How to Make Mead at Home: A Complete Guide to Honey Wine

Why Mead Deserves a Place in Your Brewing Rotation

Mead often surprises first-time drinkers. It can be bone dry and wine-like, lightly sparkling and refreshing, or rich and complex with fruit, spice, and oak. The range of styles is genuinely enormous, and the process — while straightforward — rewards careful attention to fermentation science. If you've already brewed beer or wine, you'll find mead sits somewhere between the two, with its own quirks worth understanding.

Choosing Your Honey

Honey is your fermentable, your flavour base, and your identity as a mead maker. The variety you choose will define the finished drink more than almost any other decision.

• Wildflower honey — widely available and versatile; produces a well-rounded, lightly floral mead
• Heather honey — bold and aromatic; excellent for a traditional British-style mead with real character
• Orange blossom honey — delicate citrus notes; works beautifully in lighter, drier meads
• Manuka or raw honey — expensive but distinctive; best used where the honey flavour is the centrepiece

As a rough guide, use 1.2–1.5 kg of honey per 4.5 litres for a session-strength mead (around 8–10% ABV), or up to 2 kg per 4.5 litres for a full-bodied traditional mead closer to 14%.

Essential Equipment

Mead making requires minimal specialist kit, which is part of its appeal. You'll need:

• A sanitised fermentation vessel — a 5-litre demijohn works well for small batches
• An airlock and bung
• A hydrometer for tracking fermentation progress
• A long spoon or wine whip for degassing
• Siphon and tubing for racking

Browse our full range of homebrew equipment at BrewCo to make sure you have everything in place before you start.

Nutrients: The Most Overlooked Part of Mead Making

Honey is almost entirely sugar with very little in the way of yeast nutrients. Without intervention, your fermentation will stall, produce hydrogen sulphide (the classic 'bad egg' smell), or result in a harsh, hot finish. This is where staggered nutrient additions come in.

• Use a combination of Fermaid-O or Fermaid-K (organic and inorganic nitrogen sources) alongside DAP (diammonium phosphate)
• Add nutrients in stages — at pitch, then at 24 hours, 48 hours, and at the one-third sugar break
• Degas your must thoroughly at each addition to prevent foam-overs and encourage CO₂ release
• Target a YAN (yeast assimilable nitrogen) level of around 200–250 ppm for most meads

Getting your nutrients right is the single biggest upgrade you can make to your mead quality. Explore our mead making supplies for nutrients, yeasts, and adjuncts.

Yeast Selection

Wine yeasts are the standard choice for mead, and for good reason — they're clean, reliable, and alcohol-tolerant.

• Lalvin 71B — the go-to for most traditional and fruit meads; softens malic acid and produces a rounder finish
• Lalvin EC-1118 (Champagne yeast) — highly attenuative and vigorous; use when you want a very dry, sparkling result
• Lalvin D47 — excellent for floral and delicate meads, but ferment cool (below 18°C) to avoid fusel production
• Mangrove Jack's M05 Mead Yeast — a popular and forgiving choice that preserves honey aromatics

Styles Worth Exploring

Once you've mastered a traditional mead, there's a whole world of variation to explore:

• Melomel — mead fermented with fruit; try raspberries, blackberries, or elderberries for a rich, tannic result
• Metheglin — spiced mead; warming winter versions with cinnamon, clove, and vanilla are particularly rewarding
• Cyser — mead made with apple juice; sits at the crossroads of mead and cider with fantastic complexity
• Bochet — made with caramelised (burnt) honey; produces deep toffee and dark fruit notes

Patience and Clarity

Mead takes longer than beer to clear and condition. Rack off the lees after primary fermentation (usually 2–4 weeks), then allow the mead to clear in secondary for at least 4–8 weeks. Finings such as Kieselsol and Chitosan work well if you want to speed up clarity. Cold crashing at near-freezing temperatures for a week will also drop most haze before bottling.

Resist the urge to bottle too early — a mead that tastes harsh at 6 weeks will often be beautifully smooth at 6 months.

Shop at BrewCo

Everything you need to start brewing mead is available at BrewCo's mead making collection. From honey and nutrients to yeasts, demijohns, and airlocks, we stock a carefully chosen range to suit both first-time mead makers and experienced brewers looking to refine their craft. Based in Halifax, West Yorkshire, we offer fast UK delivery and friendly advice whenever you need it. Browse our homebrew equipment to complete your setup.