At a glance
- Style
- Traditional
- Alcohol
- About 11.6% ABV
- Finish
- Semi-sweet
- Difficulty
- Beginner
- Honey
- Clover, wildflower or orange blossom
- Yeast
- Lalvin 71B
- Ready in
- 3 to 4 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.
- 2.5 lb Honey for the must (clover, wildflower or orange blossom) (about 3 1/3 cups)
- 5 oz Honey for sweetening at the end (the rest of a 3 lb jar; add to taste)
- 0.8 gallons Spring water (to make 1 gallon of must with the honey)
- 1 packet Lalvin 71B wine yeast (5 g; one packet covers up to 6 gallons)
- 6 g Go-Ferm (yeast rehydration nutrient) (optional but recommended)
- 4 g Fermaid O yeast nutrient (split into 4 doses, see steps)
- 0.5 tsp Potassium sorbate (to stabilize before sweetening)
- 1 Campden tablet (potassium metabisulfite)
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
- Two 1-gallon glass jugs (or a 2-gallon bucket and one jug)
- Airlock and drilled bung
- Hydrometer and test jar
- Funnel
- Auto-siphon and tubing
- No-rinse sanitizer (Star San)
- Five 750 ml bottles with corks or swing-tops
New to this? Our mead making kit checklist covers what each piece does and what you can skip.
Step-by-step method
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Sanitize
Clean, then sanitize everything that will touch the mead: jug, funnel, spoon, hydrometer, airlock and bung. A no-rinse sanitizer takes two minutes and prevents nearly every problem a first batch runs into.
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Mix the must
Stand the honey jar in hot tap water for ten minutes so it pours. Weigh out 2.5 lb, pour it into the jug through the funnel, add about half a gallon of room-temperature water, cap and shake hard until no honey sits on the bottom. Top up with water to the 1-gallon mark, leaving about three inches of headspace. Do not boil it: heat drives off the aroma. Keep the rest of the jar for sweetening.
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Take a gravity reading
Fill the test jar and float the hydrometer. You should read about 1.088. Write it down: you need it to work out the alcohol, and to know where the 1/3 sugar break falls (about 1.059).
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Pitch the yeast
Rehydrate the 71B with the Go-Ferm in 50 ml of water at 104°F (40°C) for 15 minutes, then pour it in once it is within 18°F (10°C) of the must. Fit the bung and airlock and keep the jug somewhere dark at 62 to 68°F (17 to 20°C).
-
Feed the yeast for a week
Honey has almost none of the nitrogen yeast needs. Add 1 g of Fermaid O at 24, 48 and 72 hours after pitching, and the last gram at the 1/3 sugar break (about 1.059) or on day 7, whichever comes first. Swirl the jug gently first to release gas, then add the powder slowly, or it will foam over.
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Let it ferment dry
The airlock is busy for one to two weeks, then slows. After three weeks take a reading, and another three days later. When it is the same both times, usually between 0.996 and 1.000, fermentation is finished.
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Rack and clear
Siphon the mead off the sediment into the second sanitized jug, top up with a little water so less than two inches of air remains, and refit the airlock. Leave it 6 to 8 weeks. It clears from the top down; rack once more if a thick layer of sediment forms.
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Stabilize
When the mead is clear enough to read print through, add the crushed Campden tablet, wait 12 to 24 hours, then stir in the potassium sorbate and wait another day. This stops the yeast from fermenting the honey you are about to add.
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Sweeten to taste and bottle
Dissolve the reserved honey in a cup of the mead and stir it back in an ounce at a time, tasting as you go. Each ounce raises the gravity of a gallon by about 0.002, so 5 oz lands near 1.010, a balanced semi-sweet. Stop earlier for off-dry, or skip this step and the stabilizing entirely for a dry mead. Wait a week, check that the gravity has not moved, then bottle.
Timeline
- Day 0Mix the must, take a reading, pitch yeast
- Days 1 to 7Four nutrient additions, swirl daily
- Weeks 3 to 4Fermentation finishes; rack to the second jug
- Weeks 4 to 12Clears and mellows
- Month 3Stabilize, sweeten, bottle
- Month 4 and onDrink; better at 6 to 12 months
Why this recipe works
Two and a half pounds in the must, not three, is the main choice here. It starts near 1.088 and ferments to about 11.6% ABV, comfortably inside what 71B tolerates, so the yeast finishes cleanly and dry instead of stalling somewhere unpredictable. A mead that finishes without stress needs far less aging to taste good.
Sweetness is added at the end rather than left to chance. Recipes that load in extra honey and hope the yeast gives up at the right moment produce a different mead every time. Fermenting dry, stabilizing and then stirring in honey by taste gives the same result every batch, and the honey you add last has never been through fermentation, so it brings fresh honey aroma with it.
The staggered nutrient schedule is what separates modern mead from the harsh, slow meads of older recipes. Honey is nearly pure sugar. Fed in four small doses over the first week, yeast ferments a traditional mead in three to four weeks without the rotten-egg and solvent notes that used to take a year to fade.
There is nothing in a traditional mead to hide behind, so the honey is the flavor. A clean clover or wildflower honey makes a clean, floral mead; orange blossom makes a perfumed one. Do not heat it, and do not buy the cheapest blended honey you can find for this one.
Variations
- Dry: skip the sorbate, the Campden tablet and the sweetening honey. For a stronger dry mead, put all 3 lb in the must (about 1.105, 13.8% ABV) and use EC-1118 yeast.
- Sweet: sweeten with 10 to 14 oz of honey instead of 5 for a dessert-style mead around 1.020 to 1.030.
- Sparkling: use 2.5 lb, ferment dry, skip the stabilizers, prime with 1 oz of honey per gallon and bottle in pressure-rated bottles (see our sparkling guide).
- Oaked: add 0.5 oz of medium-toast oak cubes during clearing for 2 to 4 weeks, tasting weekly.
Troubleshooting
| Problem | What to do |
|---|---|
| No bubbles after 48 hours | Check the gravity, not the airlock: a leaky bung hides a healthy ferment. If the reading has not moved, warm the jug to 65 to 70°F and pitch a fresh packet of yeast. |
| It smells like rotten eggs | Hydrogen sulfide from hungry yeast. Swirl to release gas and make sure the nutrient doses went in on schedule. It usually clears within days. |
| It tastes harsh or hot | It is young, or it fermented too warm. Give it three more months in the jug or bottle; a little sweetness also softens the edge. |
| It started bubbling again after sweetening | It was not fully stabilized. Do not bottle. Let it finish, stabilize again with both sulfite and sorbate, and wait a week before sweetening a second time. |
More mead recipes to try
- Session mead (hydromel) recipe: Half the honey, a clean ale yeast and a crisp finish. Drinkable in six weeks, excellent sparkling.
- Strawberry mead recipe: Fruit in secondary, a gentle yeast and a semi-sweet finish that keeps the fresh-berry nose.
- Cyser (apple mead) recipe: Apple juice replaces the water. Crisp, easy and ready sooner than most meads.
Or browse all our mead recipes. For the same batch explained step by step, with photos and the reasoning behind each stage, see how to make honey wine.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best 1-gallon mead recipe for a beginner?
A traditional mead: 2.5 to 3 lb of honey, water to make one gallon, a packet of wine yeast such as Lalvin 71B and about 4 g of yeast nutrient in four doses. It ferments in three to four weeks and is drinkable in about three months.
How much honey do I need for 1 gallon of traditional mead?
One 3 lb jar. This recipe ferments 2.5 lb, for about 11.6% ABV, and uses the rest to sweeten. Putting all 3 lb in the must gives a stronger mead of about 13.8% if it ferments dry.
What is a traditional mead?
Mead made from honey, water and yeast only, with no fruit, spice or grain. Competition guidelines call a version made with no additives at all a show mead.
Can I make this mead without yeast nutrient?
It will ferment, but slowly, and it is far more likely to smell of sulfur and taste harsh. Nutrient is the cheapest improvement you can make to a traditional mead.
Can I scale this recipe to 5 gallons?
Yes. Use the batch-size switch above: 12.5 lb of honey in the must, about 20 g of Fermaid O in four doses and still one packet of yeast, though two start faster.
How long does a 1-gallon mead take?
About three months to bottle and four to drink: three to four weeks of fermentation, six to eight weeks of clearing, then a few weeks in the bottle. It keeps improving for a year.
How strong is this traditional mead?
About 11.6% ABV, similar to a white wine.