I have posted this, or pieces of this advice throughout the forum, here it is in one go.
Congratulations, you have discovered one of the oldest (if not the oldest) fermented beverages! You liked it so much you want to make more. There are 100s of resources online showing how to make mead. Here’s another one based on my experience making meads.
You are going to need a handful of tools for your first batch:
I usually make a batch of it in my fermenter, and then dump it into a bucket for sanitizing all my stirring implements, hoses, etc.
If you are just going to make a traditional mead (honey plus water and yeast) you will want nutrients, as Honey is a desert as far as yeast are concerned, and without proper nutrition, your fermentation will take a long time, probably get stuck, and the yeast will throw a lot of off flavors as they struggle to consume the honey. All meads work better with nutrients, as they will improve your fermentation times and the quality of your mead no matter the style.
A note on Honey. Any honey will make mead, but better ingredients make better meads. When you are just starting out, buy the cheapest honey you can afford, and learn how to get your process down. Then you can spend money on the good honey! Don't worry about crystalized honey either, the yeast will eat every scrap of it that winds up in the fermenter. The other time to use cheap honey is when you are doing a mead style that the flavor of the honey isn’t as important, or secondary to other heavy flavors in the mead.
Now, to make your mead you will want to decide how much alcohol you want in the finished product. I routinely make meads that have as little as 16% and as much as 18-20% (depending on the calculator- one of the meads I make has an ABV of 22%, different calculators suggest a more modest 19%) Here is a fairly reliable calculator that translates SG (Specific Gravity) to Alcohol potential. ABV Calculator - MeadMakr
This is the calculator I use for making new recipe's: The Mead Calculator
It will help you figure out how much water and honey to mix to get your desired ABV for the volume of your batch.
A note on Yeasts. while manufacturers often have a suggested alcohol tolerance that the yeast will survive to, keep in mind that is usually a minimum, and not a maximum, or even an average. Lowly bread yeast will go to 16% ABV, and most beer strains will easily get in to the low teens (despite advertised for 8-10%)
I find D47 is a good mead yeast, ferments quickly to completion, has pleasant esters, and clarifies well. EC-1118 was my go-to for a long time, ferments quickly, very neutral esters, and clarifies well- it does tend to blow off some of the aromatics in the honey though). This is a great place to experiment with whatever yeast you prefer!
For the love of everything delicious in mead, ignore all of the web advice to put raisins or other crap in your mead to feed the yeast. I highly recommend the TOSNA protocol, as the Staggered Nutrient Additions feed the yeast, and keeps them very happy - and happy yeast make good booze. Here is a good calculator for how much nutrients to add. BatchBuildr - MeadMakr
For primary fermentation you want to vigorously mix your water and yeast (I use a drill with a stirrer on it) this will aerate your must (pre-mead mix) then add your first nutrients and yeast.
Day 2: second nutrient addition, re-aerate (slowly - this is the most risk for degassing to go badly and foam can go everywhere)
Day 3: third nutrient addition, no mixing.
Day 5-7 (ish) take a sample, your SG should be approximately half of your starting SG (e.g if you started at 1.120, you should be around 1.060 or so.) add 4th nutrient addition, no mixing!
Day 14-21 (ish) Your mead should be pretty well done with primary fermentation. at this point, you will want to rack it into your 2nd fermenter. This will tend to degas your mead, and leave most of the gross lees behind (all the stuff at the bottom of your fermenter. If you have space in your refrigerator, you can 'cold crash' at this stage for 48 hours and it will greatly speed up clarification of your mead. Take a sample. Your mead should be around 1.010 - 1.000
The mead is perfectly drinkable at this point, but it will have a raw edge to it that will improve with age. Some people describe this as a ‘rocket fuel’ flavor, I describe it as a 'Green' or un-aged mead. The steps after this are optional, but recommended.
Put the 2nd fermenter somewhere you will not bother it too much for at least 3 months. maybe 6-9 months, make sure it is sealed with an airlock (check regularly) and do not bother it too much. The mead will do 2 things, 1, it will clarify through sediment falling out of suspension, and 2 it will finish fermenting (your FG should be around 0.995) and the alcohol will get a chance to mellow and come to life.
If you decide when your mead is good and finished aging that you want to backsweeten it, you can then sulfate it, and add more honey to your taste. I happen to prefer dry meads so I never do this. This is also the optimal time to add adjuncts like spices and oaking.
Sláinte
Links for the nutrients:
Go Ferm:
Go Ferm (Half pound): Amazon.com: Grocery & Gourmet Food
Go Ferm (Half pound): Amazon.com: Grocery & Gourmet Food
www.amazon.com
Fermaid O:
Fermaid O (1 pound): Amazon.com: Grocery & Gourmet Food
Fermaid O (1 pound): Amazon.com: Grocery & Gourmet Food
www.amazon.com
Nice 2 pack:
Go-Ferm Protect Evolution, 100g Bundle with Fermaid O, 120g: Amazon.com: Grocery & Gourmet Food
Go-Ferm Protect Evolution, 100g Bundle with Fermaid O, 120g: Amazon.com: Grocery & Gourmet Food
www.amazon.com
Congratulations, you have discovered one of the oldest (if not the oldest) fermented beverages! You liked it so much you want to make more. There are 100s of resources online showing how to make mead. Here’s another one based on my experience making meads.
You are going to need a handful of tools for your first batch:
- A fermenter (glass carboys are traditional, but pretty much anything you can make beer in you can make mead in. - I happen to really like SS fermenters)
- A good scale (weighs in grams)
- A Hydrometer (if you don't have one get one of the sets from Amazon)
- a 2nd fermenter (this one really wants to be a glass carboy or a corny keg, something that will keep O2 out of your mead while it ages for a bit.)
- a few feet of vinyl hose (3/8” – 1/2” ID works well)
- a big spoon or something to mix your ingredients
- an airlock (I prefer the 3 piece ones over the 'S' style)
- Honey (duh) about 3 pounds per gallon
- Spring water (buy it in gallons from the grocery store - NOT DISTILLED WATER!!! your yeast need the minerals! Tap water often has chlorine and other things bad for your yeast unless you have a good filtration system)
- Yeast (we’ll come back to this)
- Nutrients (we’ll come back to this too.)
- Must – the raw mead before it completes fermentation
- Fermentation – the process where yeast anaerobically turn sugar into alcohol
- Aeration – for the yeast to properly multiply in the beginning of fermentation they need O2. Once they are making alcohol, oxygen is your enemy.
- ABV – Alcohol [content] By Volume
- SG – Specific Gravity, used as a proxy for determining sugar content in the Must
- OG – Original Gravity (sometimes SG for Starting Gravity) the SG of the Must before you added the yeast.
- FG – Final Gravity the SG of the MEAD when it is done fermenting.
I usually make a batch of it in my fermenter, and then dump it into a bucket for sanitizing all my stirring implements, hoses, etc.
If you are just going to make a traditional mead (honey plus water and yeast) you will want nutrients, as Honey is a desert as far as yeast are concerned, and without proper nutrition, your fermentation will take a long time, probably get stuck, and the yeast will throw a lot of off flavors as they struggle to consume the honey. All meads work better with nutrients, as they will improve your fermentation times and the quality of your mead no matter the style.
A note on Honey. Any honey will make mead, but better ingredients make better meads. When you are just starting out, buy the cheapest honey you can afford, and learn how to get your process down. Then you can spend money on the good honey! Don't worry about crystalized honey either, the yeast will eat every scrap of it that winds up in the fermenter. The other time to use cheap honey is when you are doing a mead style that the flavor of the honey isn’t as important, or secondary to other heavy flavors in the mead.
Now, to make your mead you will want to decide how much alcohol you want in the finished product. I routinely make meads that have as little as 16% and as much as 18-20% (depending on the calculator- one of the meads I make has an ABV of 22%, different calculators suggest a more modest 19%) Here is a fairly reliable calculator that translates SG (Specific Gravity) to Alcohol potential. ABV Calculator - MeadMakr
This is the calculator I use for making new recipe's: The Mead Calculator
It will help you figure out how much water and honey to mix to get your desired ABV for the volume of your batch.
A note on Yeasts. while manufacturers often have a suggested alcohol tolerance that the yeast will survive to, keep in mind that is usually a minimum, and not a maximum, or even an average. Lowly bread yeast will go to 16% ABV, and most beer strains will easily get in to the low teens (despite advertised for 8-10%)
I find D47 is a good mead yeast, ferments quickly to completion, has pleasant esters, and clarifies well. EC-1118 was my go-to for a long time, ferments quickly, very neutral esters, and clarifies well- it does tend to blow off some of the aromatics in the honey though). This is a great place to experiment with whatever yeast you prefer!
For the love of everything delicious in mead, ignore all of the web advice to put raisins or other crap in your mead to feed the yeast. I highly recommend the TOSNA protocol, as the Staggered Nutrient Additions feed the yeast, and keeps them very happy - and happy yeast make good booze. Here is a good calculator for how much nutrients to add. BatchBuildr - MeadMakr
For primary fermentation you want to vigorously mix your water and yeast (I use a drill with a stirrer on it) this will aerate your must (pre-mead mix) then add your first nutrients and yeast.
Day 2: second nutrient addition, re-aerate (slowly - this is the most risk for degassing to go badly and foam can go everywhere)
Day 3: third nutrient addition, no mixing.
Day 5-7 (ish) take a sample, your SG should be approximately half of your starting SG (e.g if you started at 1.120, you should be around 1.060 or so.) add 4th nutrient addition, no mixing!
Day 14-21 (ish) Your mead should be pretty well done with primary fermentation. at this point, you will want to rack it into your 2nd fermenter. This will tend to degas your mead, and leave most of the gross lees behind (all the stuff at the bottom of your fermenter. If you have space in your refrigerator, you can 'cold crash' at this stage for 48 hours and it will greatly speed up clarification of your mead. Take a sample. Your mead should be around 1.010 - 1.000
The mead is perfectly drinkable at this point, but it will have a raw edge to it that will improve with age. Some people describe this as a ‘rocket fuel’ flavor, I describe it as a 'Green' or un-aged mead. The steps after this are optional, but recommended.
Put the 2nd fermenter somewhere you will not bother it too much for at least 3 months. maybe 6-9 months, make sure it is sealed with an airlock (check regularly) and do not bother it too much. The mead will do 2 things, 1, it will clarify through sediment falling out of suspension, and 2 it will finish fermenting (your FG should be around 0.995) and the alcohol will get a chance to mellow and come to life.
If you decide when your mead is good and finished aging that you want to backsweeten it, you can then sulfate it, and add more honey to your taste. I happen to prefer dry meads so I never do this. This is also the optimal time to add adjuncts like spices and oaking.
Sláinte
Links for the nutrients:
Go Ferm:
Go Ferm (Half pound): Amazon.com: Grocery & Gourmet Food
Go Ferm (Half pound): Amazon.com: Grocery & Gourmet Food
www.amazon.com
Fermaid O:
Fermaid O (1 pound): Amazon.com: Grocery & Gourmet Food
Fermaid O (1 pound): Amazon.com: Grocery & Gourmet Food
www.amazon.com
Nice 2 pack:
Go-Ferm Protect Evolution, 100g Bundle with Fermaid O, 120g: Amazon.com: Grocery & Gourmet Food
Go-Ferm Protect Evolution, 100g Bundle with Fermaid O, 120g: Amazon.com: Grocery & Gourmet Food
www.amazon.com
