When people look into making mead the first thing they run into is the time and effort it takes to get involved. Let’s face it, in this tik tok obsessed world of low attention spans, it can be daunting to have to wait months to see results. I know this because when I started, I wanted results as soon as possible.
I can tell you from personal experience that if you stick with homebrewing and learn to develop the skill, it’s not only worth the time but also the money invested. This is a great hobby that allows you to make really good alcohol that you can store for years and tastes fantastic. You will be learning a form of art that will pay dividends for you the rest of your life.
At the end of the day, I doubt anyone who is a mead maker will look back and call his time invested a waste.
The importance of having a positive hobby
In life, a lot of the time we get so tied down with the hustle and bustle of things that we forget to actually live it. Back and forth to the office every day and when we come home we spend what limited time we have with the family or just unwinding while being constantly bombarded with distractions in the form of social media and television.
At some point along the lines it’s important to do something creative that is for yourself. This is where homebrewing comes in for a lot of people. Making your own alcohol at home is a perfect hobby that allows you to create something instead of just consuming more product or passively watching something. You’ll get hands on and bring something new into this world.
This feeling of accomplishment in my opinion supersedes any type of associated costs or negatives associated with long brewing times because not only do you get a feeling of accomplishment, but you also get a very useful skill along with some long lasting items that everyone is interested in (mead).
Is it hard to make mead at home?
When people first get into homebrewing it’s usually to make either beer or wine for themselves because that is what is popular, but what about mead? Many people I’ve talked to thought that mead was somehow harder to make. When I show them how to make it they are usually surprised that it’s often much easier to make.
Compared to beer, I find that mead is much easier to make as it involves a lot of less steps. With beer, there’s all the steps of getting the malt out of the grains, boiling, sparging, hopping, bottle conditioning, etc. With mead it’s just putting honey in water, dropping in the yeast, and calling it a day. The difference is that beer is usually ready to go in a month while mead could take years to age properly.
When I was first starting out I was making beer with my homebrewing equipment and while I made them work fine, I found the relative ease of making mead to be a nice break. Even though the time investment is greater for mead, most of the time investment is just letting it sit in a bottle to age after everything is already done. The effort it took to make mead was much less than beer, and yet it yielded me the same amount of liquid but at 15 percent vs 5 percent at a SLIGHTLY higher cost than beer.
Making mead is more similar to making wine than beer. However, I find that making wine is a more delicate process whereas mead is more set and forget. The effort seems to be slightly less for mead, the cost seems to be slightly less, and the time invested with aging seems to be on par. Against wine, mead still yields the same amount, provides similar abv, and provides a long lasting product that you can call a work of art.
Homemade mead vs commercial products
Due to recent controversy in the beer world, many people have been questioning what they are drinking. Some have come to the conclusion that it might be a good idea to start homebrewing instead of relying on the same 3 global corporations for a false choice in alcohol. What an exciting time to be in homebrewing and welcoming all the new faces fed up with subpar choices at the store.
I have read a lot about people who are fed up and looking for something new and many are saying, why not homebrewing? Not only can you make your own premium beer, but you can use the same equipment with less effort to make a potentially superior product: Mead.
Is the effort it takes to become a homebrewer worth it compared to just buying stuff at the store? I would say a resounding yes. Most of the effort in homebrewing comes at the front end with setting everything up. Once you get the process down, it’s as easy as following a simple recipe. Sure, you could save time by just buying it at the store, but once you become a homebrewer you get more than just your own custom alcoholic beverage, you get a new skill.
Lasting skills and products
When you take the dive into making mead you’re investing in a skill that could turn out to be extremely handy down the line. Let’s face it, not everyone knows how to make good mead. No matter what happens, you’ll always have the ability to make alcohol for yourself or friends with the right materials. With this knowledge you could do all sorts of things like open a meadery, make a mead cellar, or teach others how to make their own. You never know when your new found skills could come in handy.
This may sound completely insane, but imagine building a cellar full of mead. Now you have a ton of mead bottles that are worth something. If there was ever a time of emergency in the country you could always barter with your mead products. In good times and bad, everyone is going to drink. If you were ever thinking about getting into prepping, making mead would be a huge feather in your cap. That’s hard to put a price tag on and is certainly worth the effort. Think about it this way, if you were going to do it anyway, it’s nice to know your efforts will last for years.
The Artistic quality of making fine mead
There’s something to be said about how much it’s worth it to you to make something of artistic quality like a fine mead. Once you get some meads under your belt you can start really getting experimental and finding what you like best. From making just the right mead to putting it in the perfect bottle with labels and wax, once you see that final product that everyone loves it will hit home how much it’s really worth.
The feeling of accomplishment to know that you created something that sat on your wall for years to age to perfection only to be enjoyed by friends and family is really something else. Worth it? I’d say so.
Conclusion
Hopefully through this article I’ve conveyed that Homemade Mead is certainly worth the effort. It will give you a new skill, give you fantastic tasting mead, and allow you to create something truly artistic. Just have the patience to get through the aging process and keep making mead!