Mead Making: An Easy Guide for Beginners

Today I'm going to guide you through your first mead making experience. This guide is aimed at absolute beginners who have never tried making mead before. If you go through this article and you think that you want to try something a little more advanced, especially if you already have some experience brewing, then you should probably check out one of my other brewing articles:

How to Make Your Own Mead

How to Make Hard Cider (Simpler cider making.)

How to Make Your Own Hard Cider (A little more complicated recipe.)

As always, you need to be of legal age to make your own alcohol. The laws for having homemade alcohol are the same as those for store bought. In the US, don't do it unless your 21.

OK Now let's talk about making mead the easy way for beginners. Here's what you are going to need to get started making mead:

2 lbs Honey

Empty One Gallon Milk or Apple Juice Jug

1 Packet Brewing Yeast

1) Before mixing all the mead making supplies you need to sterilize your gallon jug. Do this by washing it out several times with hot water. It is especially important that you really wash it out if it was a milk jug. Any milk left will ruin your homemade mead. You should also sterilize the jug if possible. The easy way of making sure the jug is sterilized before mead making is to pour a little bit of cheap vodka in the jug and swirl and shake the jug so the vodka touches every part of the inside of the jug. Then rinse the jug out with water. You can also use other store bought alcohol or even rubbing alcohol, but make sure you really rinse it out if you use rubbing alcohol or it might give you an upset stomach later or ruin your mead.

2) Pour your 2 lbs of honey into the jug. You can make this easy by making the honey a little warm so it will pour into your mead jug easier. Then add enough warm water to the jug that it is full with about one and a half inches empty at the top.

3) Add 1/4 teaspoon of yeast to 1/4 cup of warm water. Note warm does not mean bath water temperature! Maybe lukewarm is a better description. If your water is too hot, it will kill the yeast and ruin your mead making. Give the yeast a very easy stir and wait five minutes.

4) After you have waited five minutes add the water/yeast solution to the jug of honey and water. Now screw the lid on the jug only 1/2 turn. Give the jug a squeeze and make sure air flows out of the cap. If the cap is on too tight, the jug of mead will explode, making a mess. Brewing snobs will be horrified that you aren't using an airlock for you mead making and are instead just using a lightly screwed on bottle cap, but if you have been careful about sterilization it should work fine....That's why I call them brewing snobs, because they think you always need expensive equipment and are afraid to experiment with brewing. I've had great making mead and cider without using an airlock.

5) This is the hard part....Your mead making is basically done. Easy right? Now you need to let your mead sit in a dark place for a long time (closets are ideal.) You should probably let it sit for about 3 weeks. After three weeks you will see some sludge in the bottom of the jug that looks like mud. This is called trub and it's totally natural. As the yeast feeds on the sugar in the honey it multiples (sort of like having baby yeast which grow up and have their own baby yeast.) This trub is just more yeast and some of its waste products. Carefully transfer your mead into another jug making sure that as little trub as possible gets into the other jug. Even better yet, transfer it into some Grolsch type swing top bottles or some sterilized wine bottles. If you get into brewing, buying a bottle capper is a great investment and makes bottling easy, but for beginners empty bottles are perfect. By the way if you want your mead sparkling add one or two table spoons of honey to the gallon and stir it up before bottling.

6) And now the really hard part....Wait at least 6 months before tasting your mead. If you can wait a year that is even better. Mead takes a little bit of time to mellow out after being made. When it is "young" it has a harsh taste to it which lessens with age. Many beginners are turned off by their first mead making experience because they age it for only a month or two and it tastes horrible (some people think the taste is like burnt rubber.) You really need to let it sit for a while even though it isn't easy because your exicted about tasting the fruits of your mead making labor.

7) After you've waited long enough. Give your mead a try. I recommend leaving it in the fridge overnight before you try it, but it's also good warm.

Hopefully you've had a sucessful time making mead, especially if you are a beginner to brewing. Although this recipe is really easy, it is a great way to start brewing. If you enjoyed the mead making, try reading some of my other articles. Cider making is also really easy and yields awesome results.

You can also try making mead following this recipe again, but try adding some fruit. For example try adding the juice of one or two freshly squeezed oranges to the batch for different flavors.

Good Luck and Happy Brewing.