Liripoop - more liri, less poop

Mead Making Basics

by Neal Grout

Mead, in its most basic form, is an amount of honey dissolved in an amount of water and then yeast is added to ferment the mixture. The formula for doing so depends on whether you want a dry or sweet mead.  One part honey to five parts water will produce a dry mead while one part honey to four parts water will give a sweet mead.

Most home brewers though will add various ingredients to impart other flavours to the mead. A Cyser is a mead fermented with apple juice. A melomel is the name given to a mead flavoured with other fruit. Metheglin is a mead made with herbs or spices. You can also have various combinations, for example a melomel flavoured with both oranges and cloves.

Let's firstly take a look at the basic ingredients:

Water

The water needs to be of a certain purity so that no off flavours are imparted to the mead. Bottled spring or mineral water works well and is necessary if you are going for a cold fermentation method (see later notes) but tap water in most cases will be fine as long as the water is boiled vigorously for five minutes first to boil off any chlorine which will adversely affect the taste of your finished mead.

Honey

Any clear honey will do. The lighter and more delicate honeys will produce a better mead but if your making a melomel or metheglin then a darker honey is fine as the taste of a delicate honey will only be masked by the fruit or spices.

Yeast

Its quite possible to culture your own yeast from the air around you much in the same way as a sourdough mix but this can be a bit hit and miss (more often a miss). If you want a weaker (in alcohol) mead that will ferment within a month then use a beer yeast. You can also use a wine or sherry yeast which will ferment in a couple of months but produce a stronger mead. Better still is to use a yeast specially cultured for mead production. This will take slightly longer than a wine yeast but will produce a much smoother tasting mead and is well worth the effort if you can acquire some.

Copyright © 2008 Liripoop
Last modified: 05/30/08

E-mail