How long does mead take to ferment? Racking, clearing, stabilizing and aging

The short answer

Primary fermentation

2 to 6 weeks

Secondary and clearing

1 to 3 months

First drinkable

About 3 to 4 months for a standard mead

At its best

6 to 12 months; sack meads 2 years and up

Done means

Same gravity reading 3 days running

Timeline by mead type

Recipes for each of these styles are in our mead recipes collection. For the day-by-day version of a standard batch, see the timeline in our 1-gallon mead recipe.

What speeds it up or slows it down

• Nutrient. The biggest factor. Honey has almost no nitrogen, and a mead without nutrient can take months to ferment and smell of sulfur along the way. Staggered nutrient additions over the first week are the modern standard.
• Temperature. 60 to 70°F is the sweet spot for most wine yeasts. Colder is slower; warmer is faster but produces harsh, hot-tasting alcohols that take months to fade.
• Starting gravity. More honey means more sugar to convert and more stress on the yeast. A 4 lb per gallon must ferments more slowly than a 2.5 lb one.
• Yeast strain. Champagne strains such as EC-1118 are fast and tolerant; others are gentler and slower. See best yeast for mead.
• pH. Honey musts have little buffering, and pH can drop during fermentation until the yeast stalls. It is a common cause of stuck traditional meads.
• Honey type. Darker honeys such as buckwheat carry more minerals and often ferment a little more easily than very pale honeys, and they need longer to mellow.

How to tell fermentation is finished

Use a hydrometer, not the airlock. An airlock can stop bubbling while the yeast is still working slowly, because the mead is saturated with CO2 or the stopper leaks. It can also keep bubbling after fermentation ends as dissolved gas escapes when the room warms.

1. Sanitize a wine thief or baster and pull enough mead to float the hydrometer.
2. Read it at eye level, at the bottom of the curved surface, and write it down.
3. Repeat on two more days, about 24 to 72 hours apart.
4. If all three readings match, fermentation is finished. If they are still dropping, wait.

Where it stops depends on the yeast and the honey. A dry mead finishes around 0.990 to 1.000. A sweet mead may finish at 1.020 or higher because the yeast reached its alcohol limit. A reading that stalls well above the yeast's expected finish, say 1.040 when you expected dry, is a stuck fermentation, not a finished one: warm the mead, swirl it and consider a fresh yeast starter.

Racking mead and the lees

Racking means siphoning the mead off its sediment into a clean, sanitized vessel. The sediment is called lees: dead and dormant yeast, fruit pulp and proteins. The thick layer after primary is the gross lees; the fine dusting that settles later is the fine lees.

When to rack

• First racking: once fermentation is finished by the three-reading test, usually 3 to 6 weeks after pitching.
• Fruit meads: rack off the fruit after 1 to 2 weeks, when it has lost its color, and after 4 weeks at the latest. See how long to leave fruit in mead.
• Later rackings: when a new layer of sediment forms, typically every 1 to 3 months during clearing. Two or three rackings in total is normal.

How to rack

1. Move the jug to a table a day ahead so the sediment resettles.
2. Sanitize the siphon, tubing and receiving vessel.
3. Keep the siphon's intake an inch above the lees and let the tube outlet sit at the bottom of the new vessel so the mead does not splash.
4. Stop when the mead going into the tube turns cloudy. Losing a little mead is better than carrying lees over.
5. Top up so less than 2 inches of air remains, using water, a similar mead or a smaller vessel, and refit the airlock.

How to clear mead

Most meads clear on their own given time. Patience costs nothing; fining agents speed things up when time has not worked.

Follow the dose on the package for each fining agent. Fine only a finished, degassed mead: rising CO2 bubbles keep particles suspended. Rack off the settled fining sediment after 1 to 2 weeks.

How to stabilize mead

Stabilizing stops yeast from restarting fermentation. You need it before backsweetening, and before bottling any mead that has sugar left in it. You do not need it for a dry mead that will stay dry, and you must not use it if you want to carbonate in the bottle.

Why both? They do different jobs. Metabisulfite releases sulfur dioxide, which knocks back the yeast population and protects against bacteria and oxidation. Sorbate does not kill yeast; it stops the survivors from reproducing. Sorbate alone, in a mead with a large live yeast population and fresh sugar, can fail. Sorbate without sulfite also leaves the door open to lactic bacteria, which convert sorbate into a geranium-like smell that cannot be removed.

Stabilize only a finished, cleared mead that has been racked off its lees. These chemicals will not stop an active fermentation. Alternatives to sorbate, including pasteurizing and non-fermentable sweeteners, are covered in how to backsweeten mead.

How to backsweeten mead

Backsweetening means fermenting dry, stabilizing, then adding honey to taste. It is the most reliable way to hit a sweetness level, because you taste your way there instead of guessing how far the yeast will go.

1. Stabilize as above and wait at least a day.
2. Warm the honey and dissolve it in a cup or two of the mead so it mixes evenly.
3. Stir in about a third of what you think you need. Each ounce of honey raises the gravity of one gallon by about 0.002.
4. Taste, take a gravity reading, and add more in small steps.
5. Wait a week or two before bottling. Added honey can throw a slight haze that settles out.

Two to three ounces per gallon makes a dry mead off-dry; about seven makes it semi-sweet. The full table for 1 and 5 gallons is in how much honey to backsweeten. To taste-test first, sweeten a measured sample, such as 1 cup of mead, and scale up: a gallon is 16 cups. Our guide to how to backsweeten mead walks through that bench trial and the common mistakes.

How to carbonate mead

Bottle conditioning uses a small, measured dose of sugar that the live yeast ferments inside a sealed bottle, trapping the CO2. The mead must be fully fermented and must not be stabilized, or it will not carbonate.

Dissolve the priming sugar in a little boiled and cooled water or warm mead, stir it gently into the whole batch in a bottling bucket, and bottle immediately. Keep the bottles at 65 to 75°F for 2 to 4 weeks, open one to check, then refrigerate. A mead that has aged for many months may have too little live yeast left to carbonate; add a small amount of fresh Champagne yeast at bottling if so.

How to bottle mead

Bottle when the mead is clear, finished, stable and tastes right. Clear enough to read print through the jug is a good test.

1. Confirm the gravity has not moved for at least three days, and longer if you have backsweetened.
2. Clean and sanitize bottles, closures, siphon, tubing and bottling wand.
3. Siphon without splashing, leaving the sediment behind. A bottling wand fills from the bottom and leaves the right headspace when you pull it out.
4. Leave about 1/2 to 3/4 inch of air below a cork, and about 1 inch in beer bottles.
5. Cork or cap, and label with the date and starting and final gravity.
6. Keep corked bottles upright for 2 to 3 days so the cork can expand, then store them on their sides somewhere cool and dark.

How long the bottles keep and how to store and serve them is covered in how to serve and store honey wine.

How long to age mead

Young mead often tastes thin, hot or yeasty, even when it was made well. Time fixes most of that:

• Harsh alcohol softens. The hot, solvent-like edge of a young mead, especially one fermented warm, fades over months.
• Yeast character drops away. Bready and sulfur notes from fermentation dissipate.
• Honey aroma integrates. The honey stops tasting like something added to alcohol and becomes part of one flavor.
• Slow, controlled oxidation adds depth. Nutty, dried-fruit notes develop in strong meads over years. Too much oxygen too fast is the opposite: flat, sherry-like and tired.

Rules of thumb: the stronger and sweeter the mead, the longer it improves. Session meads and bright fruit meads are best young, within months, before their fresh fruit fades. Traditional meads are good at 6 months and better at a year. Sack meads, bochets and oaked meads reward 2 years or more. Age in bulk if you can, under an airlock with little headspace, because a full carboy ages more evenly than a set of bottles. Then open a bottle every few months and drink the batch when you like it best.

Planning your next batch around how long you are willing to wait? Pick a yeast that fits the style in best yeast for mead, and start from one of our mead recipes.

Frequently asked questions