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.

The average mead recipe calls for 3 to 3.5 pounds of honey per gallon of finished mead, depending on the sugar content of the honey. This makes strong mead in the range of 14 percent alcohol.

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.

If you're using less honey to make more of a beer-like mead, those can be fully fermented and drinkable in under a month. Other types can take a few months. It just depends on the amount of honey. Amount of honey primarily is what it depends on, and some yeasts ferment honey faster than others.

Smoothing out, over time, to make a mellow, less dry experience, letting the latent sweetness emerge. If you want to create an experience for yourself or your friends, we suggest storing a few bottles of mead, out of the sun at room temperature, for 6 months to a year.

So many mead makers don't bother boiling at all, preferring instead to simply dilute their honey with warm water. If you do boil, do so only briefly.

What type of honey should I use? The key is to use raw or unpasteurized honey to get the best and most unique flavors for your mead. Commercially processed honey often found in the grocery stores is pasteurized and ultrafiltered.

Your mead will need a cool, dark place to ferment for the next 30 days.

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.

Can I use canned fruit in mead? ›

While an experienced meadmaker can bring these flavors out, they are much harder to balance in a high-gravity mead. They work better in lower-gravity meads. You can get fruit in several forms including juice, fruit concentrates, fruit puree, canned fruit, and fresh whole fruit.

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.

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.

Put your mead in a warm, dark place. 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).

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.

If you're making an average mead with around 14-16 percent abv, then it should take around 2-4 weeks depending if you are adding nutrients or not.

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.

If you follow all suggested practices, your mead will be drinkable faster. How fast is “fast” largely depends on the yeast you use as some yeast produce more fusels than others even in optimal conditions. Fermenting Temperature (especially hot temperatures) - The temperature considered too hot depends on the yeast.