How to Make Mead

How to Make Mead

Why mead?

Mead is about the easiest homebrew beverage around. I used to brew beer, mostly, but mead is easier, cheaper, and makes less of a mess. It's also more unique -- I can buy craft brewed beer at local brewpubs that's better than any beer I've ever made, but there are only a few commercial meads available and my homebrewed mead is much better than any of them I've tasted. So there.

Many mead brewers make a very sweet mead. I prefer a dry mead, and this recipe is nicely dry, just how I like it. If you prefer sweet meads, just use more honey.

Basic Recipe

For a five gallon batch, Dissolve the honey in water, as much as you can fit in the brewpot. [1] Add the yeast nutrient, acid blend, and irish moss, mix all thoroughly, and bring it to a boil. Skim off the brownish foam that collects on the surface as it boils, and when the foam's all gone, stop boiling (should only take a few minutes). Cool the liquid [2], pour it into the fermentation vessel [3], and pitch in the yeast [4].

Fermentation should begin in about 12 hours, and it should last for three weeks or so. Rack the mead into a secondary vessel when fermentation stops [5]. At this time, taste the mead and decide whether to add flavoring [6]. Whatever flavoring agent you use, put it right into the secondary and let it sit there until bottling. Here are a few of my favorite flavors:

When the mead is clear (another month or so), bottle it in clean bottles [7]. Most mead is okay to drink right away, but will improve with age up to a year or so.

Notes and helpful hints

[1] Dissolving and Boiling

I heat the water until it's ready to boil first, then turn off the heat and stir the honey into the hot water, which makes it dissolve quicker. But don't turn the heat back on until the honey is all dissolved, or it will burn and stick to the bottom of the brewpot.

When I get honey in a big bucket (30 lbs), I put the bucket right into the brewpot, with enough water to cover the sides, and heat it gently (50-60C) for an hour or so. Heating the honey makes it much thinner -- easier to measure out, and faster to mix.

Do not boil the wort any longer than you have to. Honey has lots of volatile essences from flowers, that you want to keep if you can. This is different from beer wort, which should be boiled for an hour or so to drive off unwanted esters.

[2] Cooling

I use a wort cooler to cool it down fast. If you have no wort cooler, cover the brewpot immediately when you stop boiling, and let it sit overnight. This stage, when the wort is cool but before the yeast is added, is when it's vulnerable to contamination, so keep it as sterile as possible.

[3] Pouring

Pour the wort straight down into the vessel, so that it splashes and sloshes a lot. This mixes oxygen from the air into the wort, which the yeast needs to get started growing.

Many people use a dipper to ladle the wort from brewpot to fermenter. I've found that siphoning it is easier, less messy, and more sanitary. Be sure the siphon is sanitized just like the fermentation vessel.

[4] Pitching the yeast

I hydrate the dry yeast by dissolving it in 1 or 2 cups of lukewarm water (blood temperature, test it against your wrist like baby formula). This avoids clumping, and distributes the yeast thoroughly, so it can grow fast and overwhelm any bacteria or other beasties that might be contaminating the wort.

I've found that the irish moss does a better job if it's boiled for an hour or so. So I boil it separately, in its own small pot, and pour that into the cold water first (the fermenter must have a gallon or so of cold water in it -- if you pour boiling water into an empty glass vessel, it will shatter!)

Fill the vessel right up to the top. In the first few days of fermentation, a lot of light brown foam will come out. Let it blow off, it will carry away nasty resinous flavors that you want to get rid of. I use a blowoff tube at this stage, and only fit a fermentation lock when the foaming is over with.

[5] Racking

Siphon the mead carefully to avoid splashing. Once the mead is fermented, oxygen is the worst thing for it. I flush the secondary vessel with carbon dioxide gas from a tank, to drive out any oxygen that might be around, and I'm still careful to siphon down the side of the vessel and avoid splashing.

"Yeast bite" is an unpleasant sour flavor that the mead will pick up if it sits on the yeast too long. I've found that three weeks is about the right amount of time in the primary -- shorter than that, and it may not ferment completely -- longer than that, and it's liable to pick up some yeast bite. So I shoot for three weeks in the primary.

[6] Flavoring

I think a proper mead tastes just fine without flavoring. Some people add flavors to cover up bad tastes of an improperly made mead, and some just like the flavors. Suit yourself.

Many sweet meads do well with berry flavors. I've found dry meads to be overly tart and acidic with berry flavors, so I only use berries for the (rare) sweet mead.

[7] Bottling

Alcohol levels above 7% or so will kill almost any bacteria other than yeast. This recipe makes mead at 11% alcohol by volume, so the bottles don't have to be really sterile. This is different from beer (4% ABV) which does not keep itself sterile, and you have to be much more careful when bottling.

But oxygen is very bad for mead, so avoid splashing while filling bottles. A bottle filler works very well, and makes the task easy.

Links to other sites

This page maintained by Wil Howitt
Last updated 12 December 2008