"I drank honey, beer, flowed down my mustache, but I didn't get into my mouth!" Even if you have not read fairy tales for a long time, you should remember this phrase. The Little Humpbacked Horse, Ruslan and Lyudmila, The Tale of Tsar Saltan, of Koschey the Immortal … honey-beer everywhere. By the way, this joke has a continuation: "… my soul is drunk and nourishing." We love to end magical stories with epic weddings and drunken festivities.
The phraseological unit itself is a hint from the author that you should not take everything literally. You don't believe that some mustache can prevent a beer lover from enjoying a frothy drink. This is the same fiction as the death of Koshchei, hidden in a duck, which for some reason was swallowed by a hare.
Everything is clear with beer, but honey !? Its maximum for pancakes, but you can spread bread and butter. And then drink! I must say right away that it was not exactly the mead that can still be found in supermarkets. Our ancestors drank honey. To prepare such a drink, a honeycomb was required. They were brewed in hot water, which was then filtered to remove the wax. The resulting solution was boiled with hops. Then the liquid was cooled and fermented on rye bread with added sugar and yeast. Fermented leaven in wooden barrels. Prepared, however, and a non-alcoholic version.
Sbiten was also widespread - a drink whose main ingredients were burnt honey and various spices, such as sage. They drank only hot. A sort of ancient tea substitute.
Also, the Slavs sweetened kvass with honey and even beer.
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By the way, real bee honey was also of great importance in the rituals of the Slavs. Young people smeared the corners of the room in the new house for them to make life sweet. Russian peasants prayed for rain to Elijah the Prophet and, in order to appease the saint, sacrificed sheep, honey and bread to him. The amber delicacy was used both in love magic and in ritual feeding of the souls of the dead.