How to make mead at home

Mead is honey, water and yeast. This guide makes about one gallon or 5 litres, with the honey worked out for your batch and the steps that keep a ferment healthy.

What you need

A glass jug or carboy with a bung and airlock (a 1 gallon or 5 L demijohn is ideal for a first batch).
A hydrometer and a trial jar, and a thermometer.
A no-rinse sanitiser, a funnel and a length of tube for siphoning.
Honey, water, wine or mead yeast, and yeast nutrient.

Sanitise everything that touches the must. Clean kit matters more than any recipe.

How much honey

The honey sets the starting gravity, and the starting gravity sets how strong the mead can get. About 1.100 is a good first target: around 14.6 % potential alcohol, a level most wine yeasts can finish.

For 1 US gallon at 1.100 that is about 1.19 kg (2.6 lb) of honey made up with water; for 5 L, about 1.58 kg. Work it out for your own batch below. Stir until the honey is fully dissolved, then take a hydrometer reading: that is your OG.

Result

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Yeast

Use a wine or mead yeast whose stated alcohol tolerance is above your potential alcohol. Rehydrate it as the packet says and pitch it into must at the temperature the packet gives, usually 18 to 24 °C.

Feeding the yeast in steps

Honey has almost none of the nitrogen yeast needs, which is why plain honey and water ferment slowly and can smell of sulfur. Add yeast nutrient in portions: one at 24, 48 and 72 hours after pitching, and the last at the one-third sugar break or on day 7, whichever comes first. Follow the amounts on the nutrient’s label.

The one-third break is the gravity where a third of the sugar is gone: OG − (OG − expected FG) / 3. From 1.100 to an expected 0.996, that is about 1.065.

In the first week, swirl or stir gently once a day to let carbon dioxide out.

When it is finished

Bubbles slowing down is not proof. A mead is finished when the gravity stays the same: three readings over at least 48 hours within 0.001 of each other. Dry mead usually ends between 0.990 and 1.000, often after three to six weeks.

Racking and aging

Siphon the mead off the sediment into a clean jug and top it up so there is little air. Leave it somewhere cool and dark. Mead clears and rounds out over months; rack again when a new layer of sediment forms.

Stabilising and backsweetening

If you want it sweeter, stabilise first, or the yeast will eat the new honey in the bottle. Stabilising means potassium sorbate together with sulfite (potassium metabisulfite, sold as powder or as Campden tablets). Use the doses on the product labels or in a sulfite and sorbate calculator. Then add honey a little at a time, taste, and check that the gravity stays put for a week before bottling.

Bottling safely

Bottle only a mead whose gravity has held steady. A mead with sugar left and no stabiliser can start again in the bottle and build enough pressure to break glass. Still mead goes in wine bottles with corks or screw caps. For sparkling mead, use bottles rated for pressure and a priming calculation with a bottle-pressure check.

Sources

Doses are estimates. Add in steps, test again, follow the product label. For personal use only.

Checked against the sources: October 25, 2026