15 Easy Mead Recipes for Beginners (2024)

FAQs

How much honey do I need for 1 gallon of mead? ›

We'll go over it in further detail later, but we recommend using between two and three pounds of honey per gallon of mead — 2 pounds if you want it on the dryer side, and 3 pounds if you'd like it to be sweeter.

A Berry Mead are Melomels made with berries, such as raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, currants (black, red, and white), strawberries, boysenberries, elderberries, Marion berries, mulberries, lingonberries, huckleberries, cranberries, etc. Generally, any fruit with 'berry' in the name would qualify.

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.

(You really should make more than 14 ounces - that's just one nice drink.) Generally no. Mead brews much more slowly than beer. Generally a batch of beer will take 10–14 days to finish primary fermentation (most of the activity happening in the first 2–3 days), while mead will take 3–6 weeks.

(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.)

If you put in a bunch of honey and you get enough yeast (the right kind of yeast where it ferments all the way out) then you'll have a really dry, high alcohol champagne-like mead. You can use less honey to make a lower alcohol mead. Using less honey might make it a little bit more dry, though not necessarily.

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.

Straight traditional mead is typically served chilled in a wine or co*cktail 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.

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.

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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.

What type of honey makes the best mead? ›

Orange Blossom Honey

It's also a great base product which can be experimented with endlessly by adding some distinct subtle flavors to it. Orange Blossom honey is a good reliable choice for mead production, so you really can't go wrong if this is the type of mead you produce your mead with.

Stirring twice a day is generally sufficient (if you have a fast fermentation, you might want to stir three or four times a day). Stirring does a couple of things: It blows off carbon dioxide, which lowers potential yeast stress, and it adds oxygen to your mead when the yeast can use it best.

BURP YOUR JAR DAILY TO AVOID AN EXPLOSION!

Once bubbles begin to form on the surface, you can reduce your stirring to just once a day. 5. When the bubbles begin to die down, sometime between days 10 through 14, the young mead is ready to enjoy. Remember to continue burping your jar daily until empty.

Mead will age gracefully as will wine as long as the closure (crown cap, screw cap or cork) you use is in correctly and the seal is good. There are other things in the mead (acid, tannin, alcohol, etc.) that will help to add longevity to your mead as well. I've had crown capped bottles that have gone 11 years.

The ratio of water to honey depends on the type of mead you want to make. For a dry mead, the ratio is 4 parts water to 1 part honey; a sweet mead is 2 to 1. Kluz likes his mead sweet, so he typically uses 1 3/4 gallons of honey and tops it off with 3 1/4 gallons of water.

The short answer is that for every gallon of mead that one wishes to be made, you would need anywhere from a pound and a half to five pounds of honey, then enough water to make a combined gallon. This is the 'yes' part to question above.

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.