The Restaurant at the End of the Hive: Making Mead at Home

Mead is wine made from honey, and probably the oldest alcoholic drink there is. It takes about half an hour to make and several months to wait for, which makes it the perfect brew for anyone who is good at forgetting things.

• DifficultyEasy to make, hard to wait for
• Hands-on timeAbout 30 minutes, plus a few short check-ins
• Ready in3–6 months, or about 6 weeks for a light, sparkling mead
• Makes4.5 to 23 litres, your choice

The Drink of Gods, Vikings and Patient People #

Mead has been made for at least nine thousand years, which means it predates writing, the wheel and, for that matter, the fermenter. Somebody, somewhere, left some honey and water out in the rain and came back to a happier world.

It needs only three things: honey, water and yeast. Everything else in this guide is about keeping the yeast happy, because honey is wonderful food for people and surprisingly poor food for yeast. Look after the yeast and it will look after you. Ignore it and it sulks, slowly, for months.

What You Need #

The honey #

We often have local honey on the counter at our shops, so ask us. Otherwise, this is your chance to visit the local market or a beekeeper. Any pure honey works. The flavour carries through to the finished mead, so a mild honey such as clover makes a gentle mead, and a strong honey such as leatherwood or a eucalyptus honey makes a bold one. Avoid honey "blends" with added syrups.

The gear #

Item	Why
5L Demijohn with Swing Lid, or a 15L fermenter for bigger batches	Somewhere for the mead to ferment and age. A demijohn lets you watch it clear, which is oddly satisfying
A bored bung and an S-Bend Airlock	Lets the gas out and keeps everything else out
Mangrove Jacks Mead Yeast M05	Made for mead. Our pick
Yeast nutrient	The most important thing in this guide. Honey has almost no yeast food in it, so without nutrient the yeast struggles, smells and stops early
Hydrometer and a trial jar	Tells you how strong it will be, and when it has finished
Plastic Wine Thief	Takes a sample out of the demijohn for your hydrometer without tipping or disturbing it
A no-rinse sanitiser (we stock several)	Mead sits around for months, so everything must start clean
A funnel	For getting honey, water and nutrient into a narrow demijohn neck without wearing them

For later: racking #

Item	Why
A second demijohn (or fermenter) the same size, with a bung and airlock	Once fermentation finishes you move the mead off its yeast into a clean vessel to age and clear. See The Long Wait below
An Easy Syphon	Moves the mead from one demijohn to the other gently, leaving the sediment behind

You do not need the racking gear on day one, so it can wait for your second visit to the shop. It will be about 2–4 weeks before you need it.

Other yeasts that work #

Yeast	Gives you
Mangrove Jacks Mead Yeast M05	Clean and honey-forward, for dry or sweet meads
Lalvin EC-1118	Very clean, very dry and very determined. Good for strong or sparkling meads
Lalvin 71B	Softer and fruitier. Lovely in fruit meads
Mangrove Jacks Wine Yeast SN9	An all-rounder that copes with high alcohol

Your Recipe #

The more honey, the stronger the mead. Pick your batch size, strength and style, and the calculator works out the honey, water, yeast and nutrient for you.

Honey varies, so treat the starting gravity as a guide and trust your hydrometer. Pop your first and last readings into our ABV calculator to see how strong it ended up.

Making It #

1. Sanitise the demijohn, funnel, bung, airlock and anything else that will touch the mead.
2. Dissolve the honey in about half the water, warm (not boiling, which drives off the delicate honey aromas). Stand the honey jar in hot water first to make it pour.
3. Pour it into the demijohn or fermenter and top up with cool water to your batch size, leaving a gap at the top for foam.
4. Shake it. Put the bung in and give it a vigorous shake for a minute or two. Yeast needs oxygen to get started, and this is the only time it should get any.
5. Take a gravity reading and write it down.
6. Stir in the first half of the yeast nutrient (the calculator shows how much), then sprinkle on the yeast. Fit the airlock.
7. Keep it at a steady 16–22°C, out of the sun.

The first two weeks #

1. Swirl it once a day for the first week. This lets trapped gas out, which keeps the yeast comfortable. Take the airlock out first if it foams.
2. Add the rest of the nutrient in two small doses, on day 2 and day 4. Dissolve each dose in a few spoonfuls of cooled boiled water, take the airlock off, pour it in through a sanitised funnel, then refit the airlock and give the demijohn a gentle swirl. No stirring needed. Little and often keeps the yeast happier than all at once, but if you would rather not open it, adding all the nutrient at the start still works.
3. Check the gravity after 2–4 weeks. When it reads the same a week apart, the main ferment has finished.

Taking a reading from a demijohn #

Do not tip the demijohn to pour a sample. Tipping stirs up the yeast at the bottom, lets air in, and is surprisingly hard to aim at a narrow trial jar. Instead:

1. Sanitise a Plastic Wine Thief (or a clean turkey baster, if one has gone missing from the kitchen) and your trial jar.
2. Take the airlock out, lower the thief into the middle of the mead, well above the sediment, and lift out enough to float your hydrometer.
3. Refit the airlock straight away, then take your reading.
4. Do not pour the sample back. Taste it instead: it is the best way to learn how mead changes, and it saves the rest of the batch from anything the sample picked up on its travels.

Each sample costs a little mead and lets in a little air, so there is no need to check daily. Once at the start, then once a week from about two weeks in until two readings match, is plenty. For more on sampling without spoiling, see our Safe Sampling Guide.

Opening the demijohn for a minute is perfectly safe at this stage. The fermenting mead is covered by a blanket of CO2 and full of busy yeast, so stray germs have no chance. Just sanitise the funnel, and swirl gently before adding the nutrient: a fizzy mead can foam up suddenly when powder goes in.

A warm ferment is mead's biggest enemy. Above about 24°C the yeast makes harsh, hot, solvent-like flavours that take many months to fade, if they ever do. In warmer weather, keep it in the coolest part of the house, or in a fermenting fridge.

The Long Wait #

Young mead tastes rough. This is normal, and is no reflection on you, the honey or the bees. Time is the final ingredient.

1. Rack it. Once fermentation has finished, gently siphon the mead off the layer of yeast at the bottom into a clean, sanitised demijohn. An Easy Syphon makes this simple; keep the end of the tube above the sediment. Fill it close to the top, so there is little air touching the mead.
2. Wait. Leave it somewhere cool and dark for 2–3 months. It will slowly clear, and the rough edges will soften.
3. Rack again if a new layer of sediment forms, then wait some more. A clear mead is a happier mead. Our wine guide covers racking and bottling in a little more depth.

Back-sweetening #

Back-sweetening means adding sweetness after fermentation has finished, and it is very common with mead. A mead fermented dry and then sweetened with a little extra honey tastes brighter and more honey-like than one that simply stopped sweet. The catch is that the yeast is only resting, and will happily eat the new honey. So you stabilise it first, with two products working together:

Product	What it does
Campden Tablets	Release a small amount of sulphite, which stuns the yeast and protects the mead from oxygen and spoilage during ageing. Usually 1 tablet per 4.5 litres, crushed. Check the packet
Potassium Sorbate	Stops the yeast from multiplying. It cannot stop a ferment that is still going, so the mead must be finished first. Use the rate on the packet

Add both to the finished, racked mead, wait 24–48 hours, then stir in honey (warmed so it pours) a little at a time, tasting as you go. Leave it a week or two before bottling to make sure nothing restarts.

A stabilised mead cannot be carbonated in the bottle. Decide early whether you want it sweet and still, or dry and sparkling.

A little acid #

Honey has almost no acid, so a finished mead can taste flat or overly sweet. A pinch of acid brightens it up the way a squeeze of lemon lifts a dish. Add it after fermentation, a little at a time, and taste: adding acid at the start can make the yeast struggle.

Acid	Flavour
Citric Acid	Bright and lemony. The easy everyday choice
Tartaric Acid	The acid in grapes. Gives mead a more wine-like crispness
Malic Acid	The acid in apples. Soft and fresh, lovely in a cyser

Variations, With Old Names #

Mead has been around long enough to collect some splendid vocabulary.

Name	What it is	How
Traditional mead	Honey, water, yeast	Exactly as above
Melomel	Mead with fruit	Add 500g–1kg of berries, cherries or stone fruit (frozen and thawed is best) after the first week. A little Pectinase helps it clear
Metheglin	Spiced mead	A cinnamon stick, a split vanilla bean, a few cloves or a piece of ginger, added during ageing. Taste weekly and take them out when it is right
Cyser	Mead made with apple juice	Swap some or all of the water for 100% apple juice with no preservatives. Halfway to a cider
Session mead (hydromel)	A light, sparkling mead	Pick Light 8% in the calculator, ferment it dry, then bottle it with carbonation, like a cider. Ready in about 6 weeks

Start with one small batch of traditional mead. It shows you what your honey tastes like before you start adding raspberries and opinions.

Bottling #

Still mead #

Bottle it once it is clear and the gravity has not moved for several weeks. Wine bottles work well. Traditional wine corks need a tool called a corker to squeeze them in, which we do not stock. The easy alternative is plastic top corks, which push in by hand and are fine for mead you will drink within a few months. Ask us which ones suit your bottles. Keep the bottles somewhere cool and dark, and try one every few months. Mead keeps improving for a year or more.

Sparkling mead #

Only for mead that has fermented completely dry and has not been stabilised. Bottle it in Morgan's PET Bottles with Carbonation Drops, exactly like beer or cider, and leave them at room temperature for 2–3 weeks.

Never bottle mead that is still fermenting, even slowly. Mead can keep going for months, and every bit of honey left in the bottle becomes pressure. Two identical readings, a week or more apart, before anything goes into a bottle.

Serving suggestion: a small glass, slightly chilled, preferably while telling someone it took you six months.

Happy brewing, and may the bees always be on your side.