Bottling Mead
The Right Bottle for the Mead
After your mead is dry or stabilised and back sweetened to taste, allow the mead to clear. Cold crashing definitely speeds clearing if you can do it. Once clear, it is time to bottle your mead. Traditional meads can be bottled in any colored glass without skunking from light exposure. If your mead contains hops or herbs, I would suggest brown bottles to avoid any issues.
What type of bottle to use? This largely depends on your mead. I’ve decided to split this into carbonated/non-stabilised meads or non-carbonated/stabilised meads.
Non-carbonated or stabilised meads
This category is for dry or completely stabilised meads. If those criteria are met, you can use any bottle you wish. You are not concerned with pressure in the bottles from continued fermentation, therefore, it is completely safe.
Carbonated or non-stabilised meads
This category requires heavy-duty bottles or kegs due to the fact that the bottle will experience pressure. Absolutely do not use wine bottles with corks! The following vessels do well here:
Beer bottles with crown caps
Beer bottles with swing tops
Champagne bottles with caps or caged corks
Belgian ale bottles with caged corks
Stainless steel growlers
Kegs
These bottles are safe for this purpose. Beware that stalled meads should never be bottled. If you didn’t hit your expected gravity, beware!
Bottling Process
When bottling, oxygen is the enemy. Mead that is oxidized has a wet cardboard-type flavor. A few key steps can help you avoid oxygenation. Stabilisation not only prevents fermentation, but also protects from oxygenation. As always, stabilising is best! Alternatively, bottling mead that is still cold from cold crashing is another way to protect from oxygenation. Chemical reactions such as oxygenation are vastly slowed at cold temperatures.
Bottling is easiest when you have a pour spout on the side of the carboy. If you do not have a pour spout, then a self-priming siphon is best. Simply get as much of the clear mead as you can in your bottles. The yeast at the bottom of the carboy is referred to as “lees”. You can always pour the remaining lees into a tall, thin bottle and allow it to clear again to get a bit more mead…or drink it cloudy. I won’t judge.
Cap, Corks and Swing Tops
A few quick tips about closures for your bottles.
Crown caps: Make sure your crown caps are the oxygen scavenging kind. Standard beer caps work on most beer bottles, but you will need a slightly larger size for champagne bottles. Invest in a metal capper. The plastic cappers always seem to break at the worst times.
Corks: Buy high-quality corks. Even the best quality corks don’t last forever. Check with the manufacturer to determine how long the cork lasts before you need to re-cork your bottles. If you are corking a carbonated mead, you will need a cork cage to reinforce the cork combined with champagne bottles or Belgian ale bottles.
Swing tops: Be sure to check the integrity of the rubber O-ring. They will need to be replaced from time to time. Don’t forget to remove the O-ring during sanitization and check for any grunge.
Storage
Mead is pretty forgiving on storage conditions, but room temperature in a dark area is always my suggestion. Why tempt fate with your precious mead? The common mantra is that mead gets better with age. This mantra stems back from poor fermentation practices before we scienced everything! With proper fermentation practices that I’ve described here, most mead is good straight out of the fermentor. Even better after clearing.
Traditional meads can be aged without any issues as long as they are protected from oxygenation. They often develop a richer honey profile over time. Especially around the 6 month mark. In some rare cases, I’ve experienced meads that have gone through a “dumb” phase. Dumb phase is a wine term that means the flavors are muted right after bottling. Don’t worry. They come back after a few months in the bottle. As I said, this is rare, but it does encourage you to hide a few bottles.
Fruit, herb, and sometimes oaked meads are often better young than aged. These flavors tend to fade over time, thus losing the balance you achieved at bottling. Coffee meads are especially notorious for having a tight window of being at peak. A bit of trial and error is required to figure out the sweet spot on these meads!
