How to Make the Best Mead at Home

Last Updated: January 28, 2026 by Michael Kahn. Published: January 28, 2026.

So you want to make mead? Excellent choice.

Welcome to the ancient and noble art of turning honey into booze. 

This is a practice that’s been perfected by everyone from Vikings to medieval monks, and is now experiencing a mini renaissance in Australia (well, sort of). That’s right, while the rest of the world obsesses over kombucha and cold brew, Aussie craft brewers are quietly fermenting honey like it’s 795 AD.

Why Australia Is Making Honey Wine

Why the resurgence? Blame it on our obsession with all things artisanal, local, and “I made it myself, actually.”And maybe Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon might have also played a part here. Mead ticks all the boxes: it’s ancient (humans have been making it for over 9,000 years), it’s simple (honey + water + yeast = magic), and it gives you serious bragging rights at dinner parties. Plus, Australia’s incredible diversity of native honeys means we’re positioned to create meads that simply can’t be replicated anywhere else on the planet.

Honey, aka Australia’s liquid gold

Here’s where things get properly interesting. If beer is about the grain and wine is about the grape, mead is all about the honey. And Australia, my friends, produces some of the most distinctive honeys on Earth.

Blue Gum honey from Tasmania and Victoria delivers a bold, slightly harty flavour that creates a mead with serious personality. It’s robust, it’s confident, and it’s for those who love a kick. 

Macadamia honey from New South Wales and Queensland is the smooth operator of the honey world: buttery, nutty, and subtly sweet. Ferment this beauty, and you’ll get a mead so refined it makes chardonnay look like goon in a bag.

Leatherwood honey from Tasmania’s ancient rainforests is the stuff of legend. It’s intensely floral, slightly spicy, and creates a mead worth trying. Fair warning: using Leatherwood honey may cause you to develop an insufferable superiority complex about your home brewing.

Other cracking Australian options include Jarrah from Western Australia (rich and malty), Yellowbox (delicate and fragrant), and Ironbark (bold with caramel notes). The point is: your honey choice isn’t just important. It’s the entire personality of your mead. Choose wisely, or better yet, make multiple batches and conduct extremely important “research.”

Getting Everything Together (Without Losing Your Mind)

Right, let’s talk equipment. The good news is that making mead doesn’t require you to transform your kitchen into a Breaking Bad-style laboratory. The even better news is that investing in a dedicated mead brewing kit like those found at Aussie Brewmakers saves you from the beginner’s nightmare of “wait, do I need to sanitise that?” (Spoiler: yes, you absolutely do.)

A proper mead brewing kit typically includes:

• Fermentation vessel (usually a glass carboy or food-grade plastic bucket).
• Airlock and bung (keeps the oxygen out and lets CO2 escape).
• Siphon and tubing (for transferring your precious liquid without disturbing the sediment).
• Hydrometer (measures sugar content and alcohol potential).
• Sanitiser (arguably the most important bit to keep bacteria away)

Why bother with a kit instead of cobbling together random containers from under your sink? Three words: sanitisation, simplification, and not destroying 15 litres of expensive honey because you use your cousin’s dodgy homebrew bucket that once held who-knows-what. Plus, it might be a good gift idea for your mate who wants to become a craft brewer, and then you can reap the rewards.  

The Mead-Making Process

Alright, let’s get fermenting. Don’t panic. This is genuinely easier than assembling IKEA furniture.

Step 1: Creating Your Must

Your must is simply honey, water, and nutrients mixed. Here’s the basic formula for about 4 litres of traditional mead:

• 1.5 kg of your chosen Australian honey
• 3 litres of water (filtered or spring water; save the tap water for your pot plants)
• Yeast nutrients 
• Wine or mead yeast (don’t even think about using bread yeast unless you want disappointment)

Warm about half your water (not boiling), dissolve your honey into it whilst stirring, then add the rest of the water to cool it down. Chuck in your nutrients, let it cool to room temperature, then pitch your yeast.

Pour everything into your sanitised fermentation vessel, attach your airlock, and congratulations. You’re officially a mead maker. Feel free to update your Instagram bio.

Step 2: Primary Fermentation (The Bubbly Phase)

Now the yeast gets to work, consuming sugar and producing alcohol and CO2. You’ll see bubbles coming through your airlock. This is excellent and means you haven’t completely messed it up.

Keep your fermenting mead somewhere dark and temperature-stable (18-24°C is ideal). Your garage, a cupboard, or that weird space under the stairs all work brilliantly.

Primary fermentation typically takes 2-4 weeks. You’ll know it’s done when the bubbling slows dramatically, and your hydrometer readings stabilise. 

Step 3: Secondary Fermentation (The Clarifying Phase)

Once primary fermentation is complete, carefully siphon (or “rack”) your mead into a clean, sanitised secondary vessel, leaving the sediment behind. This is where your mead begins its transformation from cloudy chaos to clear brilliance.

Secondary fermentation can take anywhere from 1 to 3 months. During this time, your mead continues to clarify as the remaining yeast and particles settle out. The airlock stays on because fermentation might still be happening at a leisurely pace. 

This is also when you can get creative. Want to add fruit? Spices? A subtle hint of vanilla? Secondary fermentation is your opportunity for experimentation. Just remember: subtlety is your friend. Nobody wants mead that tastes like you’ve dumped in an entire spice rack.

Step 4: Ageing (AKA The Hardest Part)

Here’s the brutal truth: fresh mead is rough. It’s harsh, it’s hot (alcohol-wise). But give it time, and it transforms into liquid gold.

Minimum ageing recommendation? 

Three months in the bottle. Ideal. 

Six months to a year. Life-changing. 

Yes, you read that right. The mead you make today might not reach its full potential until 2027. This is where the Vikings have a serious advantage. They have the patience of people who don’t have Netflix. Bottle your mead in sanitised wine bottles with proper corks or caps, store them somewhere cool and dark, and then exercise the most difficult skill any home brewer must learn: leaving the bloody stuff alone.

The Payoff

When you finally crack open a bottle of your perfectly aged, Australian mead and pour it for unsuspecting friends, their reaction makes every moment of waiting worthwhile. “You made this?” they gasp. “From scratch?”

Yes. Yes, you did. 

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some Leatherwood mead that’s been ageing for eight months, and it’s calling my name.

Cheers, or as the Vikings probably say: Skål