How to Brew Mead: Ancient Honey Wine for Modern Makers

Somewhere between the collapse of Rome and the rise of craft beer, humanity collectively forgot about mead. This strikes me as particularly odd, considering that fermented honey water predates agriculture itself. Archaeological evidence suggests our ancestors were getting tipsy on wild honey ferments before they figured out bread. Yet walk into any liquor store today, and you'll find shelves groaning with IPAs and sours while mead huddles in some dusty corner, misunderstood and overlooked.

I stumbled into meadmaking purely by accident. A friend's backyard beehive produced an absurd honey surplus one summer, and rather than let it crystallize in jars, we decided to try something different. That first batch was terrible—oxidized, medicinal, with all the charm of cough syrup. But buried beneath those flaws was something intriguing: a complexity that beer couldn't touch, a connection to something older than civilization itself.

The Fundamentals Nobody Explains Properly

Most meadmaking resources dive straight into recipes without addressing the elephant in the room: mead is fundamentally different from beer or wine. You're not extracting sugars from grain or fruit; you're diluting pure sugar that's already dissolved. This changes everything about your approach.

Honey is essentially dehydrated flower nectar that bees have enzymatically modified. When you add water, you're reversing millions of years of evolution designed to preserve that nectar indefinitely. The moment water touches honey, you've started a clock. Wild yeasts, dormant in the honey, wake up. Bacteria that couldn't survive in pure honey suddenly find themselves in paradise.

This is why sanitation in meadmaking isn't just important—it's existential. Beer has hops with their antimicrobial properties. Wine has acidity and tannins. Mead has... optimism and good intentions. Your sanitization game needs to be impeccable, bordering on paranoid.

Choosing Honey Like You Actually Care

Here's where I'm going to ruffle some feathers: that bear-shaped bottle of clover honey at the grocery store will make perfectly acceptable mead. The meadmaking community has developed this bizarre honey snobbery that would make wine sommeliers blush. Yes, varietal honeys create distinct flavor profiles. Orange blossom mead tastes different from wildflower mead. But if you're starting out, use what you can afford.

That said, there's a middle ground worth exploring. Local honey from small apiaries often costs barely more than supermarket honey while offering genuine terroir. I once made a batch with late-season goldenrod honey that tasted like liquid autumn—woody, slightly bitter, with this haunting floral note that commercial honey never achieves.

The real consideration isn't prestige; it's water content. Honey should be below 18.5% moisture to prevent fermentation in the jar. Most commercial honey meets this standard, but if you're buying from Farmer Bob's roadside stand, ask about moisture content. Or better yet, borrow a refractometer and check yourself. Nothing ruins a mead faster than starting with partially fermented honey.

Water: The Ingredient Everyone Ignores

I spent two years making mediocre mead before realizing my water was the problem. Chlorinated tap water doesn't just taste bad; it actively interferes with yeast health. Those first batches that fermented slowly and stuck at 1.030? Chloramines were murdering my yeast colonies.

The solution is stupidly simple: let your water sit out overnight to off-gas chlorine, or use campden tablets (potassium metabisulfite) to neutralize chloramines. One tablet per 20 gallons does the trick. Some meadmakers insist on spring water or complex mineral additions. Unless your tap water tastes actively bad, this is overkill. Medieval meadmakers weren't checking their water's calcium carbonate levels.

Yeast Selection and the Myth of "Mead Yeast"

Every homebrew shop sells packets labeled "mead yeast" or "sweet mead yeast." This is marketing nonsense. These are usually just wine yeasts repackaged at a premium. Any wine yeast will ferment honey. The question is which characteristics you want to emphasize.

Lalvin D47 remains my workhorse yeast. It ferments clean, preserves honey character, and dies reliably around 14% ABV, leaving residual sweetness. For dry meads, EC-1118 is a monster that will ferment anything to bone-dry 18% rocket fuel. 71B-1122 metabolizes malic acid, making it perfect for melomels (fruit meads).

The dirty secret is that bread yeast works too. I've made perfectly drinkable mead with grocery store active dry yeast. It won't win competitions, but it ferments honey into alcohol, which is the fundamental point. Don't let equipment snobbery prevent you from starting.

The Process: Where Theory Meets Reality

Traditional meadmaking instructions read like alchemy: "Mix honey and water, add yeast, wait six months." This works about as well as "add flour to water to make bread." The details matter enormously.

Start with your honey-to-water ratio. For a standard strength mead (12-14% ABV), use 3 pounds of honey per gallon of finished mead. This accounts for volume loss during racking. Mix the honey with room temperature water—hot water drives off volatile aromatics that you want in your mead, not your kitchen air.

Here's where I diverge from orthodox meadmaking: I don't boil or pasteurize. Raw honey contains enzymes and compounds that contribute complexity to the finished mead. Yes, there's a contamination risk. In fifteen years of meadmaking, I've had exactly one infected batch, and that was because I forgot to sanitize my racking cane. The risk-reward calculation favors going raw.

Oxygenation is crucial for the first 72 hours. Yeast need oxygen to reproduce before they switch to anaerobic fermentation. I use an aquarium pump with a sanitized air stone, but vigorous stirring works too. This is the only time you want oxygen anywhere near your mead. After those first three days, oxygen becomes the enemy, causing oxidation and cardboard flavors.

Nutrients: The Missing Link

Honey is basically pure sugar with trace amounts of minerals. Yeast need nitrogen, vitamins, and minerals to ferment properly. Without nutrients, fermentation stalls, producing hydrogen sulfide (rotten egg smell) and fusel alcohols (jet fuel taste).

The meadmaking community has developed increasingly complex nutrient protocols. TOSNA (Tailored Organic Staggered Nutrient Additions) has adherents who measure nutrients to the tenth of a gram and add them on precise schedules. This works, but it's also why people think meadmaking is complicated.

My approach: add a teaspoon of yeast nutrient and a half teaspoon of energizer at pitch, then again at 24 and 48 hours. Degass by stirring when you add nutrients. This releases CO2 that can inhibit fermentation. Is this optimal? Probably not. Does it produce clean, drinkable mead? Absolutely.

Temperature Control and Patience

Fermentation temperature matters more than most meadmakers admit. Too hot, and you get fusel alcohols and stressed yeast flavors. Too cold, and fermentation crawls or stalls. The sweet spot for most wine yeasts is 62-68°F.

I ferment in my basement, which stays around 65°F year-round. If you're fermenting in a warm apartment, look into swamp coolers (fermenter in a tub of water with a wet t-shirt and fan) or temperature controllers. The $50 investment in temperature control will improve your mead more than $500 worth of fancy equipment.

Primary fermentation takes 2-6 weeks depending on temperature and yeast health. You'll know it's done when the airlock stops bubbling and the mead begins clearing. Don't rush this. Mead ferments slower than beer, and patience prevents problems.

Racking, Aging, and the Waiting Game

Once fermentation completes, rack (siphon) the mead off the yeast sediment into a clean carboy. This prevents autolysis—yeast cells dying and releasing off-flavors. Some meadmakers rack monthly; I rack when there's visible sediment, usually every 2-3 months.

Here's the hard truth about mead: it needs age. Fresh mead tastes hot, sharp, and unbalanced. Six months is the minimum for drinkability. A year is better. Two years is when mead really shines. I have bottles from 2015 that keep improving.

This aging requirement is why mead fell out of favor. Beer is drinkable in weeks. Wine needs months. Mead demands years. In our instant gratification culture, that's a tough sell. But the wait rewards you with complexity that younger beverages can't match.

Clarifying Without Chemicals

New mead looks like muddy water. Time and gravity will clear it, but there are ways to speed the process. Cold crashing—chilling the mead near freezing—forces particles to settle. Bentonite clay, added during secondary fermentation, binds to proteins and drops them out of suspension.

I've experimented with various fining agents: sparkalloid, chitosan, egg whites. They all work, but they also strip flavor and aroma compounds. My current approach is patience and cold. Move the carboy to a cold place for a month, and physics handles clarification.

Bottling: The Final Frontier

Bottling seems simple until you create bottle bombs or oxidize a year's work in an afternoon. Still mead is straightforward—rack into sanitized bottles, cork or cap, done. Carbonated mead requires precision.

For sparkling mead, you need to add priming sugar and ensure some yeast remains alive to ferment it. Too much sugar creates grenades. Too little leaves flat mead. I use 0.75 ounces of corn sugar per gallon for a champagne-like carbonation. Mix the sugar with a small amount of mead, then blend back into the batch before bottling.

Use bottles rated for pressure—champagne bottles or Belgian beer bottles work well. Regular wine bottles will explode. Trust me on this. The sound of exploding mead bottles at 3 AM is unforgettable in the worst way.

Variations and Experimentation

Once you've mastered basic mead, the variations are endless. Metheglin adds spices—cinnamon, cloves, vanilla. Melomel incorporates fruit. Pyment blends grape juice with honey. Braggot combines mead with beer.

My favorite creation remains a capsicumel—chile pepper mead. I add dried ghost peppers to secondary fermentation, tasting daily until the heat balances the residual sweetness. It sounds insane, but the interplay of sweet honey and scorching capsaicin creates something transcendent.

Don't be afraid to experiment. I've made mead with everything from oak chips to coffee beans to pine tips. Some batches were disasters. Others revealed flavor combinations I never imagined. That's the joy of meadmaking—you're not following industrial standards but creating something uniquely yours.

The Philosophy of Slow Fermentation

Modern life pushes us toward speed and efficiency. Meadmaking pushes back. You can't rush honey into becoming mead any more than you can rush an oak into becoming lumber. The process unfolds on its own timeline, indifferent to your impatience.

This forced slowness becomes meditative. Checking fermentation progress, racking between carboys, tasting the gradual evolution—these rituals create rhythm in our chaotic lives. You're not just making alcohol; you're participating in a process older than written history.

There's also profound satisfaction in self-sufficiency. Every bottle represents months of attention and years of patience. When you pour a glass of aged mead for friends, you're sharing time itself, transformed into liquid gold.

Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Everyone ruins their first few batches. Here are the mistakes that still haunt my dreams:

Oxidation turns mead into expensive vinegar. Minimize headspace in carboys, use CO2 to purge containers if possible, and handle gently during racking.

Infection creates anything from subtle off-flavors to undrinkable swamp water. Sanitize everything twice. If it touches mead, it should be sanitized.

Temperature swings stress yeast and create off-flavors. Find a spot with stable temperatures and leave your fermenter alone.

Impatience leads to bottle bombs, harsh flavors, and disappointment. Mead rewards patience like no other hobby.

The Economics of Meadmaking

Let's talk money. A gallon of decent mead costs $60-100 retail. Making it yourself costs about $15-20 in ingredients. The math seems obvious until you factor in equipment, time, and the learning curve.

Basic equipment—fermenter, airlock, racking cane, bottles—runs about $100. You can spend thousands on conical fermenters and glycol chillers, but you don't need to. My first batch fermented in a pickle bucket from a restaurant. It won a bronze medal at competition.

The real investment is time. Between active work and waiting, each batch represents hours of attention spread across months or years. If you're looking for cheap alcohol, buy vodka. If you want to create something meaningful, make mead.

Final Thoughts on an Ancient Art

Meadmaking connects us to our ancestors in ways that other hobbies can't match. Every culture that discovered honey also discovered mead. Vikings drank it before battle. Ethiopians still brew tej for celebrations. Medieval monks perfected recipes we still use today.

When you make mead, you join this unbroken chain stretching back to prehistory. The process remains essentially unchanged: honey, water, yeast, time. The magic happens in the details, in your choices and patience.

Start simple. Make a basic traditional mead before attempting complex recipes. Keep detailed notes—ingredients, temperatures, observations. What seems obvious during bottling becomes mysterious two years later when you're trying to recreate a spectacular batch.

Most importantly, share your mead. This hobby thrives on community. Join a local homebrew club, enter competitions, give bottles to friends. Every meadmaker I know started because someone shared a bottle and sparked curiosity.

The learning curve is real, but it's not steep. If you can follow a recipe and practice basic sanitation, you can make mead. Whether it becomes good mead depends on patience, attention, and a willingness to learn from mistakes.

So gather some honey, sanitize some equipment, and start your first batch. In a year or two, when you're sipping golden ambrosia that you created from three simple ingredients, you'll understand why our ancestors considered mead the drink of gods.

The journey from honey to mead mirrors life itself—sweet beginnings, vigorous transformation, patient maturation, and finally, something worth savoring. What are you waiting for?

Authoritative Sources:

Piatz, Steve. The Complete Guide to Making Mead: The Ingredients, Equipment, Processes, and Recipes for Crafting Honey Wine. Voyageur Press, 2014.

Schramm, Ken. The Compleat Meadmaker: Home Production of Honey Wine From Your First Batch to Award-winning Fruit and Herb Variations. Brewers Publications, 2003.

Morse, Roger A., and Kenn Aellen. Making Mead: A Complete Guide to the Making of Sweet and Dry Mead, Melomel, Metheglin, Hippocras, Pyment and Cyser. Wicwas Press, 2003.

American Mead Makers Association. "Mead Guidelines." mead-makers.org/mead-guidelines

National Honey Board. "Honey: A Reference Guide to Nature's Sweetener." honey.com/files/general/refguide.pdf

Cornell University Department of Food Science. "Mead Production: Selection and Use of Honey." foodscience.cals.cornell.edu/extension