A demijohn full of mead.

Your First Mead Recipe

This recipe is a basic traditional mead recipe. It was made using our Mead Batch Builder.

You can download a print-friendly version of this recipe here.

Mead Measurements

Batch Size: 5 litres
ABV: 11.5%
Original Gravity: 1.088
Final Gravity: 1.000-1.020

Ingredient List

  • five litres spring water
  • One sachet of Wyeast 1388 liquid yeast
  • 1.6 kgs honey
  • 4.5g Fermaid O
  • 2.6g potassium carbonate
  • 2.5g Fermaid K
  • 1g potassium sorbate
  • 0.5g potassium metabisulfite

Cleaning and Sanitising

  1. Clean all equipment with warm water and soap.
  2. Thoroughly rinse equipment with water.
  3. Prepare no-rinse sanitiser following packaging guidelines.
  4. Immerse all equipment in the sanitiser solution and allow to sit for minimum contact time.

Must Preparation (Day 0)

  1. To a sanitised demijohn, add 1.5 kgs of honey.
  2. Add potassium carbonate, Fermaid K, and Fermaid O to the demijohn.
  3. Add enough water to fill half the demijohn, cap with a cork, and mix until the honey is fully dissolved. A swirling motion works best for small demijohn.
  4. Add water to just shy of a five-litres.

Yeast Preparation

  1. Remove Wyeast 1388 yeast package from the fridge and allow it to reach room temperature.
  2. Activate the yeast by breaking the internal “smack” packet. It helps to trap the internal nutrient packet in a corner before smacking it.
  3. Allow the pouch to expand for at least 15 minutes.
  4. It should swell to demonstrate yeast activation.
  5. Sanitise one of the top pouch corners.
  6. Once the yeast and must are within 5°C of each other, cut the sanitised pouch corner and pitch the yeast into the fermenter. Make sure not to cut the corner so much that the internal nutrient packet can come out into your fermenter.

Fermentation

  1. Store the demijohn in a temperature range of 20-22°C.
  2. Take a hydrometer reading every 3 days until the gravity reaches 1.000 or below.
  3. This should take between 7-14 days.

Stabilising and Backsweetening

  1. Cold crash in the fridge until clear.
  2. Add potassium sorbate and potassium metabisulfite to a freshly sanitised vessel. The mead should be kept at room temperature for at least 48 hours after adding the stabilisers.
  3. After 2 weeks, add honey to your desired sweetness using the below measurements as a guide.
    Dry - do nothing.
    Off Dry - add 75g honey (1.005)
    Semi-Sweet - add 150g honey (1.010)
    Sweet Mead - add 300g honey (1.020)
    If you aren’t sure, we suggest starting off-dry. Allow the mead to stand for a few days, and taste. You can always add more honey, but you cannot take it back!
  4. Mix well, then allow the mead to clear again.
  5. After a few days of storing the mead at room temperature, move the mead back to the fridge until clear.

Bottling

  1. Remove mead from the fridge.
  2. Using an auto-siphon and bottling stick, fill a bottle with mead.
  3. Close the bottle using an appropriate closure specific to the bottle type.
  4. Repeat until all mead has been bottled.
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