One of the best things about mead is the sheer amount of different varieties there are. You can use any kind of ingredients to throw some type of mead together and it’s likely that somewhere else in the world has done a similar mead. Mead allows the most creative of brewers to stretch their imagination to bring forth something unique. At some point, the very definition of mead itself gets tested when we ask, can mead be made without honey?
Technically, mead can’t be made without honey because mead is fermented honey water. However, over the years people have substituted different sugars for the honey in their mead with a result resembling something similar to mead. The brewing process they used is the exact same process they would use for mead. Is the only difference really one of semantics? We’ll dive in below to see what exactly the difference, if any, there is.
Is Mead without Honey Really Mead?
Mead is simply an alcoholic beverage that is made from fermenting honey and water. This is a standard definition that is used as an umbrella term for any of the different varieties of honey wine. For instance, many different meads are categorized into subcategories such as melomels, acerglyn, etc depending on what ingredients there are besides the honey such as fruit or spices. Where it gets confusing is when you start adding ingredients that are typically a totally different category of alcoholic beverage than mead such as beer or wine. For example, what determines which category to use for your alcoholic beverage in a braggot? Is it the amount of honey vs malt or the abv of the beverage? Stuff like this can get confusing which is why putting some beverages in categories can be seen as a gray area.
The point I’m trying to make here is that you shouldn’t get hung up on the technical definitions of these beverages because to the layman, they really don’t know the difference anyway. To them, making a mead with different ingredients is perfectly fine if it doesn’t actually have honey as long as it tastes like a mead. You shouldn’t get bogged down in a 10 minute conversation with your friend who has no idea what mead even is about the specifics of why this maple syrup mead isn’t actually a “mead” and is actually maple wine.
What is the point of making mead without honey?
Some might ask, what is the point of this? There’s a couple points here. One has to do with curiosity and expanding your horizons, the other has to do with vegan options. When you are on your homebrewing path, at some point everyone asks, what if? What would this taste like if I do this instead of that? What if I do the unthinkable and substitute honey? To me, this is a very human idea: to explore the unexplored, to question that which should not be questioned. To act on these ideas is the sign of a very high level brewer.
Others might be vegan themselves or just concerned with making a vegan alternative to their mead for others to enjoy. Many see honey as not being a vegan ingredient because it’s harvested from bees. Vegans try to eliminate all forms of animal exploitation. It’s not clear that bees are harmed exactly from the harvesting of honey, but it could be argued that their health is damaged and they are certainly exploited for their honey. So for them, it’s logical to use the techniques of making mead to make a beverage without honey in it.
Why not just make “something else”?
The question then becomes, why don’t they just call it something different? There are actually different names for brews made without the use of honey that are similar to mead. It’s just easier to say “make a mead from agave nectar” than “make Pulque”. Few people, even in the homebrewing world, know what pulque is, but when you tell them to make a mead by substituting agave for honey, it makes perfect sense.
It’s just a matter of convenience and simplicity. Saying to make a mead with x ingredient, any brewer who has in the past made some type of mead or at least read about it will instantly figure out how he’s supposed to make it, the average abv, and what it would taste like.
Are the brewing techniques the same?
Typically, when you’re making a mead without honey, the way you go about brewing it are the exact same process. This could vary slightly with different ingredients and different yeasts, but basically you’re doing the same thing as you would with a mead with honey. The process for making mead with honey is so versatile that it allows you to basically substitute any ingredients in and get the job done. So if you’ve ever made a mead with honey before you should have all the skills necessary to make a mead without honey.
The only difference would be the primary ingredient that is being fermented is some other sugar that isn’t honey. So you’d have to calculate the differences in yeast nutrients you’d have to use based on whatever ingredient’s nutrient profile is that you’re using instead. The good news is that many of these experiments have already been made and are made clear in the recipe.
What to use as a substitute for honey?
There’s a number of different things you can use to substitute for honey but typically when people think of a substitute they are thinking of something that is similar to the consistency of honey. The two ingredients that people use to substitute are maple syrup and agave nectar. Both of these can be used to make an alcoholic drink that will yield you something similar to mead.
As we mentioned earlier, when you make a “mead” with agave nectar, you can either call it mead or what it’s traditionally known as which is Pulque. Pulque is a traditional drink from central Mexico that is made from fermenting the sap from an agave plant. It’s usually very low abv at around 2-6 percent, so if we want to bump that up to mead levels we’d have to use the appropriate amount of agave nectar with the correct mead yeast.
When you use maple syrup as a stand alone substitute for honey in a mead, it’s traditionally known as “maple wine”. This is a fantastic substitute but would again need the correct measurement of maple syrup to use with the correct yeast strain to yield abv results similar to a traditional mead.
Both maple syrup and agave nectar are both great substitutes to use in a mead as they both lend well to adding spices, fruits, and are similar in cost.
Bottom Line
You can make a drink like mead without honey that is very similar to mead with all the characteristics and brewing techniques used to make mead. It won’t really be mead because mead is from honey but it will be very similar.