I just bottled my first mead and it turned out well enough that I decided to make a bigger batch for Christmas gifts this year. Unfortunately (or rather, fortunately!) I miscalculated and made way more must than I needed, so now I’m experimenting with random “recipes” I didn’t plan 😂 turned into a happy accident! I’ll need to get more bottles once they’re all ready.

4.5 gallons are a cinnamon apple made with equal parts water and apple juice, 1.5 gallons is the same, but with cranberries added, another gallon is blueberry apple, and another is plain apple.

My last two bottling days, in which I did three batches each time.

The older photo is my "Old Bohemia" mead (the sage-hops recipe famously mentioned in Kingdom Come: Deliverance), a coconut ube mead (made with coconut water and boiled ube), and the Miruvor Elvish Wine recipe that floats around this subreddit now and then.

The newer photo is my Blueberry Szechuan (typical mead with blueberry juice and szechuan peppercorns in secondary), Saturday Breakfast (an oaked bochet backsweetened with maple syrup and then cold-brewed with coffee beans), and chocolate-covered cherry (a traditional mead which I backsweetened with black cherry juice and lactose, and then rested on toasted cacao nibs and vanilla). Happy to provide more recipe detail if anyone is curious, but I just love the look of the bottles!

I can’t get a better picture so I an hoping I can get some clarity on what the reading shows. I am still very new to mead making.

What is the starting gravity of this mead(technically a cyser I think) it looks like it's close to the 9. I'm not great at looking at where it is and getting the gravity

This is a Hibiscus and black tea mead which had oak barrel chips infused in brandy. When I first bottled this after about 5 months brewing it had a very harsh taste and strong bitter alcohol taste (its also very strong 22% ). I backsweetened it a bit too. 8 months later and its mellowed quite a lot and is actually so good. I'll backsweeten less next time cause I think it would be better that way but still amazing now. This is wayyyyyyy better than I expected for a first time brew (i did 3 other flavours) and seeing how the flavour develops over time has been fascinating. I am keeping track for every 6 months to see how that develops. I have enough of each flavour to do it over a 3 year span so I will have ample data by the time this batch is finished.

Hello! This is my first batch of mead, and I’m a little unsure about if now’s the right time to rack.

It’s been a full month since I pitched this batch, and the gravity reading now says 0.994. I gently swashed it around to see if I could see the lees, but I don’t. None of that bottom part in the photo moved. The darkened bottom part you see is the bucket’s “heels.”

I was hoping to rack this weekend and try taste-testing to find the right back sweeten measurements with my roommate, although due to not seeing any lees, I’m unsure if it’s too soon.

I’m planning to get another reading tomorrow, but in the case that the final gravity reading remains 0.994 and I still don’t see lees, should I wait another week? Another month? Or would you stabilize and rack anyways? TYIA!

Context(you can ignore)

Work/life has me living out of a tent/truck/sometimes a tiny room, so our refrigerator and ordering things capacity is limited. I was talking with my buddies who’ve made mead and taught me the basics but I have some more specific science/finishing questions.

Questions

1. Can my mead be a very small batch? Like two mason jars worth. I don’t really drink besides for flavor but I’ve only seen people make huge batches.

2. Is it ok to use store bought pasteurized honey and arreate for yeast? Idk next time I’ll have yeast but we have air and a good amount of honey per person in storage for tea and shit.

3. Is the old glove trick fine as an airlock here? I learned that in my friends cellar on her experimental side batch that she wasn’t using a kit on.

4. For non yeast natural air aerated pasteurized honey what ratio to water should I use when initially mixing?

5. When do I add fruit flavors(natural canned fruit juices we have) so they don’t cause bacteria? Can I add those to honey instead of water(this is for my buddy who also wants to do this)

6. What’s the visual sign my mead is done? Operating under the assumption that I will not have an ethanol test.

I apologize if this is too long but cheers.

Hey mead lovers, I'm 21 (M), Brazilian, and have been making meads and melomels for two years now.

I have a question that I would like y'all's opinions on whether it should be taken seriously.

Here in South America in general, it is common for Generation X and beyond to prefer drinking beverages chilled, so am I, and when it comes to mead making, after my mead is done, I serve it cold to taste. I've never seen the wrong of it until I travelled to Europe and New Zealand, where people tend to drink it at room temperature. I've wondered why, asked some friends of mine there, and they replied saying:

"If a drink is already good at room temperature, it doesn't matter what temperature it is, but if it's not tasty at room temperature in the first place and only good after chilling, it's not a good drink".

And some also said that some meads should be heated before drinking; I've wondered how that would be practical in a tropical(hot) land like mine, since most of the year in my country is very hot and not so pleasant to drink non-refreshing drinks on the weekends.

So I tried some of my favourite meads, "mulberry melomel" and "plain eucalyptus honey mead" as it is in room temperature and to be honest it tasted inferior(to my pallet) as the ones I've tasted abroad in room temperature, so it got me wondering if for now on I should be focused on it tasting great at room temperature first or not... because at the end of the day my chilled meads do taste quite nice(not being naive, I still have lots to improve).

Have you guys ever thought of it? Should it matter? Or does it depend on the country's drinking culture?

Would love to know your view on this topic :)

So i kinda screwed up i think. I put whole tea bags into my brew after about two weeks of fermentation (was attempting to add a bit of mouth feel to it) when i did a gravity check. Next time checked gravity and now as it clarifies it forward these small yellow hard things that I've never seen before and it has me a bit concerned. It was made with my own honey thats strained to get large chunks of wax out but not filtered. So could it just be tiny bits of wax thats collected and floated to the surface?

I’ve got a traditional mead fermenting right now and I’m curious on how I can flavor it to taste like coconut? I want to try and go for a toasty creamy taste. Does anyone have some tips?

Hello! I am curious how everyone stores their mead. I keep mine in the basement, and recently it has developed some mold issues on the outer bottles and wax seals (see pictures). I cleaned and sanitized everything, and also upgraded my dehumidifier, but I was wondering if anyone has any other tips for how to store mead to avoid these issues in the future.

I've been brewing for a couple of years now, slowly progressing from "It's Drinkable" to "I'd gift it to friends". I think I've hit my first "I'd go out of my way to buy that"! My personal reserve is down to 5 bottles after friends had a taste

The nose reminds me of a freshly peeled apple, and the taste has those bright apple/honey notes followed by an oaked/vanilla/rich honey finish. Very smooth at 13% and sweet, but not overdoing it.

This is a fairly simple sweet traditional made using NSW Bloodwood Honey + 71B + water... Nothing too crazy, but it has taken 3 attempts to really nail both the recipe and the process.

I've found with this honey that the final flavour is heavily dependent on brewing with the honey, rather than backsweeting at the end. This made previous attempts without temperature control vary wildly especially in QLD/AUS.

• First attempt ended early due to the heat at 1.043, tasty but not what I was after
• Second attempt went long and ended at 1.008, I tried the backsweetening here to 1.020, but it lost a lot of its character... Took on a more generic honey taste
• This attempt, sticking to 20c netted me the sweetspot between the two at 1.027

This one was brewed in a ~10L batch, sat in primary for about a month, then racked to sit on an American oak spiral for a whole year.

Recipe without the waffle:

• ~4kg of NSW Bloodwood Honey
• ~6L spring water (to target 1.126 OG)
• 10g of Lalvin 71B
• Fermaid-O following TOSNA 2.0
• Primary lasted ~1mth
• Racked onto medium toast American Oak for 12mths
• No clarifying agents used
• Stabilised and bottled in the affordable and stylish Ikea 500ml swingtops

Had a batch of traditional mead in my basement for awhile. Kinda forgot about it for a year or so. But when I finally remembered it was down there I noticed the airlock had no more water in it and this is what it looks like. Doesn't smell bad but definitely doesn't look the best. Any thoughts?

So I think I'm about to begin bottling here in a few weeks with my first batches.

I'm planning on getting a table corker along with 750ml bottles and #9 corks (?).

I guess my real question is, is there a procedure for working? As in do I keep them stored upright or on its side? A little of both?​

Hi dear guys

My wife and I are trying to do mead, as many in here :)

We are totally new and the first two batches did not work for us.

Can someone with expirience help us?

Does this look okay? We used pure-culture yeast, honey, water and apples, it is now about 4-5 weeks old and the foam is disappearing, but I am a bit concerned about the white stripes on top.

Thank you

I've had this happen to me twice now so I'm wondering if anyone else has run into it. Over the last couple summers I've made a pair of spicy pineapple meads. Both were 1-gallon batches with QA23 yeast, and the first was pineapple-jalapeno and the second was pineapple-habanero. In both cases I used 52 fl. oz. Aldi not-from-concentrate pineapple juice, water up to a gallon, and honey up to about S.G. 1.100 or so. For the jalapeno one I used a half dozen seeded jalapenos in primary, and in the habanero one I used 3 seeded habaneros in primary. 1 teaspoon total of yeast nutrient, added in 4 daily increments, starting with fermaid K then switching to fermaid O.

In both cases, the mead developed a notable (maybe even pronounced) peanut butter flavor after a couple months of aging. I initially chalked it up to the jalapenos, but would say it was slightly more pronounced in the habanero batch. This has led me to wonder if it's something to do with the pineapple juice? Has anyone else had this happen to them when fermenting pineapple juice in a mead?

I plan to start a mango habanero mead over the winter so it's ready to drink in the summer but if it's the peppers giving me these issues I want to know ahead of time.

Finally, I'm getting around to make the famous Viking Blod and try doing a Guinness Braggot

VIKING BLOD

1kg natural honey + water

2.5L cherry and white grape juice

1.3L Hibiscus and mint

5g yeast

Total 5.1L

O.G 1.106

------‐---------------

GUINNESS BRAGGOT

1kg natural honey + water

8x440ml cans of non-alcoholic Guinness beer

5g yeast

Total 4.8L

O.G 1.054

Three gallons of base mead. 1.106 SG. I'm thinking a dragon fruit hibiscus 🌺 mead or Heather honey back sweetened traditional.

I wondered if anybody had any tips about using cranberries in secondary?

I plan on doing a session mead (~5% abv) and racking on top of frozen cranberries. I heard that fermentation with this fruit can be tricky but I wonder if that applies when its used at this step.

Thanks in advance for your help!

I added a Camden tablet, crushed up and the day later added potassium sorbet. I just transferred it over to my secondary vessel to cold crash before bottling. And the airlock on my secondary vessel is bubbling. Did I mess up? This is my first mead so I’m a bit confused.

Pretty excited about the newest mead I’ve made! I was at a ren faire and found a vender called 559 Honey, and they had different flavors. The samples were amazing!

I got two, one was their orange/lemon and another was huckleberry. So far, these flavors came out super well in the mead and even though the huckleberry is still very young, it’s got a gorgeous red color.

Citrus recipe-
3lbs orange honey from 559 Honey
1 gallon water
K1-V1116 yeast (one packet)
Fed the first three days with Fermaid

For the other, exact same recipe but with 3lbs of their huckleberry honey.

I just started my first traditional mead about 2 hours ago (first picture) and now it looks like a collection of a bunch of stuff at the bottom of the carboy (lees? Dead yeast?).

Im really worried and would love to have to help with figuring out what's going on and if i need to do anything to fix it.

Ingredient specifications:

- Batch Size: 2.3 Gallons

- Honey: S&J Produce Farmers Market, 6lbs total + 0.6lbs of store bought "Nate's 100% pure raw honey"

- Yeast: 5g of Lalvin D47, rehydrated in ~6.5g of go-ferm in ~125mL boiled water, cooled to ~104°F

- Starting Gravity: ~1.095

This was then split from my 5 gallon bucket to a 1 gallon carboy and a 2 gallon bucket, put into my temperature controlled fridge.

I've kept my fridge around 65 - 66°, as ive seen that's the ideal temp for Lalvin D47.

After about 2 hours, all this stuff settled at the bottom of both containers. I just shook them, sadly forgot to take a picture before shaking. The layer at the bottom of the 1 gallon glass carboy was about an inch and a half thick.

Help please!

Larry was kind enough to give them a home on the wiki: https://wiki.meadtools.com/en/recipes/historical

These are close translations, not modernized. No batch sizes, no nutrient schedules, just what the cook or cellar master wrote down back then. There’s a hopped sage mead, the old french bochet, a spiced cherry mead, one where you add water until an egg floats, and a rose and laurel berry mead.

The intro page explains how to read them and what yeast they actually used. Spoiler: they didn’t just wait for wild yeast.

i spent quite a while translating and checking these against the original manuscripts. If you brew one, let me know how it turned out.

There isnt much flavour left, and it is a bit harsh alcohol flavour. Will giving it time in a bottle in the closet fix the flavour? How do i improve the flavour? I added some frozen fruit pulp (second fermentation) and i think it sent the yeast into overdrive, and now i got a bit of a dry slightly bitter wine (not unpleasant bitter). Was hoping for a more cassis flavor