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The recipe at a glance
- Makes
- 1 gallon, about five bottles
- Honey
- 3 lb (about 4 cups)
- Strength
- About 13.5% to 14% ABV, fermented dry
- Hands-on time
- 45 minutes, plus a few minutes a day in week one
- Ready to drink
- About 4 months
- At its best
- 6 to 12 months
This is a traditional mead: honey, water and yeast, nothing else. It is the best first batch because there is nowhere for mistakes to hide and nothing to mask the honey, so you learn what each decision does. Once it works, every other style is a small variation.
Equipment
- Two 1-gallon glass jugs (one to ferment in, one to rack into)
- Drilled rubber stopper (size 6 fits most gallon jugs) and an airlock
- No-rinse sanitizer
- Hydrometer and test jar
- Funnel, and a small auto-siphon with tubing
- A scale that reads to 0.1 g is helpful for nutrient
- Five wine bottles with corks, or swing-top bottles
A one-gallon starter kit with all of this costs $40 to $60 at any homebrew shop.
Ingredients
Traditional honey wine, 1 gallon
- 3 lb (1.36 kg) raw honey, about 4 cups
- Spring or filtered water to make 1 gallon (3.8 L) total, roughly 3 quarts
- 1 packet (5 g) wine yeast: Lalvin 71B, or EC-1118 for a drier, stronger mead
- About 4 g yeast nutrient such as Fermaid-O, divided into four doses
- Optional, for a sweeter finish: 1/2 tsp potassium sorbate, 1 Campden tablet and 2 to 7 oz more honey
About the honey: it is 90% of the flavor, so use one you like the taste of. Clover or wildflower is ideal for a first batch; orange blossom is the classic upgrade. See best honey for mead.
About the water: chlorine and chloramine cause off-flavors. Use spring water, or filtered tap water.
Step by step
Sanitize
Wash, then sanitize everything that will touch the mead: jug, funnel, spoon, airlock, stopper, hydrometer. A no-rinse sanitizer such as Star San takes two minutes and prevents almost every problem beginners run into.
Mix the must
Stand the honey jar in hot tap water for ten minutes so it pours. Pour it into the jug through a funnel, add about half a gallon of room-temperature water, cap and shake hard until no honey sits on the bottom. Top up with water to the shoulder of the jug, leaving three inches of headspace for foam. Do not boil the honey: heat drives off the aroma you are paying for.
Take a gravity reading
Fill the test jar and float the hydrometer. Three pounds of honey in one gallon should read about 1.105 to 1.110. Write it down; you need it to calculate alcohol later.
Pitch the yeast
Sprinkle the yeast into a quarter cup of warm water (95 to 104°F), wait 15 minutes, stir and pour it in. Fit the stopper and airlock, and fill the airlock to the line with sanitizer or vodka.
Feed and swirl for a week
Honey has almost none of the nitrogen yeast needs. Add roughly 1 g of nutrient (about a third of a teaspoon) at 24, 48 and 72 hours and again on day 7. Swirl the jug gently first to release gas, then add the powder slowly, or it will foam over. Swirl once a day for the first week.
Let it ferment
Keep the jug somewhere dark at 60 to 70°F. The airlock will bubble busily for one to two weeks, then slow. After three to four weeks, take a reading. When it is the same (usually 0.996 to 1.002) three days apart, fermentation is finished.
Rack and age
Siphon the mead off the sediment into a second sanitized jug, leaving the sludge behind. Top up with a little water or spare mead so there is less than two inches of air. Refit the airlock and leave it for two to three months. It will clear from the top down. Rack again if a thick layer of sediment forms.
Bottle and wait
When the mead is clear enough to read a newspaper through, siphon it into sanitized bottles and cork or cap them. It is drinkable now, good at six months and better at a year.
Timeline
| When | What happens | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| Day 0 | Must mixed, yeast pitched | Record original gravity |
| Days 1 to 3 | Vigorous fermentation begins | Swirl daily, add nutrient at 24, 48, 72 hours |
| Day 7 | Fermentation steady | Last nutrient dose |
| Weeks 3 to 4 | Bubbling slows, sediment settles | Check gravity twice, three days apart |
| Month 1 | Fermentation complete | Rack to second jug |
| Months 2 to 4 | Mead clears and mellows | Leave it alone. Rack again if needed. |
| Month 4 | Clear and stable | Stabilize and sweeten if you want to, then bottle |
| Months 6 to 12 | Harsh edges fade | Drink it |
Making it sweet, dry or sparkling
Dry
Follow the recipe as written. With 71B or EC-1118 yeast, 3 lb of honey normally ferments out and finishes dry at around 13.5% to 14%. That is close to the limit for 71B, so choose EC-1118 if you want to be sure of a dry finish. For a lighter dry mead nearer 11.5%, use 2.5 lb.
Semi-sweet or sweet
The controllable way is to ferment dry and then sweeten. Once the mead is clear, stir in 1/2 teaspoon of potassium sorbate and one crushed Campden tablet per gallon, wait two days, then add honey to taste. Each ounce of honey raises the gravity of a gallon by about 0.002. Two to three ounces gives an off-dry mead around 1.005; six to seven ounces gives a semi-sweet one around 1.015. Dissolve the honey in a little of the mead first and add it in stages, tasting as you go.
Sparkling
Start from 2.5 lb of honey per gallon, so the yeast still has headroom to carbonate the bottles. Ferment completely dry, do not add sorbate, and bottle in beer or Champagne bottles with about 1 oz of honey per gallon dissolved into the batch. Keep the bottles at room temperature for two to three weeks, then chill. Use only bottles designed to hold pressure. Background on the methods is in our sparkling honey wine guide.
Scaling to 5 gallons
Multiply everything except the yeast by five: 15 lb of honey, water to 5 gallons, about 20 g of nutrient in four doses. One 5 g packet of yeast is still enough, though two will start faster. Ferment in a 6.5-gallon bucket to leave room for foam, and age in a 5-gallon carboy. Timing is the same.
Variations: fruit, spice, apple, tej
- Fruit mead (melomel): add 2 to 3 lb of frozen and thawed berries, cherries or peaches per gallon when you rack to the second jug. Leave for two to four weeks, then rack off the fruit. Blackberry, blueberry, raspberry, strawberry and cherry all work the same way.
- Apple mead (cyser): replace the water with preservative-free apple juice and reduce the honey to 2 lb.
- Spiced mead (metheglin): add one cinnamon stick, two cloves and a strip of orange peel in secondary for one to two weeks. Taste often; spices take over quickly.
- "Viking" mead: there is no single historical recipe, but a strong, sweet mead from dark wildflower honey at 3.5 to 4 lb per gallon is close in spirit.
- Ethiopian tej: uses gesho and wild yeast. See our tej recipe.
Troubleshooting
| Problem | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| No bubbles after 48 hours | Leaky stopper, cold room or old yeast | Check gravity rather than the airlock. Move to 65 to 70°F. Re-pitch fresh yeast if gravity has not moved. |
| Rotten-egg smell | Stressed yeast short of nitrogen | Swirl to release gas and add a nutrient dose. It usually clears within days. |
| Foam erupts when adding nutrient | Dissolved CO2 released all at once | Swirl first, add powder slowly, keep headspace in week one. |
| Stuck at 1.030 or above | Too much honey for the yeast, or too cold | Warm it up, swirl, and if needed add a starter of EC-1118. |
| Tastes hot or like solvent | Fermented too warm, or simply young | Age it. Six more months fixes most of it. |
| Will not clear | Suspended yeast or protein haze | More time, a week in the refrigerator, or a fining agent such as bentonite. |
Is it legal?
In the United States, federal law lets adults (anyone old enough to buy wine where they live) make wine, which includes mead, at home without a license for personal or family use: up to 100 gallons a year in a one-adult household and 200 gallons where two or more adults live. You may not sell it. States and some localities add their own rules, so check yours.
Want to know what you are aiming for?
It helps to taste a well-made traditional honey wine before you judge your own. These two are made from the same two ingredients you are using, honey and water, and have several years of age on them.
Frequently asked questions
How do you make honey wine?
Dissolve about 3 lb of honey in enough water to make 1 gallon, add wine yeast and yeast nutrient, ferment under an airlock for three to four weeks, siphon it off the sediment, let it clear for two to three months, then bottle.
How long does it take to make mead?
About four months from mixing to a drinkable bottle: three to four weeks of fermentation, two to three months of clearing, then bottling. Flavor improves noticeably for the first year.
How much honey do I need for 1 gallon of mead?
Use 2.5 lb for a dry mead around 11.5% ABV, 3 lb for a standard mead around 13.5% to 14%, and 3.5 to 4 lb for a sweet mead. Our honey calculator works out other batch sizes.
Do I need to boil the honey?
No. Old recipes boil and skim the must, but honey is naturally resistant to spoilage and boiling drives off aroma. Modern mead makers mix at room temperature.
Can I make mead with bread yeast?
Yes, and a famous beginner recipe does exactly that. Bread yeast gives up at around 10% to 12% alcohol and leaves the mead sweet, but it is less predictable and can taste bready. A packet of wine yeast costs about a dollar and is worth it.
Can you make honey wine without yeast?
Not without any yeast, but you can rely on wild yeast: raw honey diluted with water will usually start fermenting by itself within a week. That is how traditional tej is made. Results vary, so most home mead makers add cultured yeast.
What is the alcohol content of homemade mead?
Subtract the final gravity from the original gravity and multiply by 131.25. A 3 lb per gallon mead that goes from 1.105 to 1.000 is about 13.8% ABV.