Cranberry mead recipe

At a glance

Style

Melomel

Alcohol

About 13.3% ABV

Finish

Semi-sweet

Difficulty

Beginner

Honey

Orange blossom or wildflower

Yeast

Lalvin 71B

Ready in

4 to 6 months

Batch

1 gallon, scalable

Ingredients

Quantities are for one US gallon (3.8 liters). Pick a batch size and every amount updates; one packet of yeast covers up to six gallons. Not sure how much honey your own twist needs? Use the mead calculator.

Swapping the fruit or changing the amount? Adding fruit to mead covers how much to use per gallon, when to add it and how long to leave it. The dose and timing of the enzyme are explained in how much pectic enzyme per gallon of mead. This recipe ferments dry and is sweetened at the end: how to backsweeten mead has the stabilizing doses and a honey chart for any batch size.

Equipment

• 2-gallon bucket with lid
• 1-gallon glass jug
• Airlock and drilled bung
• Hydrometer
• Nylon straining bag
• Potato masher
• Auto-siphon and tubing
• No-rinse sanitizer (Star San)

New to this? Our mead making kit checklist covers what each piece does and what you can skip.

Step-by-step method

1. Make the honey base

   Sanitize everything, warm the honey jar in hot water so it pours, dissolve it in half the water and top up to 1 gallon. The reading should be near 1.096.

2. Pitch the yeast

   Rehydrate the 71B with the Go-Ferm for 15 minutes and pitch. Keep it at 62 to 68°F (17 to 20°C) under an airlock.

3. Feed the yeast

   Add a quarter of the Fermaid O at 24, 48 and 72 hours and at the 1/3 sugar break (about 1.064) or on day 7. Degas gently before each addition.

4. Freeze the cranberries

   Rinse fresh cranberries, pick out any soft ones and freeze them for at least 24 hours. Bagged frozen cranberries are already done. Freezing splits the tough skins so the juice and color come out.

5. Crush and rack onto the fruit

   When the gravity is below 1.010 (2 to 3 weeks), thaw the cranberries in the straining bag inside a sanitized bucket and crush them with a sanitized masher until every berry has burst. Sprinkle on the pectic enzyme and rack the mead onto them. Cranberries are high in pectin, so do not skip the enzyme.

6. Seven to ten days on fruit

   Push the bag under daily; whole cranberries float and dry out on top. Expect only a small restart, because cranberries carry little sugar. Lift the bag after 7 to 10 days and let it drain without squeezing.

7. Clear and stabilize

   Rack into the glass jug, top up and give it about 6 weeks to clear. Once clear and stable, add the crushed Campden tablet and sorbate and wait 48 hours.

8. Sweeten generously

   Add honey 1 oz at a time, stirring and tasting: about 9 oz takes it from 1.000 to 1.018. Cranberry needs more sweetness than any other berry to stop tasting sharp. For a cranberry-orange version, add the orange zest in a small bag for 3 to 5 days before bottling.

9. Bottle and wait

   Bottle and give it at least 2 months. Keep it cool and out of the light so the red color holds.

Timeline

1. Day 0Mix the must, pitch yeast
2. Days 1 to 7Nutrient additions; freeze cranberries
3. Weeks 2 to 3Rack onto crushed cranberries
4. Weeks 4 to 5Remove fruit after 7 to 10 days
5. Weeks 10 to 12Stabilize, sweeten, bottle
6. Month 5 and onDrink; good for about 2 years

Why this recipe works

The fruit goes in secondary because of what cranberries are. They are very acidic, and they naturally contain benzoic acid, the same compound behind the sodium benzoate preservative used in sodas. In a fresh must, high acid plus a natural preservative can slow or stall a healthy yeast population before it gets going. Once the mead is fermented and already at 12% to 13% alcohol, neither matters.

Cranberries add very little sugar, about 4%, so 2.5 lb only adds roughly 5 gravity points. The honey sets the strength at about 1.096 before fruit. What the cranberries bring is acid, tannin from the skins and that deep red color.

The sweeter finish is part of the recipe, not a preference. A dry cranberry mead is sharp and thin. At 1.016 to 1.020 the sweetness balances the acid and the result tastes like fruit rather than like sour. Sweeten to taste, but expect to need more honey than for raspberry or cherry.

Orange blossom honey points the mead toward cranberry-orange, the classic holiday pairing. 71B is fruit-forward, tolerates about 14% alcohol and is known for softening malic acid, which takes a little of the edge off.

Variations

• Cranberry-orange: orange blossom honey plus the zest of one orange in a bag for 3 to 5 days before bottling.
• Spiced cranberry: add a cinnamon stick and two cloves with the orange zest for a mulled-wine feel, then serve it warm.
• Cranberry-apple: use preservative-free apple juice in place of the water and cut the honey to 1.75 lb, then follow the same secondary schedule (see our cyser recipe).

Troubleshooting

More mead recipes to try

• Cherry mead recipe: Half tart, half dark sweet cherries in secondary, with an optional hint of almond.
• Spiced mead (metheglin) recipe: Cinnamon, clove, orange and vanilla added by taste in secondary. The holiday mead.
• Joe's Ancient Orange Mead (JAOM) recipe: The famous beginner orange mead: bread yeast, a whole orange and no racking. Sweet and forgiving.

More fruit mead recipes: Strawberry mead, Raspberry mead, Blueberry mead, Blackberry mead, Cyser (apple mead), Peach mead, Mango mead (and pineapple mead), Pyment (grape mead), Elderberry mead, Banana mead, Pomegranate mead, Pumpkin mead, Apple pie mead.

Or browse all our mead recipes. If this is your first batch, start with the traditional mead recipe or the step-by-step guide to making honey wine.

Frequently asked questions