Skip to main content
Drink

Simple Mead

A fermented honey beverage made by dissolving honey in water, boiling, and optionally adding yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Simple Mead

Ingredients

Directions

Make the honey base

  1. Dissolve honey in water and boil over moderate heat until reduced to two-thirds of the original quantity.

  2. Skim the mixture.

  3. Pour the skimmed mixture into a full barrel.

  4. Allow it to sit for three to four days to subside.

  5. Draw off the mead for use.

Prepare the combs and ferment

  1. Beat the drained combs in warm water.

  2. Let the liquid subside.

  3. Strain the liquid.

  4. Add a little yeast to the strained liquid.

  5. Let the liquid ferment in a cask for a few days.

  6. Bottle the fermented mead.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Honey
Provides the sugars that yeast ferments into alcohol, and the main flavour of the mead.
Water
Dissolves the honey and dilutes it to a drinkable strength before fermentation.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, turning the sweet liquid into mead.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More mead recipes

Sarsaparilla 10Cowslip 8Sassafras 7Sack 6 See all 45 →

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes