Types of mead: 18 styles explained

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The short answer

Some of these names are centuries old, some were coined by modern homebrewers, and a few are national traditions with legal definitions. We note which is which, and we only give an etymology where one is actually documented.

All 18 types at a glance

Honey-only meads: traditional, show, sack, hydromel

These four names describe mead with nothing in it but honey, water and yeast. The first two are about purity; the last two are about strength.

Traditional mead

What it is: honey, water and yeast, and nothing that adds flavor. The BJCP files it as category M1 and splits it by sweetness into dry (M1A), semi-sweet (M1B) and sweet (M1C).

Strength and sweetness: usually standard strength, 7.5% to 14% ABV. BJCP sweetness bands run by final gravity: dry 0.990 to 1.010, semi-sweet 1.010 to 1.025, sweet 1.025 to 1.050.

What it tastes like: the honey, and only the honey. The BJCP compares a dry traditional mead to a dry white wine: subtle honey character, soft fruity notes, clean alcohol. Orange blossom tastes of citrus and flowers, buckwheat of molasses. That makes choosing the honey the biggest decision in the recipe. More on flavor in what honey wine tastes like.

Make it: our traditional mead recipe is the right first batch, and how to make honey wine explains every step of it. For a rustic, old-world take, try our Viking mead.

Show mead

What it is: a name for plain mead, honey and water as the base with nothing added for flavor. In practice it means the same as traditional. Some mead makers use it more strictly, for a mead that also has no acid, tannin or other adjustments, so the honey is "shown" with nothing to hide behind.

Strength and sweetness: the same as traditional mead, dry to sweet.

What it tastes like: a clean, direct expression of one honey. Because nothing masks faults, it is one of the hardest styles to make well.

Make it: follow our traditional recipe with a honey you love on a spoon.

Sack mead

What it is: a mead made with more honey than usual, so it finishes stronger and usually sweeter. The name is generally assumed to borrow from sack, the old English word for strong Spanish and Canary Island wines such as sherry, though we have not found a documented link.

Strength and sweetness: BJCP defines sack strength as 14% to 18% ABV, from a starting gravity of 1.120 to 1.170. That takes roughly 3.5 to 5 lb of honey per gallon. Most are sweet, because the yeast reaches its alcohol limit before it eats all the sugar.

What it tastes like: rich, warming and dessert-like, with dried fruit and honeycomb notes that deepen over years in the bottle. Young sack meads can taste hot; they need time.

Make it: work out the honey with our honey per gallon calculator, add some of it in stages, and pick a high-tolerance yeast from our mead yeast guide.

Hydromel (session mead)

What it is: a light mead made with extra water. The word comes from the Greek hydromeli, literally "water-honey". In French, hydromel is simply the word for mead of any strength, so a French or Quebec label saying hydromel may be a full-strength wine.

Strength and sweetness: BJCP hydromel strength is 3.5% to 7.5% ABV, from a starting gravity of 1.035 to 1.080. Often dry or off-dry and often carbonated, which is why so many are sold in cans.

What it tastes like: light, crisp and quick to drink, closer to a cider or a beer in weight than to a wine. Many are flavored with fruit or hops.

Make it: our session mead recipe is ready to drink in weeks rather than months.

Fruit meads: melomel, cyser, pyment

Fruit is the most popular addition to mead in the US. The 2026 BJCP guidelines put all fruit meads in category M2, named Melomel, and split it into cyser, pyment, berry, stone fruit and other fruit.

Melomel

What it is: any mead made with fruit. Apples and grapes have their own names (cyser and pyment); everything else, from strawberries to mango, is simply a melomel. The fruit can go in during primary fermentation, where it adds color and a wine-like depth, or in secondary, where it keeps more fresh aroma. The origin of the word itself is not well documented.

Strength and sweetness: usually standard strength, 8% to 14% ABV. Fruit adds sugar and acid, so a melomel can taste drier than its gravity suggests. Many are finished semi-sweet to lift the fruit.

What it tastes like: fruit first, honey second. A well-made melomel should still taste like mead, not like fruit wine with a spoonful of honey. Tart fruits such as raspberry, blackberry and cherry balance honey's sweetness best.

Make it:

• Strawberry mead
• Raspberry mead
• Blueberry mead
• Blackberry mead
• Cherry mead
• Peach mead
• Mango mead
• Banana mead
• Pomegranate mead
• Elderberry mead
• Cranberry mead, for the holidays
• Pumpkin mead, a spiced melomel
• Joe's Ancient Orange mead, the famous bread-yeast beginner recipe

Cyser

What it is: mead made with apples, usually by fermenting honey in apple juice or cider instead of water. The 2026 BJCP guidelines (M2A) extend it to other pome fruit, so pears and quince count too. The word traces back through Middle English ciser and Medieval Latin sicera, a strong drink; it shares that root with "cider".

Strength and sweetness: anything from hydromel to sack. Two pounds of honey per gallon of apple juice starts around 1.100 and lands near 13% if fermented dry.

What it tastes like: halfway between honey wine and hard cider: fresh apple, a little tartness, and honey on the finish. It is one of the easiest styles to make well, because apple juice brings the acidity and nutrients honey lacks.

Make it: our cyser recipe uses store-bought juice, and apple pie mead is the same base spiced with cinnamon and vanilla.

Pyment

What it is: mead made with grapes or grape juice (BJCP M2B). The word comes from Old French piment, a spiced drink, from Late Latin pigmentum. In the Middle Ages it meant grape wine sweetened with honey and spices, closer to what we now call hippocras. Today it means a honey and grape fermentation, with or without spice.

Strength and sweetness: usually wine strength, 11% to 14%, from dry to dessert-sweet.

What it tastes like: like a wine with a honeyed middle. White grapes give a floral, fruity pyment; red grapes add color and tannin, which honey wine normally lacks.

Make it: our pyment recipe works with winemaking juice or bottled grape juice.

Herb, spice and flower meads

Metheglin

What it is: mead flavored with herbs or spices (BJCP M3A). The name is Welsh: meddyglyn, from meddyg, "healing" or "physician", and llyn, "liquor". In 13th-century Welsh the word meant a medicine or potion; by the 14th it meant spiced mead.

Strength and sweetness: any strength. Warm spices such as cinnamon, clove and vanilla usually suit a semi-sweet or sweet mead; herbs and ginger work well dry.

What it tastes like: it depends entirely on the spice. The mistake to avoid is too much: spice keeps getting stronger for weeks, so start with less than you think and add more after fermentation.

Make it:

• Spiced mead (cinnamon, clove, vanilla)
• Ginger mead
• Coffee mead
• Lavender mead
• Hibiscus mead

Rhodomel

What it is: mead made with roses: petals, hips or rose water. From the Greek rhodomeli, "rose-honey". The name is sometimes stretched to any flower mead, such as elderflower, heather or dandelion.

Strength and sweetness: standard strength; usually left off-dry to sweet, because sweetness carries floral aroma.

What it tastes like: perfumed and delicate, like Turkish delight when rose petals are used, tart and fruity with rose hips. Easily overdone.

Make it: we don't have a rose recipe yet. Our hibiscus mead and lavender mead use the same technique: steep the flowers briefly in secondary.

Capsicumel

What it is: mead flavored with chili peppers, hot or mild. The name joins capsicum, the pepper genus, with mel, Latin for honey. In BJCP competitions it is entered with the spiced meads (M3); the 2015 guidelines list chili meads among the commercial examples.

Strength and sweetness: standard strength and usually semi-sweet or sweet, because sugar tames heat.

What it tastes like: honey up front, then a slow build of warmth. Jalapeño brings green, vegetal notes; chipotle brings smoke; habanero brings tropical fruit along with serious heat. Often paired with fruit, as in mango-habanero.

Make it: no recipe yet. Add sliced peppers to a finished traditional mead and taste daily; heat extracts in days, not weeks.

Specialty meads: braggot, bochet, acerglyn

Braggot

What it is: mead made with malt, usually with hops too, so it sits between mead and beer (BJCP M4A: "a mead made with malt or beer"). The name comes from Welsh bragawd, from brag, malt. It is old: in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, written in the late 1300s, the Miller says Alisoun's mouth was "sweete as bragot or the meeth".

Strength and sweetness: anywhere from beer strength to wine strength. Usually dry to semi-sweet. How mead, beer and wine differ is covered in mead vs wine vs beer.

What it tastes like: depends on the beer it leans toward. Pale malt and hops make something like a honeyed pale ale; dark malts make a honey porter or barleywine. The BJCP asks for more mead character than a honey beer, with the two well integrated.

Make it: our braggot recipe uses malt extract, so no brewing equipment is needed.

Bochet

What it is: mead made from honey that is cooked until it caramelizes before the water is added. The oldest known complete recipe is in Le Ménagier de Paris, a French household book from around 1393: boil the honey, stirring, until it throws off little bubbles that burst with "a little blackish steam", then add water and ferment with beer yeast. The 2026 BJCP guidelines gave bochet its own style (M4B) for the first time.

Strength and sweetness: usually standard strength and semi-sweet to sweet, because caramelizing makes part of the sugar unfermentable and leaves body behind.

What it tastes like: the BJCP lists caramel, butterscotch, treacle, chocolate and coffee. Toasted marshmallow and crème brûlée are the notes most people reach for. Modern bochet should not taste burnt; the BJCP calls acrid burnt flavor undesirable.

Make it: our bochet recipe explains how dark to take the honey, and how to do it without a boil-over. Hot sugar burns badly; follow the safety steps.

Acerglyn

What it is: mead made with honey and maple syrup. The name appears to be a modern coinage joining Acer, the maple genus, to the ending of metheglin. In the 2015 BJCP guidelines, maple syrup is one of the extra fermentables that sends a mead to the experimental category.

Strength and sweetness: standard strength, usually finished semi-sweet: maple aroma fades when fermented fully dry, and a little sweetness brings it back.

What it tastes like: honey and maple, with vanilla and caramel. Darker, stronger-flavored syrup survives fermentation best.

Make it: our acerglyn recipe.

Regional meads: tej, Polish mead, medovukha, sima

These are national traditions with their own methods, some older than the English names above. The BJCP used to group them as "historical" meads; the 2026 guidelines give Polish mead its own style.

Tej (Ethiopia)

What it is: Ethiopian honey wine, fermented with wild yeast and flavored with gesho, a bitter shrub that plays the role hops play in beer. Called mes in Eritrea. Traditionally served in a narrow-necked flask called a berele.

Strength and sweetness: typically 7% to 11% ABV, sweeter and weaker when young, drier and stronger as it ages.

What it tastes like: golden and slightly cloudy, sweet up front with a herbal, hop-like bitter finish.

Make it: the full story, and a recipe, are in our guide to tej.

Polish mead (miód pitny)

What it is: miód pitny, "drinkable honey", made for over a thousand years across what is now Poland and Lithuania. It is graded by how much water is added per part of honey, and the name counts the total parts: a trójniak is one part honey and two of water, three parts in all. The grades were first written into Polish law in 1948, and since 2008 the four names have been protected in the EU as a Traditional Speciality Guaranteed. The 2026 BJCP guidelines list it as style M4C.

What it tastes like: viscous, sweet and aged, with notes of dried fruit, caramel and honeycomb. Many are flavored with fruit juice, spices or hops.

Make it: no recipe yet. A home trójniak takes roughly 4 lb of honey per gallon; see our honey-to-water ratio table.

Medovukha (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus)

What it is: the Eastern Slavic honey drink, made since pagan times. The name shares its root with "mead": the Proto-Indo-European médʰu, honey. Early medovukha was left to ferment naturally for years, which made it expensive; heating the honey and water was found to speed fermentation, and it became an everyday folk drink. It stayed popular in the region into the 19th century, long after mead had faded in Western Europe. The town of Suzdal is best known for it today.

Strength and sweetness: it ferments in under a month and is drunk young, so it is usually sweet. Strength varies widely by producer, from lightly alcoholic to wine strength.

What it tastes like: fresh, sweet and honeyed, sometimes flavored with herbs or berries.

Sima (Finland)

What it is: a Finnish spring drink of lemon, sugar and yeast, bottled with a few raisins. The raisins are the timer: when they float to the top, it is ready. It is tied to Vappu, the May Day festival. Sima was originally a honey mead, reportedly brought to Finland in the 1500s from Lübeck and Riga, but today brown or white sugar usually replaces the honey. Sima is an old Finnish word for honey, used for the drink in the Kalevala.

Strength and sweetness: very low alcohol, because it ferments for only a day or two before chilling. Store-bought sima is sold as a soft drink at under 1%.

What it tastes like: sweet, fizzy, tart lemonade with a light yeasty edge.

Sparkling mead

What it is: any style of mead with bubbles. The BJCP describes three levels: still (which may have very light bubbles), petillant (lightly sparkling) and sparkling (from mouth-filling to Champagne-like). The bubbles come either from a second fermentation in a sealed bottle or tank, as with Champagne, or from forced carbonation.

Strength and sweetness: any. Hydromels are often sparkling; sparkling traditional meads often run 11% to 13% and are made dry to off-dry, like a brut or extra dry sparkling wine.

What it tastes like: the carbonation lifts the honey aroma out of the glass and makes the mead taste drier and fresher than a still one at the same sweetness.

Make it: read our sparkling honey wine guide, and the sparkling option in our mead recipe. Only ever use bottles made to hold pressure.

How competitions classify mead (BJCP)

The Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) writes the style guidelines used at most US homebrew competitions. Its current mead guidelines, published in 2026, replace the 2015 edition and sort mead into four categories:

Every entry must also declare three things: strength (hydromel 3.5% to 7.5%, standard 7.5% to 14%, sack 14% to 18%), sweetness (dry, semi-sweet or sweet) and carbonation (still, petillant or sparkling). That is why you will often see a mead described as, say, "a sparkling, semi-sweet hydromel cyser".

Recipes for every style

Our mead recipe collection has a tested one-gallon recipe for most of the styles above, each scaled for 1, 3 and 5 gallons with the honey, yeast and nutrient worked out. New to mead? Start with the traditional recipe, then move to a cyser or a strawberry melomel. Not sure which yeast to buy? See the best yeast for mead.

Frequently asked questions