This guide is intended to teach you how to make excellent mead. I will step you through the hows and whys of each part in short, easy-to-read articles. The hope is that you will finish the series with a wonderful overview of quality mead-making utilizing current scientific processes. 

To start, it is best to make a standard mead to get your technique down, them move on to the various styles. It is difficult to hide flaws in a standard mead. Learn to make a clean standard mead and all your other meads will shine!

The most important part of brewing is sanitation. Anything that comes into contact with your brew should be sanitized to avoid contamination with stray bacteria and yeasts. Avoid any vessels with deep scratches. The scratches harbor bacteria and are nearly impossible to sanitize completely. The following is a sanitizing step by step…

Great! You have ingredients and everything is sanitised. For your first mead, I will step you through a basic traditional mead recipe skeleton, then give you a fully written example recipe.

Feel free to use this as a template for your own recipes. I highly suggest you have a written recipe before you start doing anything. It really helps avoid a lot of issues!

Reducing the stress that yeast experience is key to making the best mead possible. Surprisingly, avoiding yeast stress begins before pitch!

The proper way to pitch yeast depends on the form your yeast is in. Yeast come in a dry and liquid form. There are slight differences in how these forms should be treated.

Many new mead makers want to count bubbles as an indicator of fermentation. While this does tell you CO2 is being released, it is not a good indicator of fermentation progress. CO2 can be continually released from mead for months after fermentation is done.

Also, NOT seeing bubbles could just mean your fermentor is not sealed. Testing gravity is simply the only way to be sure your ferment is progressing as it should. Gravity can be read by several tools I will now describe. 

1. Confirm fermentation is complete. The best way to do this is to demonstrate a stable gravity via hydrometer or refractometer over at least a week. Preferably 2 weeks. 

2. Optional: Cold crash the mead to speed clearing. If you cannot cold crash, then allow the mead to…

Cold crashing is exactly as it sounds: using cold temperatures to make yeast fall out of solution or “crash” out. The process is very simple, but it does require a large amount of refrigerator space. 

After your mead is dry or stabilised and back sweetened to taste, allow the mead to clear. Cold crashing definitely speeds clearing if you can do it. Once clear, it is time to bottle your mead. Traditional meads can be bottled in any colored glass without skunking from light exposure. If your mead contains hops or herbs, I would suggest brown bottles to avoid any issues. 

What type of bottle to use? This largely depends on your mead. I’ve decided to split this into carbonated/non-stabilised meads or non-carbonated/stabilised meads. 

Many people new to home brewing underestimate the power of carbonation in glass bottles. A small amount of leftover sugar can make a refreshing bubbly brew. A large amount can lead to glass shrapnel and wasted mead. 

To avoid this issue, you need to know what causes it and how to prevent it. Bottle bombs are caused by actively fermenting yeast converting sugar into Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This CO2 production increases pressure inside the bottle. If the pressure exceeds what the bottle can handle, it explodes! 

Honey lacks the basic nutrients required to maintain yeast health. While fermentation is possible without nutrients, poor nutrition is the reason why you hear about year long fermentations that produce mead requiring years of aging to be drinkable. There is no reason to endure this any longer. Science came to the rescue. 

1. Confirm fermentation is complete. The best way to do this is to demonstrate a stable gravity via hydrometer or refractometer over at least a week. Preferably 2 weeks. 

2. Optional: Cold crash the mead to speed clearing. If you cannot cold crash, then allow the mead to…