Maybe you are not quite ready to jump right in and purchase all the expensive homebrewing equipment. Well you could get away with your very own science experiment using cheap easily obtained materials.
These are the steps you need to take to make mead in a plastic jug.
- Buy a jug of spring water, 3 lbs organic honey, yeast nutrient, bubbler, rubber stopper, Lalvin D-47 yeast, and sanitizer.
- Sanitize bubbler, yeast packet, and stopper.
- Add honey, yeast nutrient and yeast to jug.
- Seal top of jug with bubbler to let CO2 escape.
- Store in a dry, dark place.
It seems easy enough to make a plastic jug mead. In fact it really is downright simple, but there are a few things you need to know to make sure you succeed on the first try.
Making Mead in a 1 Gallon plastic Jug
In order to make mead you are going to need water. Its probably best to go with the absolute most delicious water you can find. Although you could use tap water, and while many recipes online tell you that you can use tap water, they fail to explain why its a bad idea.
If you are using tap water and not treating it in some way the chlorine and fluorine in the water will make it difficult for your yeast in the already uphill battle they are fighting.
Honey is anaerobic, which means its naturally resistant to bacteria colony formation, and also hard for yeast to eat through. Honey does not have as many nutrients in it as beer wort does, this is a problem in maintaining healthy yeast.
It is essential to add yeast nutrient from the get go to give your yeast a fighting chance. Some people swear by raisins and they can be a good go to, but why not just use extremely cheap yeast nutrient that will probably work better.
Sanitize Everything
We need to make sure absolutely no foreign agents can spoil our delicious nectar of the gods. This is why sanitizing is an absolute must. Get it must, because that’s what mead is called before it becomes alcoholic. OK, that was a bad joke, but you do need to sanitize everything.
To sanitize mix water and a small portion of the sanitizer that you bought to clean with. If you are using Star San it is food grade, so no need to worry if it comes into contact with your mead. Just make sure to dry it out before mixing your ingredients.
Mead Making Process
It used to be common to make sure that you pasteurize the honey and water before mixing with the yeast. This practice while still in many of the old mead making books is going away rapidly.
There is really no reason to pasteurize at all, because honey is so anti-microbial. Since you are pitching such a large amount of yeast, it will out compete any surviving microbes in the honey.
The reason that this has become common practice is not because of the reduced time, but rather because if you heat the honey, it begins to lose flavor. By pitching yeast into the raw honey the flavor is much greater.
How to mix all the Ingredients
At this point you have very few ingredients. You will need 3 lbs of honey for every gallon of water. Follow these steps to complete your must, or pre-fermented mead.
- Take already full plastic jug, then empty some water to make room for honey.
- Add Honey to plastic jug.
- Pitch the Yeast.
- Make sure there is enough head room in the jug. An inch should be sufficient.
- Close the jug and shake the yeast around in the honey and water mixture to aerate.
- Add the Bubbler to the top.
- Put in a cool dark place that maintains a constant temperature of around 70F.
Honey Choice
Make sure the honey that you are buying is organic. Be careful, A lot of cheap store bought honey is not pure honey, but mixed with other additives. This can pose a problem if you are trying to make mead. It won’t be pure and likely not taste like it should.
There are also a variety of types of honey for purchase. You can buy honey based on the flowers that bees are sent to pollinate. Many mead makers think that wildflower honey is some of the best honey to use for meadmaking.
Wildflower honey has a variety of flavors that serve the palate well and it is commonly the best tasting honey. I’ve often tried many different flavors of mead at the local meaderies and wildflower often comes out on top.
Flavored Honey
Flavored honey is very subtle. So often its best to pitch the desired flavor in secondary. For example if you want something to taste like blueberries you will need to add actually blueberries to secondary.
I have an article all about adding fruits to beer, and it works with mead as well. You need to make absolutely sure not to contaminate your mead though, so pasteurize the fruits that you are adding. You can see how I discuss the best ways to pasteurize in another article.
After all is said and done, make sure that when you are adding the fruits not to let oxygen into your closed system. A great way to do this is to keg it in secondary and then purge the oxygen. This will keep your mead fresh.
Yeast Choices
Most mead is created with wine yeast. It typically can handle the higher alcohol content present in mead compared to something like beer.
Although most mead uses wine yeast you actually can get away with using Champaign yeast or other types of beer yeast. My recent article about making mead with ale yeast is a great resource for deciding on a yeast for your mead.
So what is the suggested wine yeast for mead making?
Lalvin D-47 comes up as the number one common type of yeast for mead making. But for those of you who are impatient it can take a long time before your mead is ready. Using this yeast it will take a minimum of 6 months before you can even attempt to try your mead.
Using beer yeasts, could get your mead tasting better in as little as 3 months. But likely the best way to get delicious tasting mead faster is to overpower it with other flavorings, but this can lead to a very harsh mead that is not as soft as traditional mead.
Using Plastic in Meadmaking
When it comes to plastic I’m not much of a fan. I absolutely hate how much we rely on plastic as a one time use item, when its far more durable than that. Having said that there are certain plastics that should not be used in mead making.
Polyethylene teraphthalate (PET) is considered safe for alcohol. This type of plastic cannot be dissolved by ethanol so no plastic contaminates will leach into your drink.
This is a common plastic that is used to store alcohol and other beverages. Think soda bottles and those plastic liquor bottles that you find at the grocery store.
So when purchasing your water or milk just make sure it is made out of PET material. I would strongly encourage you not to use an old plastic jug that you found lying around for a few reasons.
- You cannot guarantee that it is sterile and has not broken down. It may be possible for microbes to hide in tiny cracks. Sanitizing it will greatly reduce contamination but not guaranteed. I have had beer bottles still be contaminated because I’ve missed some sludge before.
- When plastic is exposed to heat stress it does break down, this could make the plastic weaker and potentially increase the chance of leaching. This is a common fear of water bottles sitting in a hot car, although very unlikely it is possible.
So now that you know about the dangers of plastic make sure you are only using food grade plastics. As a general rule of thumb you can use any container that already stores liquids that you would drink regularly.
Do not use plastics that are not classified for consumable beverages.
The Next Step
If you are willing to spend a minimal amount of cash for an actual mead container you can check this mead kit out on Amazon. It has everything you need to get started making mead except for the water and honey.
Make sure you follow my suggestions on buying honey and water to use and you should make tasty mead.