Chapter 1
This course is intended to teach you how to make excellent traditional mead. We will walk you through the hows and whys of each part in short, easy-to-read lessons. The hope is that you will finish this guide with a wonderful overview of quality mead-making using current scientific processes.
Traditional Mead
In mead-making, a traditional mead is made with honey, water, yeast, and yeast nutrients. Traditional mead can also be aged on wood to impart certain flavours.
The word traditional in this context has nothing to do with how the mead was prepared.
A Brief Overview
Before getting into details, we want to give you a brief rundown of what mead-making involves. It may seem a little daunting at first, but it gets easier the more you do it. This is what a typical round of mead-making consists of:
Recipe planning and ingredients
Clean and sanitise everything
Thoroughly mix honey, water, and yeast nutrients
Prepare yeast and add it to the honey-water mixture
Add yeast nutrients at certain intervals during fermentation
Monitor the ferment with a hydrometer
Allow mead to clear using cold temperatures and time
Transfer the mead into a new container once the mead is clear
Stabilise and sweeten mead (optional, with caveats)
Transfer the mead into serving bottles
Taste and realise you need to repeat!
When you put it this way, it’s really simple. However, there is more to it if you want stellar mead. This course will get you there. Cheers!