Second, this lets the mead have time to clear. Cloudiness can be caused by either yeast or suspended protein molecules. There is also the possibility that the pectin from any fruit that is used could have set which gives the mead
2544-562: The staves imparts a certain flavour over time to the wine or spirit contents that is much admired by experts. In the 1960s, breweries started using metal casks because of cost and simplicity; since then, the trade of master cooper in England has been dwindling. In 2009 there were only four breweries left in England employing coopers, and only one was a master cooper: Alastair Simms at Wadworth Brewery in Devizes , Wiltshire ). When he appealed for apprentices, there were many applications, but
2597-450: The style represented; for instance, a mead made with cinnamon and apples may be referred to as either a cinnamon metheglin or an apple cyser . A mead that also contains spices (such as cloves , cinnamon or nutmeg ), or herbs (such as meadowsweet , hops , or even lavender or chamomile ), is called a metheglin / m ɪ ˈ θ ɛ ɡ l ɪ n / . A mead that contains fruit (such as raspberry , blackberry or strawberry )
2650-772: 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. Historically, meads were fermented with wild yeasts and bacteria (as noted in the recipe quoted above) residing on the skins of the fruit or within the honey itself. Wild yeasts can produce inconsistent results. Yeast companies have isolated strains of yeast that produce consistently appealing products. Brewers, winemakers, and mead makers commonly use them for fermentation, including yeast strains identified specifically for mead fermentation. These are strains that have been selected because of their characteristic of preserving delicate honey flavors and aromas. Mead can also be distilled to
2703-445: The voyage and endanger the ship, crew and cask contents. Whaling ships in particular, featuring long voyages and large crews, needed many casks – for salted meat , other provisions and water – and to store the whale oil. Sperm whale oil was a particularly difficult substance to contain, due to its highly viscous nature, and oil coopers were perhaps the most skilled tradesmen in pre-industrial cooperage. Whaling ships usually carried
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#17327766839922756-418: The wine. Barrels were sometimes used for military purposes. Julius Caesar used catapults to hurl barrels of burning tar into towns under siege to start fires. Empty casks were used to line the walls of shallow wells from at least Roman times. Such casks were found in 1897 during archaeological excavation of Roman Silchester in Britain. They were made of Pyrenean silver fir and the staves were one and
2809-465: The wooden or metal hoops around the barrels or buckets that the cooper had made, essentially an assistant to the cooper. The English name Hooper is derived from that profession. Over time, coopers took on the role of the hooper themselves. An Egyptian wall-painting in the tomb of Hesy-Ra , dating to 2600 BC, shows a wooden tub made of staves, bound together with wooden hoops, and used to measure. Another Egyptian tomb painting dating to 1900 BC shows
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