← Honey and bee products H46-03 · Module 3 of 7 · Pages: 21 · Worksheets: 7

Mead

Dry, medium and sweet mead from your own honey: a 10-litre recipe, fermentation, racking, ageing, bottling, fruit and spiced versions

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Mead

In short

  • The basis: 300 g of honey per litre of finished liquid gives a medium mead of 11–12 % alcohol.
  • Cleanliness is half the battle: everything that touches the mead is washed and sanitised.
  • Wine yeast and yeast nutrient: honey has little food for yeast, so without nutrient fermentation sticks.
  • The hydrometer tells you when fermentation is over. Bottle only when the gravity is the same three readings in a row.
  • Bottles closed too early burst. Don't sweeten mead before bottling without stabilising it.
  • Mead is an alcoholic drink: not for children, pregnant women or drivers; selling it needs licences.

What's inside

Chapters

  1. What mead is
  2. Equipment and hygiene
  3. Ingredients
  4. Recipe: medium mead, 10 litres
  5. Fermentation and monitoring
  6. Racking, clearing and ageing
  7. Sweetening and bottling
  8. Fruit and spiced mead
  9. When something goes wrong
  10. Alcohol, health and the rules
  11. Common mistakes
  12. Printable checklist

Worksheets

  • Mead calendar
  • Recipe calculator
  • Alcohol calculator
  • Date calculator
  • Batch log
  • Shopping list
  • Bottle labels

Fields and checkboxes can be filled in with Adobe Acrobat Reader (desktop and mobile), and the calculator adds up by itself. Filling in may not work in some browsers. A print version comes with the screen PDF.

This guide in other languages:

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