How to Make Mead

Filtering is an extremely common practice among commercial brewers, but considerably less so for homebrewers. The two main advantages of filtering are time savings, and consistency. While homebrewers may be content to let their mead sit for a couple months in order to allow time and gravity to settle out all the haze and other floating particles, commercial setups often don’t have that luxury if they wish to remain profitable. All that space necessary to let things sit there can really add up. On top of the time savings, filtering your brew can really add a level of consistency. Racking and relying on gravity to settle out all the sediment always runs the risk of letting some of the particulate stay in the brew. This can happen by it getting kicked up by the racking cane, or your mead having a slight carbonation lending buoyancy to the suspended debris.

Filtering can clear that all up nearly instantly, as well as guaranteeing that any particles larger than the filter size will be removed. If the filter size is small enough (<1 micron), you can even be certain that the yeast has been removed, so no re-fermentation can occur when backsweetening; Even without the use of stabilizers.

Be warned, filtering isn’t all upsides, however. The filter is indiscriminate in what it is pulling out, as long as it doesn’t fit through the holes. There is a chance that filtering can remove some of the elements contributing to the color, the body, or even some of the flavor of the drink. Some people prefer the taste of unfiltered beverages. Although you should not generally see a negative effect on the flavor unless you are going for a completely sterile end product ( < 0.5 microns). In the end whether you want to filter comes down to personal taste vs convenience. Keeping your filter around the 1-3 micron size is likely to get your mead quite clear clear without invoking too many of the negative aspects. The 1 micron size will actually remove a substantial portion of your yeast, although given that they tend to be roughly that size, many will still pass through, so it won’t be completely sterile.

If you are interested in filtering your brew, there’s a few different methods you could employ. All filters work on the principle of forcing the liquid through a surface with a number of small holes. These holes will occasionally get blocked with the debris that does not fit through them. This requires a fair amount of pressure to ensure a consistent flow through the filtering material. The most reliable method is to use a pump and filter device specificity designed for beverages. These are a bit pricier than other methods, but are purpose built to be simple to use and highly efficient at this task. Most of these pumps make use of disposable filter pads, which can be purchased in various levels of coarseness – to filter out different sizes of particulate. The Buon Vino Mini Jet is a popular model filter for homebrewers.

There’s also a bit more of a homemade version that plenty of homebrewers use. It is gravity fed, instead of making use of a pump. It’s not going to be quite as effective, but is probably enough to serve a lot of homebrewers’ purposes. It’s less expensive, but is a bit more work to use. This DIY version consists of an inline water filter housing and the replaceable spun filter cartridges.

Do not use any filters with carbon in them. These are not designed to remove particles based on physical size, instead relying on chemical properties to reduce the harshness of tap water – this could affect your mead’s flavor. Also, if you plan to reuse a cartridge, make sure you remove it from the housing and allow it to dry properly. If allowed to stay damp, but not completely submerged, they can start to grow mold on them.

You can make use of this filter while racking. Hook up your siphon to a piece tubing that connect to the filter housing on the inlet side, and another to the outlet nozzle that is in your empty container. Make sure everything is nice and tights, if it is at all loose, you will get leaks. You will also want to place the filter at a lower elevation compared to your full mead container, and the empty even lower than that. This will let gravity help move your liquid through the filters. Engage the siphon. The filter housing will fill all the way to the top, and then the pressure will start to build within – between the outer wall and the filter cartridge. Once it hits a certain point, the pressure is enough to force the liquid through the filter itself and up and out of the exit tubing. Once you get towards the end, you may need to tip the filter a bit to get most of the liquid out.

One of the drawbacks of this type of filter, is that it requires a build up of pressure to work. In order to have pressure, you need liquid. This means you’ll always have a portion of the brew that gets stuck on the pre-filter side of the housing as there is nothing to push it through. Depending on your goals with the filtering, this may not be the end of the world. And if you’re that concerned, a second round of filtering of your whole batch should get everything through at least once.

Multiple Uses – The “Randall”

As a bonus, this same equipment can be reused for another purpose. A “Randall” – an in line fresh flavor infuser. Dogfish Head Brewery is credited with pioneering this type of device in order to deliver a more fresh taste to any herb, fruit or other organic additive you may be wanting to serve directly before your brew exits the tap. Instead of the filter cartridge, you would have a small housing for your flavor additives which the pressure from your CO2 tank would force your brew through before exiting into the tap. “Randall the Enamel Animal” is the nickname of the original device.

Spices are a great flavor additive that can add a ton of variety and complexity to your meads. However, unlike with fruit, their potency can impart a strong taste in a very short period of time. So it can be prudent to err on the side of caution when adding spices. More can always be added to increase the flavor. But once it is infused, blending or an extreme amount of aging are your only hopes at redeeming an overpowering spice. Do note that the aging process can do some miraculous things. I’ve read about some meadmakers accidentally adding five times the recommended amount of a certain spice, and it turned into an interesting drink after a year or two of aging. But in order to avoid such long timelines, I’ve compiled a list of guidelines to at least give you a relative target to aim for. These should be good to get the flavor infused and noticeable. If you’re looking for a more dominant character from the spice, adding a bit more would be within reason.

Remember there are a few methods to extracting flavors from spices. You can add them directly into your brew (do so after fermentation ends so that the flavor compounds don’t get pushed out the airlock). This method is the simplest, but you have the least control over the end product. You’ll want to monitor it closely. Another method is to steep the herbs or spices in boiling water to extract the flavors. This works on certain types of chemical compounds better than others. The final method is to make a tincture by soaking the spices in a strong alcohol like vodka. This will extract flavors that are soluble in alcohol. The latter two methods allow you to add the flavoring to the mead with more control, as you can just add until the taste is where you want it.

Amount to add per gallon of mead

Spice/Herb	Quantity
Allspice	½ tsp
Anise	1-2 tsp
Basil, sweet	½ cup
Cocoa nib	1-2 ounces
Caraway seeds	⅕ tsp
Carob pods	¼ pod
Cardamon seeds	½ tsp
Chamomile	⅓ ounce
Chile, pepper	½ ounce
Cinnamon	½ – 1 stick
Citrus blossoms	1 cup
Clove	1 bud
Coffee, bean	2.5 shots espresso
Coriander seeds	½  tsp
Cowslip flowers	½ ounce
Dandelion leaf	¼ pound
Dillweed	½ tbsp
Elderberry flower	¼ ounce
Elecampane root	¼ ounce
Fennel  seed	½ tsp
Fig Leaves	⅙ cup
Ginger	½ -1″ of fresh ginger, sliced
Grains of paradise	¼ tsp
Heather	2 cups
Horehound flower	⅓ ounce
Juniper berries	¼ tsp
Juniper leaf	½ ounce
Lavender flower	⅕ ounce
Lemon leaves	⅙ cup
Licorice root	1/10 ounce
Mace	½  tsp
Mahlab (cherry pit)	¼ tsp
Mint	½ tbsp, bruised
Milk thistle leaf	⅓ ounce
Mugwort leaf	⅓ ounce
Nettle leaf	⅙ pound
Nutmeg	1 nut, crushed or 1 tsp powder
Orange	zest of a single orange
Orange Leaves	⅙ cup
Oregano	1-2 tbsp
Peppercorn	¼ tsp
Rose Petals	1 cup
Rosehips, dried	2-8 ounces
Rosemary	⅕ ounce
Sage	⅙ cup
Sarsaparilla root	1/10 ounce
Spruce bud	1 ounce
Star Anise	½ -1 tsp
Sweet gale	⅓ ounce
Sweetgrass	⅙ ounce
Vanilla bean	1 bean, split
Wintergreen leaf	⅓ ounce
Wormwood	0.04 ounce
Yarrow leaf	⅓ ounce

Time Limited Additions

There are some herbs and spices that you cannot leave in your brew until it is ready to bottle. These are so potent that you only want to have their flavor being leached for a limited amount of time. Otherwise the flavor will overwhelm anything else in your brew. You can rack off of these ingredients, or place them in a hop bag that can be removed when you’ve hit the concentration you want.

Spice/Herb	Quantity	Duration
Szechuan Peppers	2 tbsp	2-4 weeks
Orange peel with pith	½ orange peel	1-2weeks
Lavender	⅙ cup	Check Daily*
Rosemary	⅙ cup	Check Daily*

*Remove when half desired strength. Tends to intensify

The addition of oak flavoring is a centuries old additive to alcoholic beverages of all kinds. Wines and bourbons being the most associated with the process of barrel aging, mead is another spirit that can benefit from the addition of an oak flavor additive. When stored in a barrel, the alcohol will slowly seep into the wood in warm weather. When these slowly cool, it squeezes the alcohol back out of the walls, bringing with it some of the flavor components that make up the wood. This process repeats several times until the alcohol is finally bottled. To slow down this process, the interior of the barrels are generally charred or toasted. This will prevent too strong a woody or fibrous flavor from being sapped out by the alcohol over the long storage period.

The oak will add complexity to the drink. It can contribute a wide range of flavors. The most common of which is vanilla. The waxes, lipids and other materials in the wood can contribute flavors such as coconut, clove, or spicy and fruity notes. In addition, it will add tannin and mouthfeel, rounding out the body. This is a major reason why red wines are oaked much more consistently than whites. As they are commonly dry, they tend to be thinner without that sugar increasing their density. The oak will round out that body, giving it more of a substantial feel. This will decrease that thin, watery sensation. It is easy to add more oak, but removing it is next to impossible. The flavor will tend to mellow with age, but that can take an order of years to accomplish. So be diligent when you are oaking your mead, and test the flavor often.

Alternatives to Barrels

Barrels can be quite large and difficult to work with. Luckily for homebrewers, there are other options for mimicking this process that can add a lot of complexity to your brew. The most common of which are oak cubes,  chips, and spirals. Instead of storing your brew inside of an oaken container, these are small pieces that can be submerged in your brew. Their smaller size allows for much greater control over the amount of the oaken flavor you are adding, as they are much easier to remove, and the speed in which the flavor is being leached out is directly related to the amount of the wood you have added, and the particular shape of the pieces – which determines the surface area in contact with your mead. Chips, being the smallest pieces actually have the largest amount of surface area compared to their weight. These will very leach their flavor out much faster than an equivalent weight of oak cubes. Chips you won’t want to leave in for more than a week or two, but cubes can remain in your brew for weeks to months.

Given that most of their mass is the surface, they will also lend the most of the toasted/smoky flavor to it. If you want more of the vanilla notes that oak tends to lend, that will be more prominent when there is more of an interior to the oak pieces. So cubes will be more lax on the toasted flavor, as there is more of the inner portion of the wood for the alcohol to seep into. Spirals are similar to to cubes in this regard, but have a more carboy friendly shape.

Additive Methods

Oak flavor can be quite strong, so this is something you will want to monitor closely. Tasting every so often to ensure you don’t overpower your mead. So be very careful not to overdue it.  For chips, a tenth of an ounce per gallon for about a week is sufficient. A quarter ounce per gallon is probably a good place to start for cubes for about a two to four months. Other shapes include spirals of roughly 8” for one to two months, staves also 8” for two to three months, and honeycombs about 5” for a month.

There are three main methods of using chips, or cubes to add oak to your brew. The first, is directly adding them to your secondary fermentation. This is the most common method, as it is the simplest. Keep them contained in a small mesh bag. This will also allow you to weigh it down with sanitary marbles, as the chips like to float. As previously mentioned, the more surface area exposed to the liquid, the faster it will impart its flavor. This method requires the most watching, as the oak is directly imparting its flavor into your brew.

The second method is soaking your oak pieces in water. Use just enough to cover them, and bring it to a boil for 10 to 15 mins. You’re essentially making a wood tea. This will pull out some of the tannins from the oak ahead of time. Depending on what you want added to your brew, you can then add both to your mead, or just the chips/cubes.

The final method is a to soak your oak in a small amount of liquor, like a bourbon or rum. This will pull out some tannin, as well as impart some of the flavor of the liquor into the wood. You would then add this soaked oak to your brew, where it would slowly contribute both the oak and liquor flavors into your mead. The initial soaking could take anywhere from a few weeks to months, especially for the higher toast levels. You could dump the rest of the liquid in, but it would be a much less subtle and blended flavor profile.

Oak Varieties

These oak chips and cubes are available in several different regional varieties, all of which impart a unique set of flavors. The most common of which are American, Hungarian, and French oaks. In addition, they are available in light, medium, and heavy toast levels. The toasting accentuates the flavor profiles found in the wood, with the higher levels of toast better defining its unique characteristics.

American oak has a prominent wood flavor, as well a a higher concentration of vanillin (the compound responsible for the vanilla flavor). It also tends to have more aromatic characteristics than its cousins, and imparts these much faster. These more immediate oak characteristics also tend to be susceptible to aging and can fade over time. American oak also contains less tannin than other varieties, so will not impart quite as much body to the beverage.

French oak has a more subtle wood character that tends to be more rounded. This variety is often sought after for its spice flavors such as cinnamon and allspice. French oak contains more tannin, but is not as prominently oaky. Aging is much more kind to this variety, and is said to develop even more nuances the more it ages.

Hungarian oak also contains a substantial amount of vanillin, but has the addition of bittersweet chocolate and roasted coffee notes. On top of that, this variety has an even more prominent oak flavor than American oak.

Fermentation of your mead finished a while ago, it has fully cleared and sat aging in your carboy. Now what? Carrying around a gallon glass jug is not a great way to share your creation, so it’s time to bottle. First step, deciding on the type of bottle you wish to use. There’s a few things you need to consider when choosing: level of carbonation, and strength of alcohol in your drink.

Not all bottles are designed to withstand the increased pressure of a carbonated beverage, so if you opted to carbonate yours, you’ll be more limited in which ones are available to you. Beer bottles and champagne bottles are your main options for a sparkling mead. These use a thicker glass that can withstand the pressure, as well as a more gradually angled neck that moves pressure towards the opening so any excess would pop the top instead of blowing the glass outwards. Normal wine bottles are made of thinner glass, and the shape doesn’t do enough to angle the pressure upwards. This is how bottle bombs occur. If there’s a buildup of pressure and it can’t escape up the neck, it will find it’s own way out.

The alcohol content of your drinks should also inform how you wish to serve it. Beer bottles tend to be a single serving size of the beverage. But beer is also generally a lower ABV drink than most wines. When someone grabs a beer bottle, they’re probably not expecting to get hit with an 18% drink in such quantity. That beer bottle could hold nearly 3 servings of wine. So, choose carefully when deciding upon which containers you will be portioning out your creation in. If it isn’t meant to be sessionable, choose something that is socially recognized as something we should pour into smaller portions.

Filling your bottle

Alright, we’ve chosen our container. Now we have to get the liquid into them. We’ve previously discussed how to transfer the brew from one large container into another. The racking cane will work in this instance as well. Except for one issue. The cane relies on a siphon and gravity to create a continuous flow. This is great when the tube’s exit stays in the same container. But trying to pull that tube out of a bottle mid flow, while also managing not to overfill, would just cause a mess. Luckily, there is a bottle filler attachment that can be used in conjunction with the racking cane and tube. These attach to the exit end of the tubing, and usually have a spring loaded nozzle. This nozzle blocks any liquid from passing through unless you are pushing it against the bottom of a bottle. This lets you control the rate at which your mead is flowing out, while maintaining the siphon in the cane. You can now easily switch bottles without making a mess.

NOTE: Do be careful if you happen to set your filler down inside of a bottle. Even if you’re not manually pushing it down, it’s own weight can be enough to let a small amount of liquid flow out. I’ve stepped away in the middle of bottling once or twice and walked back to a small overflow from the bottle.

Time to seal your bottle

Your bottles are now all full, it’s time to close them up. If you’re using flip-top bottles, this part is easy, but for the beer, wine, and champagne bottles will require some equipment. For beer bottles, you’ll be wanting to use crown caps and a capper. Many beer homebrewers will already have one of these handy. The cappers hook around the neck of the bottle allowing it to center the cap on top of the bottle. Pressing down the lever will fold the sides of the cap down around the lip, sealing your brew inside.

For wine bottles, you’ll be wanting corks and a corker. There’s several types of models for these. I have a Gilda single lever hand corker that works quite well. There’s some fancier floor models that are more stable and require less force, but they all function quite similarly. Corks, you’ll need to get wet first. I put them in a small pot with some water, and cover them while it boils. This steams them up so they absorb moisture and become softer. You then place these moistened corks into the corker. The corkers all have a method to squeeze the cork from the sides, making it temporarily a smaller diameter – just small enough to fit inside the inside of the bottle opening. They then push from the top until the cork is fully within the neck of the bottle. The corks is no longer under pressure from the device, so starts to expand, plugging the hole and getting a snug fit. Storing the bottles on their side will keep the cork wet and plump, keeping it from drying out and getting crumbly and allowing too much oxygen in.

Now you’re free to attach whatever labels you might like and really amp up the presentation.