A Simple Traditional Mead Recipe – With as Little Waffle as I Can Manage

I’ve always loved making mead. It all started, bizarrely enough, with me trying (and failing, in spectacular fashion) to make a half-decent cider. Every batch tasted like something that had been sieved through a particularly pongy compost heap on a hot day.

Out of sheer desperation I tipped some honey in to sweeten it… and it worked. The cider tasted lovely and sweet with a little fizz. What I hadn’t realised was that the whole thing had kicked back into life. It bubbled, it brightened, and when it finally stopped, my cider tasted, astonishingly, not like a crime against nature.

That happy accident is how I discovered cyser: the slightly feral love-child between cider and mead. From that moment on I fell head-first down the mead rabbit hole. No regrets. Well… a few regrets. (Ask me about my pizza mead one day. Actually, no... Don’t.)

For the next few years, I brewed absolutely everything I could think of: traditional meads, spiced ones, fruity ones, and a few creations I’ve mentally blocked out for my own wellbeing. I even looked into selling the stuff properly alongside my honey. But mead is taxed like wine, honey prices are ridiculous, and the legal hoops are enough to make you lie on the floor and think about your life choices. Eventually I accepted that commercial mead wasn’t happening any time soon.

So now I make it purely for the joy of it: to drink, to share, and to stash away in the garage for years like a dragon with a very peculiar hoard. And because one of you lovely lot recently asked for a simple, reliable recipe after spotting some of my five-year-old bottles in a video, I thought: right. Let’s finally write this up properly for once, instead of slapping everything together with hope and an “eh, it’ll do” attitude.

I’ve also filmed a full YouTube video to go with this blog, so if you prefer a visual guide, or you just want to watch me accidentally make a mess of my dining room in real time, you can follow along step-by-step over there too.

Click the image to go to the video

Next up is the basic recipe - no faff, no waffle - so you can get cracking straight away. After that, I’ll take you through the why, so you understand the method as well as the mead.

Quick Step-by-Step

(For the “I Don’t Want Your Life Story, Greg, Just Tell Me How to Make the Bloody Mead” Crowd)

Batch size: 5-litre traditional mead - roughly 11–12% ABV if you behave yourself.

Ingredients

• 1.5 kg raw honey

• 5 L mineral water

• Juice of ½ lemon

• 1 packet mead yeast (Lalvin 71B-1122, D47, or M05 Mead)

• 3 × 7 g sachets of bread yeast (21 g total)

• 3 black tea bags

• Optional: charred oak cubes (if you want to feel fancy)

• Cleaning/sanitiser: Chemsan, Starsan, VWP, etc.

1. Clean & Sanitise

Give everything a wash: fermenter, spoon, airlock, the lot.

Run your hand around the inside of the bucket; if it feels rough or “bobbly”, wash it again.

If it smells weird, also wash it again.

If it looks at you weird, wash it again.

Wash this equipment until you are 100% sure it's spotless.

Once it looks and feels clean, sanitise anything and everything that will touch the must (honey water mix we will be making) or components that will be going in it.

2. Make the Yeast Nutrient Tea

Pop your 3 bread-yeast sachets and 3 tea bags in a mug.

Fill with boiling water and let it steep until it’s properly cool.

Make this first, it’ll be ready by the time you need it.

3. Make a Yeast Starter

In a sanitised glass, jug, or old takeaway tub (we’ve all got one):

• 400 ml warm water (microwave ~30 seconds, or until ~35°C)

• 4 tbsp honey

Add your mead yeast, stir gently, and leave it for 15–20 minutes.

By the time you’re done prepping the must, it should be looking foamy.

Look for the yeast globules rising and falling from the side of the container.

4. Build the Must (Your Mead Mix)

Pour 1.5 kg of honey into the sanitised fermenter. (Use weighing scales or eyeball it, I believe in you)

Add roughly half your mineral water.

Stir until your arms question your life choices.

Add the juice of ½ lemon.

Fish the tea bags out of your cooled nutrient tea and pour it into the must.

Top up to 5 L with the rest of the water

5. Aerate Like a Lunatic

Put the lid on.

Take the fermenter outside (trust me).

Thumb over the airlock hole, then shake it like it owes you money.

Release your thumb gently to avoid a mead geyser, then shake again.

You want froth, bubbles, chaos as yeast loves oxygen at this stage.

6. Pitch the Yeast

Pour the active, frothy starter into the fermenter.

Fit an airlock (filled with no-rinse sanitiser, not water… vodka also works…).

Stick it somewhere that stays between 18–22°C and won’t be bumped by kids, pets, or your future self.

7. Ferment

• Days 1–7: Give the fermenter a gentle swirl/stir once or twice per day to release CO₂.

• Weeks 2–4: Bubbling slows down, your yeast are settling into retirement.

• Weeks 4–6: When it starts to clear, it’s ready for secondary fermentation and ageing.

I’ll cover siphoning and the second fermentation stage properly in another blog soon, so you don’t accidentally repaint your kitchen with mead.

Optional: The Hydrometer (AKA: The Fancy Stick I Rarely Bother With)

Right, let’s address the long glass stick in the room. A hydrometer is one of those brewing gadgets people either swear by… or ignore entirely while making perfectly good booze. I fall into the second camp. And here’s why:

I’m making mead for personal consumption.

Whether it’s 10% or 13%, I’ll be equally tiddly after a few bottles.

Maths upsets me on a deep and spiritual level.

And algebra?! Taking the absolute mick.

That’s why I didn’t include it in the main recipe, beginners don’t need the faff. But if you want to track your ABV properly, or you’re one of those weirdos who enjoys measuring things, here’s the simple version that won’t melt your brain… much…

A hydrometer measures density of a liquid.

You take two readings:

• OG (Original Gravity): before fermentation

• FG (Final Gravity): after fermentation

Sugar makes liquid dense; alcohol makes it lighter. The difference between OG and FG tells you your ABV.

How to Use It (Pain-Free Version)

1. Sanitise the hydrometer and a measuring cylinder (germs are the real enemy here).

2. Fill the measuring cylinder with your must or mead.

3. Drop the hydrometer in gently and give it a little spin to shake off bubbles.

4. Read the number at eye level.

5. Write it down somewhere you’ll actually remember.

How to Know Fermentation Has Finished

If you are using a hydrometer, you’re looking for the FG to stay the same for 2–3 days.

For this recipe, it’ll usually land somewhere around 0.996–1.010.

If you’re not using one, just wait until the airlock slows to a crawl and the mead starts clearing.

The Maths Bit (I’m Sorry)

ABV ≈ (OG − FG) × 131

That’s it. One subtraction, one multiplication...

And yet my whole soul rejects it like my 3 year old rejects green beans…

So… entirely optional.

Use it if you want to be precise.

Ignore it if you’d rather live free from arithmetic and trust the yeast to do their thing.

Either way, your mead will be just as drinkable, just as lovely, and just as capable of making you forget how silly you looked during the aeration stage of this recipe.

It's a bit of a workout if you have noodle arms like me.

Now the Waffle: Why This Recipe Works So Well

First sign your mead’s gone wrong: it screams your name.

If you’re still here, you’re absolutely my kind of person. This is the bit where we slow down, grab a brew, and talk about the why behind everything. Just so you’re not just blindly following instructions and hoping you haven’t unknowingly summoned a demon in a bucket.

This method is something I’ve put together over the last five years. I’ve tweaked it, argued with it, ignored my own advice, come crawling back to it, and brewed it enough times that it’s now the version I trust the most. That said, several of the later attempts of this exact recipe are still ageing quietly in the loft like forgotten Victorian ghost children, so perhaps don’t treat me as gospel just yet. But as far as I can tell, it works reliably, simply, and without needing a PhD in fermentation science or a garage full of specialist kit.

What we’re going to do now is break down the reasoning behind each part, so you know exactly what’s going on and why I’ve suggested doing it this way. Once you understand the logic, you can start experimenting confidently (changing honeys, tweaking strength, adding fruit and spices) and you’ll have a good idea of what each change is likely to do. And if you inevitably try something weird and it somehow still turns out great, you can absolutely blame me in the story when you tell your mates how you got there… please….

Why 1.5 kg of Honey in 5 Litres?

1.5 kg of honey in a 5-litre batch hits a lovely, sweet spot. It gives you a drinkable traditional mead that:

• Ferments reliably for beginners,

• Doesn’t turn into rocket fuel that needs three years in a cupboard before it stops burning on the way down,

• Lands at a comfortable 11–12% ABV, like a nice wine rather than a punishment.

Could you add more honey and make it stronger?

Absolutely.

Would I suggest that for your first batch?

Absolutely not.

This ratio gives you something that’s genuinely ready within the year.

I’d personally let it age longer, mead always rewards patience, but I know full well some of you are impatient gremlins who’ll be eyeing the demijohn after month three. This recipe keeps you safe from yourselves.

Why I Recommend Raw Local Honey

Supermarket honey will work, but it’s been heated, blended, strained, mixed with who-knows-what and generally bullied into uniformity. Raw local honey, on the other hand, gives you:

• Better flavour - proper floral character, not “generic honey essence,”

• Natural nutrients like pollen, minerals and enzymes,

• More personality from whichever flowers your local bees have been raiding

Good honey makes good mead. Local honey makes lovely mead.

*Shameless plug*

That Foamy, Waxy Top from the Settling Tank

If you’re a beekeeper, you’ll know the top layer of a settling tank - the foamy, waxy, pollen-speckled bit - isn’t the sort of thing you’d put in a nice jar. But for mead?

It’s the perfect ingredient for the best mead you’ll ever make.

Here’s why:

• It’s loaded with pollen, wax crumbs, and tiny bits of hive life,

• Those bits carry extra minerals, vitamins, and nutrients that supercharge your yeast,

• It costs you nothing - this is the stuff you’d normally scrape off and bin.

We’re basically upgrading “waste” honey into something the yeast will treat like a gourmet meal and the resulting mead tastes all the better for it.

Why Use Mineral Water (and Save the Bottle)?

For this recipe we’re using a 5-litre bottle of cheap supermarket mineral water, and it’s not just because it’s convenient. It’s because it solves about six beginner problems in one go.

First, the obvious bits:

• You instantly know exactly how much volume you’re working with. No measuring jugs, no mental maths, no “is this about five litres?” guesswork.

• It comes in a food-safe container you can then reuse for racking, ageing, transporting, or hoarding... also makes a fetching hat…

But the real reason is the water itself.

Tap Water Is Safe… Just Not Always Ideal for Mead

British tap water is perfectly safe to drink, we’re lucky in that regard, but it isn’t always the best starting point for fermentation. Depending on where you live, your tap water can be:

• Very hard (lots of calcium and magnesium)

• Very soft (almost no minerals at all)

• Lightly chlorinated

• Or occasionally it just… tastes weird

When you’re drinking it, you barely notice.

When you’re fermenting with it, the yeast absolutely notices.

Why This Matters

Tap water can be a bit unpredictable when it comes to brewing. Chlorine and chloramine, the disinfectants some water companies use, can react with the natural compounds in honey and create chlorophenols. These taste disturbingly like sticking plaster, TCP, or plastic that's had a hard life. Once they’re in your mead, they’re not going anywhere. They don’t fade, they don’t mellow, they just sit there waiting to disappoint you.

Then there’s the mineral issue. Hard water carries extra calcium and magnesium, which can clash with the acids from your honey and lemon juice. That’s where you start getting chalky, metallic, or generally muddled flavours that make your mead taste “off” without you immediately knowing why. On the flip side, very soft water has so few minerals that the yeast ends up underfed. Fermentation can run sluggishly, stall entirely, or produce a mead that tastes thin and a bit hollow… like it’s missing its backbone.

And of course, if your tap water tastes a little like a swimming pool on a hot day, your mead will absolutely inherit that vibe. Fermentation doesn’t hide odd flavours; it amplifies them.

Mineral water avoids all of this. It gives you:

• A consistent mineral profile

• A clean, neutral flavour

• Zero surprises

When you’re just starting out, “no surprises” is exactly what you want. It lets the honey and yeast do their thing without fighting whatever happened to be lurking in your pipes that day.

Mineral water: not fancy, not expensive, just reliable. Exactly what you need at this stage.

Cleaning vs. Sanitising (Yes, They’re Different)

This is the least glamorous part of making mead, but honestly, it’s the most important step of the entire process.

If you nail your cleaning and sanitising, your mead will usually behave itself. If you cut corners here, the microbes hiding on the back of your spoon will absolutely rise up like the colonies in the 1700’s and ruin your day/yeasty empire.

Can't be having those pesky bacteria seceding the mead now, can we?

Good honey and fancy yeast won’t save a batch that’s been contaminated by something lurking in last month’s dried-on residue. That’s a lot of money to lose on laziness…

Cleaning comes first. This is the job of getting rid of the obvious muck: sticky honey, old yeast crust, dust, anything you can see or feel. I always run my hand around the inside of the fermenter; if there’s even a hint of grit or roughness, it needs another wash. The same goes for smell: if something smells off, it is off, so wash it again. Only when everything is genuinely clean do you move on to sanitising, which is where you kill the invisible troublemakers the eye can’t see but your yeast will absolutely notice.

Sanitising is what protects your batch from moulds, wild yeasts, and all the little microbes waiting to turn your honey into something that smells like it was brewed in an old builder’s boot. Anything that touches the must, be it fermenter, spoon, funnel, airlock, siphon, jug, needs to be sanitised, no exceptions.

Mead is simple; infections are simpler. One stray germ in the wrong place and that’s your whole batch gone.

It’s just as important to clean after brewing as it is before. A lot of beginners forget this. Once you’ve racked or bottled your mead, wash and sanitise everything straight away. Dried-on honey and crusty yeast are ten times harder to remove later, and future you will be eternally grateful when everything is spotless and ready to go for your next batch.

To make life easier, many sanitisers like Chemsan and Starsan can be mixed into a spray bottle. It’s incredibly handy for getting into awkward corners, threads, lid crevices and grommets, and for giving something a quick blast right before you use it. It saves time, saves effort, materials, and honestly just makes the job far less faffy.

Do this step properly and the rest of mead making becomes much smoother. It’s not glamorous, but it’s the foundation every good batch rests on.

Homemade Yeast Nutrient: Bread Yeast & Tea

If you’re brand new to brewing, you’re probably not going to have Fermaid K, Go-Ferm, or any of the fancy yeast nutrients knocking around in your cupboard. Honestly, you don’t need them for your first batch.

Mead makers have been using simple homemade nutrients for centuries, and the version I use is cheap, reliable, and surprisingly effective: bread yeast and black tea.

This was one of my many experiments with nutrients

It sounds odd on paper, but here’s the logic. When you pour boiling water over the three packets of bread yeast and three tea bags, the heat instantly kills the yeast and bursts the cells open. All the good stuff locked inside (amino acids, nitrogen, B-vitamins and trace minerals) floods out into the liquid. That mixture becomes a nutrient-rich tea that works beautifully as food for your mead yeast. Proper mead yeast (like M05 or D47) needs nitrogen and vitamins to grow and ferment cleanly, and this little concoction gives it exactly that.

The black tea does its own important job too. Honey on its own has no tannin, which means early mead can taste thin, sweet, or a bit like alcoholic sugar water. The tannins from the tea provide structure and body, helping your mead mature into something that tastes more balanced and wine-like rather than flat and simple.

The only rule you must follow: let this yeast tea cool completely before it ever gets near your fermenter. Hot nutrient tea and live yeast do not mix! Once it’s cool though, it goes straight in and gives your yeast the perfect start to a healthy, happy fermentation.

Why Bother with a Yeast Starter?

You can just sprinkle the yeast straight into the must. Loads of people do. It usually works but making a yeast starter is one of those tiny, high-value steps that gives you an enormous advantage. Think of it as sending your yeast into the must already warmed up, fed, stretched, and absolutely ready to dominate anything else that dares to exist in there.

When you mix the yeast with warm water and a bit of honey, you’re gently waking it up and giving it a quick snack before the real work begins. Within fifteen or twenty minutes you’ll see bubbles and foam, proof that the yeast is alive and raring to go. That alone is worth doing if your packet is a bit older or has been living at the back of a cupboard next to the mystery spices.

But the starter does something even more important: it shortens the “lag phase” - that quiet, suspicious period after pitching where you stare at the fermenter wondering whether anything is happening. During the lag phase, your yeast are multiplying… but so is everything else.

Here’s the crucial bit many beginners don’t realise:

Honey is not sterile…

Raw honey naturally contains wild yeasts and microbes that stay dormant because honey is dense and dehydrated. The moment you add water, they wake up like they’ve just heard an alarm clock. The sanitising you did earlier kills anything living in the bucket, spoon, and funnel… but it doesn’t kill anything inside the honey. Once the must is mixed, those wild microbes will begin stretching their legs.

This is why you want your chosen yeast to be the biggest, baddest microbe in the must. A strong starter means your yeast hits the mix at a runner’s pace, instantly outcompeting anything wild that crawled in from the honey. It establishes control quickly, ferments cleanly, and leaves no ecological room for troublemakers to take hold.

In short: sprinkling yeast works.

A starter works better.

It keeps your batch firmly under the rule of your “chosen champion” rather than whatever the honey dragged along for the ride.

Aeration: Shaking It like You’ve Gone Mad

At the very start of fermentation, yeast absolutely loves oxygen. They need it to build strong cell walls, multiply quickly, and get ready for the real work ahead. Once fermentation is underway, oxygen becomes the enemy… but right at the beginning, it’s their best mate. This is why we shake the must like you’re trying to get the last quid out of the piggy bank: hard, fast, and with enthusiasm.

The goal is froth, bubbles, and as much oxygen dissolved into the liquid as you can manage. Yeast that starts life well-oxygenated will hit the ground running, powering into fermentation like they’ve just heard the starting pistol. Skip this step, and the yeast will probably still get there in the end, but they’ll be slower, more stressed, and far more likely to produce off-flavours. Think of it as their pre-marathon warm-up: you can run cold off the couch, but it’s not pretty.

Now… this being said, learn from my mistakes. I once shook a fermenter indoors with the lid on only mostly securely. What followed was a catastrophic honey-water tsunami across the kitchen and dining room floor. I mopped, I scrubbed, I despaired. For five whole years after that incident, no matter how hard I cleaned, our feet made that faint schlup-schlup noise whenever we walked across the laminate. It was a sock only zone… It wasn’t until we finally had the floor replaced that the curse was finally lifted.

So, please, take my advice:

• Do your enthusiastic shaking outside.

• Put the lid on tight and give it everything you’ve got, the air in the headspace should be enough to fill the must with oxygen.

• Stop every so often and carefully remove your thumb from the airlock hole. Angling so you and your floor are out of splash range. This will relieve any pressure build up.

Your yeast will thank you for the oxygen.

Your floor will thank you for the precaution and what’s best is your other half won’t have thoughts of murdering you in your sleep.

Temperature: The 18–22°C Sweet Spot

Yeast are fussy little creatures, and they’re at their happiest in that cosy 18–22°C range. Keep them there and they’ll quietly get on with their job, bubbling away at a steady pace and producing clean, pleasant flavours. Drop much below that and fermentation slows to a crawl…

It’ll still work, and you’re less likely to get off-flavours, but you may find yourself staring at the airlock wondering if anything is happening. Go much warmer and the yeast start sprinting, tearing through the sugars far too quickly and producing harsh fusel alcohols (the stuff that tastes like regret and gives you hangovers you feel spiritually).

The key is stability. Yeast hates big swings in temperature almost as much as I hate discovering I’ve lost yet another hive tool... A cupboard, under the stairs, a cool spare room, or any spot that stays fairly steady day to day is perfect. Give your yeast a calm, consistent home and they’ll reward you with a far smoother mead. As a tip, make sure you put a mat down or something just in case…

I made a temperature controlled "fermentation booth" out of an outdoor storage box, stacks of insulation foam and reflective bubble wrap... The temperature of my meads were stable but I don't think my mind is...

Swirling, Degassing, and the Patience Game

During the first few days of fermentation, your yeast is working like mad, producing a constant stream of CO₂. If you leave all that gas trapped in the must, it can keep the yeast pushed to the bottom and make them work less efficiently. A gentle swirl helps release that excess CO₂, keeps the yeast happily suspended, and stops them forming a lazy little cake at the bottom of the fermenter before they’ve finished their job.

You don’t need to get dramatic with it like in aeration. No shaking, no sloshing, no recreating my honey-tsunami incident. Just a light swirl once or twice a day during Days 1–3 is more than enough to keep the yeast moving and the fermentation healthy. I personally like to use a sanitised spoon to give the mead a good stir. You can get right to the yeast stuck to the bottom that way.

After two to four weeks, everything begins to calm down. The bubbles slow right down, the yeast settle, and somewhere between Weeks 4 and 6 the mead should begin to clear. That’s your cue to rack it. Gently siphoning the clear liquid off the sediment into a clean container. I’ll be doing a full second blog in the next couple of weeks going over siphoning, secondary fermentation, and how to avoid making a mess of both, so keep an eye out for that.

This is also where patience becomes your greatest brewing skill. Mead rewards those who wait… even if waiting is not always our strongest quality.

 

Why Mead Tastes Rough Young (and Why Ageing Is Magic)

If you’ve never made mead before, you’re almost guaranteed to fall into the classic trap. You’ll ferment a batch, wait a few weeks, excitedly take your first sip… and immediately think you’ve produced something that could clean a fully blocked toilet. Young mead is nearly always hot, sharp, and a bit all over the place. It hasn’t had time to figure out who it wants to be yet.

Fresh from fermentation, the alcohol is harsh, the acidity from the lemon sticks out like a sore thumb, and the honey character is usually cowering behind the commotion. This is normal. In fact, it’s expected. Mead straight out of primary fermentation is basically a teenager: confused, intense, occasionally smelly, and absolutely not ready for polite company.

But here’s where the magic, and the chemistry, really kicks in. Over the next few months, if left in secondary, your mead quietly transforms itself. Early on, it’s full of higher alcohols called fusel alcohols, which taste hot and a bit solvent-like. As the mead ages, these react with natural organic acids and slowly convert into esters, the fruity, floral compounds that make aged mead smell and taste far more elegant. It’s literally harsh alcohol turning into perfume. This all happens slowly, especially at cooler storage temperatures, which is why mead ageing takes months rather than weeks.

At the same time, the acidity and tannins begin to settle down. The lemon juice, the tannins from the black tea, and the acids produced during fermentation all start out shouting over one another. Ageing lets them calm down, link up, and round themselves into something smoother and more balanced. Meanwhile, the honey character, which fermentation temporarily bulldozes, starts creeping back into the spotlight as the yeast finish their job and drop out of suspension. Those lovely floral, fruity, toffee-like notes rebuild themselves slowly over time.

And then there’s the clearing. As the months pass, yeast cells, proteins, pollen, and all the other microscopic floaty nonsense gradually fall to the bottom. As these settle out, the flavour becomes cleaner, the aroma sharper, and the entire drink smoother. Clear mead doesn’t just look nicer, it genuinely tastes better because all those distracting bits are no longer swirling around interfering with the flavour or getting stuck in your teeth.

So, if your first taste makes you question every decision that led you here, don’t panic, and definitely don’t pour it away (far too many beginners do). Mead rewards patience more than anything else in brewing. The longer you leave it alone, the more it transforms, and the prouder future-you will be when you pour that first properly matured glass.

And yes, ageing will become a bit of an obsession. Mead makers everywhere (myself included) end up chasing clarity and longevity like gremlins with clipboards. Look at any mead making forum and you’ll find people showing off their dusty demijohns from the 1940s, or taking smug selfies through their mead to prove how crystal-clear it is. It’s a whole thing. You’ll understand soon enough.

Lemon Juice: Cheap, Simple, Effective

Some mead makers swear by acid blends, pH meters, titration kits, and carefully balanced chemistry and that’s brilliant if you’re entering competitions or trying to recreate a specific flavour profile with scientific precision. But for a first traditional mead, you really don’t need to turn your kitchen into a chemistry lab. The juice of half a lemon does the job beautifully.

A splash of lemon adds just enough acidity to balance the natural sweetness of the honey, helping the mead taste like an actual drink rather than honey-flavoured ethanol. It brightens the profile, sharpens the edges in a good way, and keeps the whole thing from feeling flabby or overly sweet.

It’s cheap, it’s simple, and you can buy it everywhere. No specialist ingredients, no faff… just a bit of citrus doing exactly what it needs to do. A tiny addition that quietly keeps the whole recipe in balance.

Final Thought: Mead Is Low Effort, High Reward

The beauty of mead is that once you’ve done the initial faff, it mostly looks after itself. There’s a tiny burst of excitement at the beginning, a couple of small jobs over the first few weeks, and then you leave it alone and let time do what time does best. No constant tinkering, no stressful adjustments. Just patience, occasional swirling, and the odd proud stare at your bubbling airlock like it’s your firstborn.

If you follow the steps, keep everything clean, treat your yeast with a bit of kindness, and fight the urge to poke at it every five minutes, future-you will end up with a lovely bottle (or five) of honey wine. And when you finally pour that first glass, you’ll be able to say, with complete confidence, “I know exactly why this worked… and I absolutely shook it like a man possessed to get here.”

And if you’re wondering what comes next, don’t worry. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be putting out another YouTube video and a full follow-up blog showing you how to siphon properly and how to do your second fermentation without redecorating the kitchen. Keep an eye out, there’s plenty more sticky chaos to come!