Mix honey with water and it will ferment. Left to run its course with a wine yeast, it becomes mead (honey wine); stopped after a day or two in a sealed bottle, it becomes a lightly sweet, fizzy honey soda. Honey has been part of fermented drinks for a very long time: residues in pottery from the Neolithic village of Jiahu in China show a fermented drink of rice, honey and fruit made as early as the seventh millennium BC (McGovern et al., 2004). Ethiopia’s tej, flavored with gesho leaves, is a living honey-wine tradition.
Why Water Makes Honey Ferment
Most honey carries a small population of yeasts, but ripe, undiluted honey usually has too little free water for them to grow – honey that has absorbed moisture can start fermenting on its own (Snowdon & Cliver, 1996). Dilute it and they – or the wine yeast you add – start turning the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide. That’s the whole process; everything else in mead-making is about controlling it: which yeast, how much honey, what temperature, and when to stop.
Wild honey yeasts do work, but they are unpredictable and slow, so most meadmakers add a wine yeast for a clean, reliable fermentation. Honey with garlic or fruit added, rather than water, is a different kind of ferment – see fermented honey and garlic honey.
How Much Alcohol Is In It?
Every fermented honey drink contains alcohol; how much depends on how much sugar the yeast eats. You can’t tell by taste, but a hydrometer will: take a reading before you add the yeast (the original gravity) and another when fermentation has finished (the final gravity), then multiply the difference by 131 for the approximate alcohol by volume (WineMaker). A mead that starts at 1.100 and finishes at 0.995 is about 13.8% alcohol.
A light honey soda bottled after a day or two has much less, but it isn’t alcohol-free, and it keeps rising while the bottle sits warm. For comparison, in the US a drink that reaches 0.5% alcohol is regulated as an alcoholic beverage – the line kombucha makers have to watch (TTB).
Is Fermented Honey Water Probiotic?
There’s no evidence that it is. Honey water is fermented by yeasts, and nobody has shown that it delivers live beneficial bacteria. If you want a fizzy drink with live lactic acid bacteria and yeasts, kombucha and the other drinks in our guide to fermented drinks like kombucha are better choices. Because all honey drinks contain alcohol, they aren’t for children, during pregnancy, or for anyone avoiding alcohol – and babies under 1 year shouldn’t have honey in any form (CDC).
Making Mead: The Essentials
- Clean and sanitize everything that touches the mead – jug, airlock, spoon, funnel, siphon.
- Honey to water sets the strength and sweetness. About 1.4 kg (3 lb) of honey made up to 3.8 litres (1 US gallon) with water is a classic one-gallon batch (recipe card below). Less honey gives a lighter, quicker “session” mead.
- Use a wine yeast and yeast nutrient, following the packets.
- Fit an airlock so carbon dioxide can escape and air and fruit flies can’t get in; vinegar bacteria need oxygen to turn alcohol sour.
- Measure the original gravity before pitching the yeast, and check that the final gravity is stable for several days before bottling – bottling a mead that is still fermenting can burst bottles.
- Be patient. Primary fermentation usually takes a few weeks; the mead then clears and mellows over months.
Common variations: melomel is mead with fruit, metheglin is mead with spices or herbs, and cyser is made with apple juice instead of some of the water. For another long-established home brew, see kvass.
A Light Honey Soda
Dissolve 60 g (3 tbsp) of honey in 1 litre of lukewarm water, add the juice of half a lemon and a few slices of ginger, and stir in a small pinch of wine or champagne yeast. Pour it into a clean plastic soda bottle, close it, and leave it at room temperature for 1–2 days, squeezing the bottle to judge the pressure. When it’s firm, move it to the fridge and drink it within a few days, opening it slowly. Plastic bottles show you the pressure; glass ones can burst.
Making Mead Legally in the US
Under federal rules, any adult can make wine – mead included – for personal or family use without paying tax, up to 100 gallons a year in a one-adult household or 200 gallons with two or more adults. It can’t be sold, and state or local law can be stricter (27 CFR 24.75). Other countries have their own rules.
