Pawpaw Mead Recipe

With pawpaws, the culinary possibilities are endless.

By Andrew Moore
Updated on August 15, 2023
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by AdobeStock/eqroy

Start preserving pawpaws of your own to make this delicious and uniquely American drink. Enjoy this pawpaw mead recipe, made with local honey and apple cider.

I’m a pawpaw man. I’ve been hooked since my first taste of this fruit. The pawpaw is the largest edible fruit native to the United States, and it has a texture and flavor similar to a mango-banana custard — unparalleled in the Eastern woods. Ranging from eastern Oklahoma to the Atlantic, and from southern Michigan to Louisiana, the pawpaw (Asimina triloba) is like a tropical fruit adrift in our temperate climate, with a history as beguiling as its flavor.

For the past seven years, I’ve researched the pawpaw tree and its fruit — from Native American wildcrafting to frontier foodways — and chronicled its revival among wild-fruit enthusiasts, permaculturists, amateur plant breeders, and professional scientists. Along the way, I’ve definitely eaten my share of pawpaws. I’ve consumed them fresh (my preference), and I’ve made puddings, smoothies, and delicious pawpaw ice cream. As I’ve gathered the fruit from forests, farmers, and fellow gardeners, a question kept coming to mind: Just what am I going to do with all of these pawpaws?

That led me to discover an overlooked American tradition — pawpaw booze. Pawpaw brandy, beer, and wine were mentioned during the Civil War and into the 20th century. West Virginian Roy Lee Harmon once wrote, “[Pawpaw] brandy was a drink without peer. You could take a few snifters of it and feel like you were floating on a pink cloud eating ice cream and viewing some beautiful scenery.” A Kentucky newspaper proclaimed in 1896, “The paw-paw is ripe and the mountain man is in his glory brewing paw-paw beer.”

With this tradition in mind, I decided to make a country wine and find my own glory. A number of my contemporaries have experimented with pawpaw brewing. In Ohio alone, a dozen breweries make a seasonal pawpaw beer each September when the fruit is ripe. Pawpaw wine, beer, and mead can be found in a number of states, from North Carolina and Kentucky to Missouri and Indiana.

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