15 Easy Mead Recipes for Beginners (2024)

FAQs

What is the fastest you can make mead? ›

After two to three weeks the major portion of the ferment will be done and the balloon will be limp. At this point you can taste a little bit to see how it is coming along but it isn't really a tasty wine at this point. It will need another couple of months to start to get delicious.

Use 1.5 to 5 pounds of honey per gallon, depending on your target for residual sweetness and alcohol content. The more honey, the more residual sweetness and the greater potential for a high, final alcohol content.

4. Add small amounts of herbs, spices, or a handful of fresh berries, and/or wild-foraged edibles. This step is optional. If you don't want to do a straight honey-water-yeast traditional mead, then just add very small amounts to experiment with herbs, spices, anything you know is edible and tasty.

To make a dry 5% ABV mead, the BatchBuildr predicts you will need 0.98 lbs honey, and recommends a 1.034 SG to start. For the 10% ABV dry mead batch, you'll actually need 2.02 pounds of honey and should have an SG of 1.071. For the 15% dry mead, you'll need 3.13 pounds of honey and an original gravity of 1.110.

Why did it fall out of favor? There were some new tax laws, as well as an increased availability of West Indian sugar in the 17th century that made honey harder and less necessary to obtain. But it was also the rise of other alcohols—namely beer and wine—that really did it in.

The fastest you can bottle mead out of the primary fermenter is about 3 weeks. I've never bottled sooner than 8 weeks. The soonest you can start drinking bottled mead is about 1 week after bottling. But most batches keep getting better for at least 2 years.

(Some recipes call for boiling the honey, which makes for a cleaner, quicker ferment. However, many of the aromatic oils that are characteristic of the different flower honeys are boiled off as well in this process. Either method will make you mead.)

Your mead will start to ferment within 24 to 48 hours, and will continue doing so for about a week (sometimes longer). You'll know it's done when the bubbling has slowed down significantly (fermentation creates carbon dioxide, which causes bubbling in the airlock).

The best honey for mead is raw and local. If you have our Mead Making Kit & need honey to get started, try some of our favorite regional honey varieties: Clover & Midwest. The perfect bulk honey for mead, each bottle contains 40 oz (2.5 lb) - exactly what you need to ferment 1 gallon of mead.

Preservatives will impede or prevent fermentation. Likewise with bottled juices or frozen fruit juice, look out for Potassium Sorbate, a preservative that will prevent fermentation. If using juice, use pure juice. Added sugar in commercial juices can add strange flavors.

What fruit makes best mead? ›

Ken introduces his “Noble” fruits which he believes are the top fruits to use in meads including fruits like tart cherries, raspberries, currants and blackberries. We discuss how the acidity and tannins provide the flavor and structure needed for a large gravity mead with a substantial amount of residual sweetness.

Straight traditional mead is typically served chilled in a wine or cocktail glass; but there is really no wrong way to drink it. From ice cold fruit meads to piping hot spiced meads, this versatile beverage can be served at a variety of temperatures depending on the style and ingredients.

Lalvin D-47

This white wine yeast is the primary choice for many mead makers. It ferments at a moderate to fast pace with little foaming and is good for medium to dry meads. It tends to accentuate the honey characteristics so it is a good choice for traditional varietal mead.

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In general, more yeast is actually better, at least at first. But you can, if you severely over-pitch, end up dosing your must with so many ravenously hungry yeast cells that they over compete for the sugar and nutrients, resulting in stressed yeast and resulting production of off flavors.

If your tap water is filtered, safe to drink and tastes good, then it can be used to make mead. If you wouldn't drink water from your tap, we wouldn't suggest using it to make your mead. We also advise against using distilled water because it is stripped of minerals that actually help the yeast during fermentation.

Fermentation, Aging and Stabilization

Using staggered mead nutrients and degassing, the primary fermentation can typically be completed in a few weeks, even for high gravity meads. Smaller session meads can sometimes be done in just a few days.

Pitch the yeast according to instructions. Add yeast to the fermenter and mix well. Make sure there is water in the airlock so you can monitor the bubbles (the visual bi-product of fermentation) escaping. Wait approximately two weeks and your mead will be ready (the bubbles will have all but stopped).

The fermentation usually takes about 7 days, but your mead might bubble as long as two weeks! That's totally fine — the longer your mead ferments, the more sugar your yeast are eating — and the dryer and more alcoholic your mead will become.

The fermenting process depends on various factors, like temperature, the amount of honey, the type of yeast, and the presence of additives and nutrients. Depending on how active the yeast is, it will take around 2 to 6 weeks.