Blueberry Mead Recipe

The short answer: for one gallon of blueberry mead, dissolve 2.5 pounds of honey in water, add 2 to 3 pounds of crushed blueberries in a straining bag, a wine yeast and yeast nutrient, and ferment under an airlock for about a week on the fruit. Lift the bag out, rack the mead into a clean jug and let it age for several months. It is one of the easier melomels (mead made with fruit) because blueberries are mild, widely sold frozen and kind to beginners.

This page is the blueberry version of our how to make mead guide, so the basics of sanitizing, hydrometer readings and racking are covered there. If you want a wine made with blueberries and sugar instead of honey, see our blueberry wine recipe. For a darker, tarter cousin of this mead, try the blackberry mead recipe.

Ingredients for 1 Gallon of Blueberry Mead

The ingredients needed to make 1 gallon of blueberry mead are honey, blueberries, water, wine yeast and yeast nutrient, plus pectic enzyme and one Campden tablet if you want a clear, clean result. Each one has a job:

• Honey, 2.5 lb: the main sugar. By the 35 points per pound per gallon rule our mead calculator uses, 2.5 pounds in one gallon gives an original gravity near 1.088 before the berries add their own sugar. That ferments to roughly 12% alcohol if it goes dry.
• Blueberries, 2 to 3 lb: flavor and color. Two pounds gives a gentle berry note; three gives a mead that clearly tastes of blueberry.
• Water, to 1 gallon: use filtered or spring water if your tap water is heavily chlorinated.
• Wine yeast, 1 packet: bread yeast will ferment honey, but a wine yeast is cleaner and handles more alcohol.
• Yeast nutrient, 1 tsp: honey is a thin diet for yeast. The Fermax label doses 1 teaspoon per gallon.
• Pectic enzyme, ½ tsp: breaks down the fruit pectin that otherwise leaves the mead hazy.
• Campden tablet, 1: sulfite that knocks back wild yeast and bacteria riding on the fruit. Crush it and wait 24 hours before the yeast goes in.

Treat the weights as a starting point. Honeys differ in water content, so let the hydrometer reading, not the pound figure, tell you where you landed.

Do you have to use a kit?

No. A jug, a stopper and an airlock are all the gear a first batch needs. A starter mead kit just bundles those pieces; see the kit picks at the bottom of the page, or our comparison of the best mead making kits.

Wild or Cultivated Blueberries

Both work. Cultivated blueberries, the large ones in supermarket pints, give a mild, slightly sweet berry flavor and a pink to purple color. Wild blueberries are smaller, and the usual reason to buy them (often sold frozen) is a stronger flavor and a deeper color for the same weight, so you can use a little less fruit.

Both will fade somewhat during long aging, as most berry color and aroma does. If you want the blueberry to stay in front, use the upper end of the fruit range, or add a second handful of thawed berries after fermentation, once the yeast has finished and cannot ferment out their aroma.

Fresh or frozen

Frozen berries are a good choice, not a compromise. They are cheap, available all year and already broken down by freezing. Weigh them frozen and use the same amount. Avoid sweetened or syrup-packed fruit, which changes your gravity and adds ingredients you did not plan for.

Crushing and Freezing the Fruit

Blueberry skins are tough and the berries hold their juice well, so whole fresh berries give up their flavor slowly. Freezing them solid and thawing them cracks the skins, and a few presses with a masher or clean hands finishes the job. Do the crushing in a straining bag so the skins can be lifted out in one piece later.

Homebrew Answers does the same thing: the berries go into a straining bag and are gently mashed to release the juice, then added with the honey at the start rather than after primary fermentation. Other mead makers add fruit later to protect delicate aromas, and both approaches are common. Adding it at the start is simpler, and it is the method this recipe uses.

Sanitize the fruit stage, too

Fruit brings its own yeast and bacteria. That is the reason for the crushed Campden tablet and the 24 hour wait before pitching, the same step we use in the blueberry wine card.

Yeast and Nutrients

Pick a wine yeast, not bread yeast. The card uses Lalvin ICV-D47, a common choice for meads, and Lalvin 71B is another well-known one for fruity, medium-strength meads. Whichever you buy, check the alcohol tolerance on the packet against your original gravity: a 1.088 must is well inside what ordinary wine yeasts handle, but a stronger mead is not. Our best wine yeasts guide compares the strains.

Nutrient matters more in mead than in fruit wine, because honey has little for yeast to eat besides sugar. Fruit helps a little, but not enough to skip it. The usual advice is to split the nutrient into two or three additions in the first days of fermentation rather than dumping it in once. The card uses two: half at pitching, half after two or three days. Our how to make mead guide goes through the timing in more detail.

Step by Step

The recipe card is the short version. Here is what to watch at each stage.

Mix and measure

Dissolve the honey completely before you add the fruit. A dark layer left at the bottom of the jug gives a false hydrometer reading. Take your original gravity after the fruit goes in and write it down, because you will need it to calculate alcohol later with our ABV calculator.

Ferment on the fruit

Homebrew Answers expects fermentation to start 24 to 72 hours after pitching and the primary stage to run about a week. Keep the jug in a cool room out of direct light and push the fruit bag under once a day, or the top will dry and invite mold.

Rack and age

Lift the bag out and let it drip. Do not wring it hard: that clouds the mead. Siphon off the sediment into a clean jug, a job made easier by an auto-siphon (see how to rack wine). Homebrew Answers conditions its blueberry mead for 2 to 3 months, racks again, and ages another 4 to 6 months before bottling, with up to 9 months in total. Do not rush it: blueberry mead tastes sharp and hot when young.

Scaling to 5 Gallons

Multiply everything by five. The original gravity stays the same, so the mead comes out equally strong.

Use a fermenter bigger than the batch for the fruit stage: 10 to 15 pounds of berries take up room and foam. Afterward, rack into a 5 gallon carboy with little headspace; our carboy vs bucket guide helps you choose. Always check the packet for how much must each yeast pack is meant for.

How Much Mead Does 5 lb of Honey Make

It depends on how strong you want it, and you can work it out with the same 35 points per pound per gallon rule our mead calculator uses. Original gravity equals 1 plus (pounds of honey × 35 ÷ gallons of finished mead) ÷ 1000.

ABV figures use (OG minus FG) × 131.25 with a final gravity of 0.995. So 5 pounds of honey makes about 2 gallons of standard-strength mead, roughly nine 750 ml bottles after losses to sediment, or about 1.5 gallons if you want it stronger. Fruit adds sugar of its own, so a blueberry batch lands a little higher than the honey-only figure. Take a reading before you pitch and trust the hydrometer.