How do you make mead? Well, dilute some honey with water, add yeast, and let it ferment. That’s all, folks! Thanks for reading our blog!
Ok, maybe it’s not quite that simple. In our fourth installation of the Bee to Bottle blog series, we’re taking a closer look at the process of meadmaking and how it combines the biochemistry of yeast converting natural sugars in honey into alcohol with the art of balancing flavors, textures, and aromas. (If you’re just joining us, we’ve discussed importance of quality bee forage, beekeeping, and honey in previous posts).
1. Mix Honey, Water, and Yeast
Meadmaking begins with sanitization. It’s not a glamorous start, but we’ve found that being scrupulous in our cleaning prevents contamination and off-flavors that can ruin our mead. Sometimes, the littlest things can make a huge impact -- and this is one of those things.
Once everything is ready, we prepare a solution called the must by diluting honey with water to reach a desired sugar concentration. This determines how sweet or dry the finished mead will be as well as how much alcohol is produced. More honey means more flavorful aromatics but can also potentially mean more alcohol. A good mead keeps these in careful balance.
Andrew mixing honey and water together to create the must.
Next, we add yeast. Mead can be fermented with native wild yeasts, although the results are often inconsistent. Here at Meadiocrity, we use cultivated yeasts and carefully match the yeast traits with the honey variety and mead style. Using different yeasts with the same starting must can produce drastically different meads.
Flavor additions such as fruit being co-fermented with the must may be added at this stage as well.
2. Ferment
Yeast digest the sugars from the honey in the must to create alcohol and carbon dioxide. Not all sugars are the same and certain yeasts work better with one type of sugar. In mead, glucose and fructose are the most prevalent sugars. These are the same sugars that occur in wine produced from grapes.
We often get asked if mead is very sweet because it uses honey. The answer is yes or no depending on style. Just because grape juice is sweet does not mean a wine must be sweet. The same goes for mead. As the sugars are digested, the mead becomes dryer and the aromatics of the honey become liberated.
After primary fermentation is done, additional flavors such as spices, herbs, or fruit juices might be added depending on the style.
3. Fine, Filter, Finish
At the end of fermentation, meadmakers determine any final steps to take on the mead before bottling it. The meadmaker can choose to bind undesired compounds with fining agents or filter the mead to remove the yeast still left in suspension. The meadmaker can also add final flavor or acid additions to round out the flavor profile. This stage is highly dependent on the meadmaker’s style and what characteristics of the mead they are looking to emphasize.
4. Bottle
Mead can be still (no bubbles), petillant or frizzante (some bubbles), highly carbonated, or made using a traditional sparkling wine method. The carbonation happens just prior to bottling and can highlight different characteristics of the mead. Mead can be stored in a number of drinking vessels. Bottles and kegs are most common, however, aluminum cans and growler fills are increasing in popularity -- and of course, there’s always the traditional drinking horn!
Hooking up to the tank to start bottling
The Meadiocrity Way
We extensively tested a variety of honeys, yeast, and processes before we settled on our general approach to meadmaking. We continue to improve our processes, but any mead that we produce must meet our high standards:
Always use local, raw, unfiltered honey
Whether it is from our estate hives or our local partner beekeepers, unprocessed honey stronger floral characteristics and has not been denatured by the pasteurization process. We only use the best.
Let the honey speak for itself
The bees worked hard to capture sunshine and hundreds of thousands of flowers in honey. There is no need to mask its flavors with over-the-top flavors, and you should always know that honey was used to make our mead.
Be easy drinking and flavor intense
Drinking mead should be more than just a novelty. Each sip should make you want more and the flavors should be bold.
Be balanced
Balancing residual sugar, alcohol, acid, and aromatics is critical to making a high quality mead and the balance of our meads have become a recognized characteristic of our style.
Meadmaking is fun, challenging, and wide open for experimentation, and we love pushing the limits of technique, flavor, and ingredients to bring you the absolute best mead possible. Demand Meadiocrity.
Young Foundation straight from the tank.