Mead was my first real failure. 1997, a five-litre demijohn full of honey and tap water, no idea about nutrients. After two weeks the whole cellar smelled of rotten eggs. The batch stood still, the yeast had starved, and I didn't know why. Since then I've learned mead-making, and I promise you: it's no witchcraft. But it's nothing for the impatient either.
Honey wine is probably the oldest fermented drink we know. The traces reach back over 5,000 years, long before the first grape wines. I need no drinking horn and no fur over my shoulder for it. I need good honey, clean water, the right yeast and patience. In exactly that order.
The honey decides before you even begin
The honey is your entire aroma base, there's nothing more in it at the start. A mild honey like acacia or rapeseed gives a restrained, clear mead. Strong varieties like forest, chestnut or lime honey bring distinctly more character, sometimes almost malty. Both are right, you just have to know what you want.
What I advise against: the cheapest baker's honey off the shelf, often strongly heated and flat in flavour. And please don't boil the honey. That used to be common, to clarify it, but it drives out the fine aromas. Today I dissolve it lukewarm at about 40 degrees in one part of the water, no more.
Water and ratio: the sober numbers
Take soft, odour-neutral water. Heavily chlorinated tap water you either leave standing open overnight or you reach for still spring water. Chlorine and yeast don't get along.
For a semi-dry mead around 12 to 13 percent vol I reckon with a good 300 grams of honey per litre of water. That brings you, in must weight, into the region of 90 to 100 °Oechsle. Check that with the must hydrometer after dissolving, because honey varies in sugar content. If you want it sweeter, you go higher, but then have to stabilise at the end. If you want it drier and lighter, you take less honey. As a rough rule of thumb for the start: one part honey to three or four parts water.
Why the honey lets your yeast starve
This is the point at which everything went wrong in 1997, and the reason mead is different from grape wine. Honey is almost pure sugar. What the yeast lacks is nitrogen, more precisely the available amino acids with which it multiplies and works. Grape must brings those along by nature, honey practically none.
If the yeast gets no nitrogen, exactly what I smelled back then happens: it gets into stress, produces hydrogen sulphide, and your cellar stinks of rotten eggs. In the worst case the fermentation stops entirely. That's why yeast nutrient with mead is not optional, but mandatory. You add the nutrient to the batch, dosed as per the pack instructions. Without it you needn't even begin.
The right yeast for a sugar-rich batch
A mead batch starts with a great deal of sugar, and not every yeast copes with that. An ordinary universal yeast can strike its sails early under such high sugar pressure and leave you with a stalled, sticky batch.
For such batches I take a cultured yeast bred precisely for that, for wines with high sugar content and medium alcohol content, that is the class of mead, Auslese, ice wine. It works reliably through instead of giving up at 10 percent. Rehydrate the dry yeast briefly in a little lukewarm water before you add it, then it starts more surely.
How you set it up, step by step
- Clean and disinfect everything. Demijohn, airlock, funnel, spoon. Here I'm strict, and for good reason: my acetic spoilage of 1998 came not from bad luck but from a badly rinsed tube. Acetic bacteria forgive no carelessness.
- Dissolve the honey lukewarm. One part of the water at around 40 degrees, stir in the honey until everything is clearly dissolved. Don't boil.
- Top up to volume. Fill up to the target volume with cold water and mix well so you don't have a honey layer at the bottom.
- Measure the must weight. Hydrometer in, check °Oechsle, correct with honey or water if needed.
- Add nutrient and yeast. Stir in the yeast nutrient, add the rehydrated yeast.
- Fit the airlock. Fill it with water. Leave plenty of air in the demijohn, at least a hand's width. Too full a demijohn plus vigorous fermentation, that was my exploded demijohn back then, honey water on the cellar ceiling.
- Leave warm and quiet. A steady 18 to 20 degrees. The main fermentation usually takes two to four weeks, you recognise the end by the airlock barely bubbling any more.
Maturing: six to twelve months, and I mean that seriously
When the fermentation is through, you don't have mead, you have a young, harsh, often cloudy batch. Young mead tastes rough, of yeast and sharp alcohol. That passes, but only with time.
After the main fermentation you draw the mead off the sediment, that's called racking: carefully siphon into a clean vessel, leaving the yeast at the bottom behind. Then you store it cool and dark and repeat the racking whenever sediment forms again. Reckon with six to twelve months of maturing before the mead becomes rounded. With the strong honey varieties rather twelve.
If you want a sweet mead, you add honey to sweeten at the end. But first you have to stabilise, otherwise the residual sweetness goes back into fermentation with the last yeasts and your demijohn is suddenly under pressure. For that you use potassium sorbate together with a little sulphite, dosed as per instructions. No one skips this step twice.
Two honest notes at the end
If you're starting from zero and don't want to gather fermentation vessel, airlock, yeast and nutrient separately first, take the Arauner Mead Starter Set A with glass demijohn. It has everything for the first batch in it. It comes from the house of Arauner in Kitzingen, which made wine yeasts and cellar supplies since 1897. The business closed in 2024, we carry on the original goods from Aachen.
If you already have a demijohn and airlock, then you need two things I don't skimp on. The AURIVA wine yeast, because it's bred for sugar-rich batches like mead and won't stall on you half way. And a yeast nutrient, because otherwise the honey lets your yeast starve. You don't have to repeat the mistake of 1997.
From the cellar, Magnus