Best products from r/mead

Since I actually find the links in the sidebar to be fairly unhelpful, at least for someone as detail oriented as me as a beginner, and I'm still enough of a beginner to remember how hard it was to get started, I'll go ahead and give you a start here.

Equipment needed

• Primary Bucket
  
• Carboy
  
• Airlock (x2 to make your life easier) + rubber stopper(bung) + vodka for sterile agent, could use water instead. I like vodka. Also, you could use balloon here instead of all this.
  
• Hydrometer, so you can measure your starting gravity and estimate the strength of your brew.
  
• Racking Cane
  
• Siphon Hose
  
• Bleach or some other sanitizer
  
• You can get everything up till this point with a homebrew kit, here's one for a 3 gallon batch, plus a few extras that aren't necessary but are nice to have. Like a bottle filler.
  
• Large (can hold several gallons of water) Stockpot
  
• Large metal spoon for stirring
  
• Small bowl for starting your yeast
  
• Small spoon for stirring your yeast
  
  Equipment Wanted If you think you'll get really into this, here's some equipment that I have that I feel makes life a lot easier.
  
  
• Auto Siphon so you don't have to use your mouth to get things started. You don't need a racking cane if you have this.
  
• Fermentation Sampler. Is an easy place to read your hydrometer (don't drop your hydrometer into your carboy by accident, regret!!) and makes it real easy to get a small glass for sampling without having to risk the mess of siphoning into a glass.
  
• Cloth bag to hold primary ingredients to lessen particles in your mead during racking.
  
  Ingredients Needed
  
  
• D-47 Lalvin is a type of Yeast specifically used for brewing. I don't know if I can speak very well to the differences in yeasts, but I like this one because in my limited experience it propagates and dies quickly so you have less time in the brewing stage and more time in the ageing stage which is what makes Mead delicious.
  
• Honey! See amount listed in recipe. I personally like to purchase locally. Some recipes will indicate a specific type of honey. Others that are heavily flavored won't matter as much. I believe I used a clover honey in this, but I don't think you can tell with all the other flavors.
  
• Molasses. Regular in the store molasses works fine.This is acting as my nutrient (to feed the yeast) and additional sweetener because I knew I wanted a very sweet mead. Bonus, I'm pretty sure this is what gave it most of it's color.
  
• Pumpkin mash. You could use Libby's pumpkin mash here, but I wanted to be as "from scratch" as possible so I roasted 4 pie/sweet pumpkins.
  
• 1 bottle cinnamon sticks. This is the size I used.
  
• For the spices - really just put in the spices you feel appropriate for pumpkin pie. I ended up with the ratios I did because that's what smelled nice in the primary bucket. Ha!
  
• Spring water. You know the water you can buy at the store in jugs? That's the stuff. The reason you want to use this instead of tap is there's no fluoride or chlorine to possibly taint the taste of your mead.
  
  To Brew a Mead
  
  

1. Sanitize all of your equipment. First wash everything with soap and water. If this is new equipment, you can probably skip that part and move on to sanitation. To do this, you can use the sanitation packets (if you bought the kit and have them) or you can use bleach. (There are other methods too, but these are the ones I'm familiar with. If you use bleach, it's 1 Tbl/1gallon of water to make a sanitary solution to wash things in. Soak all your equipment in your sanitary solution for 20 minutes. Then rinse. If you used bleach, you will need to rinse a lot. Over and over again till you can't smell any more bleach. In my experience, 4x rinse has worked for my bleach solution.
   
2. Prepare your primary. This is only necessary for a recipe like this one where you have a lot of ingredients that don't go into the Must. In this case, you'll put pumpkin mash directly into the primary (assuming you've already roasted and cooled your pumpkins or are using canned pumpkin mash) or into a cloth bag so you don't have to worry about mush particles getting into your siphon later.... Pour in molasses, orange peels (which you've also washed) and all your spices.
   
3. Prepare your Must. The must is your heated honey-water mixture. You use your large stockpot, put in all your honey (you might want to melt it some by placing the bottles/jugs into a hot water bath in your sink or in a different pot on your stove, this makes it easier to pour and use all the honey), and as much spring water as you can fit in the stockpot on top of the honey without over flowing. (Unless you're making a 1 gallon batch - then make sure you don't use more than 1/2 a gallon- 3/4 gallon.) Note: you don't have to heat the honey for any kind of sanitizing purpose. I heat my honey/water mixture just enough so the honey dissolves nicely in the water. I feel like this makes it easier to mix everything, but you don't have to! There's a whole bunch of hubub about it killing flavor and whatnot. I only feel this is true if you accidentally boil it. DO NOT BOIL your Must!
   
4. Cool your Must to about room temperature. To do this, you can put your stockpot into a cold bath and track the temperature fall, you can add it to your primary bucket and add in chilled spring water till almost your goal volume (not quite), or put it covered in your freezer/fridge till it reaches around 70degrees. Don't let it get below 65degrees though, that's too cold. Whichever way, add the must to your Primary bucket after and bring your volume up to goal by adding spring water.
   
5. Prepare your yeast. Follow the directions on the back of your yeast packet to bring your yeast to life. Typically, this means heating a couple cups of water to 109degrees in that small bowl you sanitized, adding your yeast, stirring vigorously with the small spoon you sanitized, and letting your yeast propagate for 15 minutes.
   
6. Pitch your yeast! While the yeast is propagating in it's small bowl, give your primary a couple stirs to mix everything up. After the time has passed, upend or pitch your water/yeast mixture into your primery bucket.
   
7. Stir vigorously! This is my SO's favorite part. We play crazy music and stir like crazy (using that big metal spoon you sanitized) for 5-7 minutes. This get everything mixed up good and adds the oxygen the yeast needs for fermentation. So the more bubbles the better!
   
8. Take your starting gravity. Either stick your hydrometer straight into your primary bucket or use a sampler. Write it down and use one of the links on the side to figure out your potential alcohol content, or use the chart that came with your hydrometer.
   
9. Put your lid on your primary bucket and add your airlock to the bunghole (hehehe) aka that rubber surrounded hole in the top. Add vodka (or water) to the airlock to create an airtight seal. Place your primary vat into a cool dark place for a week or two.
   
   NOTE If you're making a 1 gallon batch, you can put your batch directly into your jug carboy and shake instead of stir. You can also use a balloon instead of an airlock. I recommend sanitizing a food-grade funnel to put all your ingredients in if that's the case. To make smaller batches - just divide everything in my recipe (except the yeast, always just use 1 packet of that regardless of the batch size) by 6.5x. For example - for a 1 gallon batch you would use 1.5 cups of pumpkin mash instead of 10.5 cups. etc etc etc.
   
   As time goes by
   
   

• Several weeks down the line you'll want to rack your mead. What this does is several things. You move your mead from Primary to Secondary. Secondary should be a glass carboy for long-term storage. This reduces the chance of plastic tainting the taste of your mead and reduces the chance of your mead alcohol slowly degrading your plastic primary. The reason it's nice to start in a plastic primary is for easy mixing and it leaves a lot of head space for your vigorous yeast activity. When you transfer to secondary (glass carboy) you reduce the amount of mead exposed to air, thus reducing the chance of infection. Also, every time you rack it cleans your mead of sediment, making it that much more drinkable.
  
• You'll want to rack several times before you consider bottling.
  
• The longer your mead sits, the better it gets. Unlike beer, plan for the long term.
  
• Keep your mead cool and dark. At one point I had access to cool but not dark, so I put a blanket over my mead.

Your recipe sounds like it'll turn out well if all goes according to plan! You may want to add some sweetness back if it ferments dry, but you've got several weeks to figure that out and read the Wiki to get all caught up on the method and terminology to things like back sweetening and nutrient addition schedules. I admire that you're being industrious with your fermentation equipment, I wasn't brave enough to start fermenting with whatever I had on hand with my first batch.

If you think you'll stick with it, here's the equipment I used for my first batch. I highly recommend looking into it if you think you'll do another batch! (I apologize if you aren't in the US, Amazon is my go-to)

• Hydrometer - $15.99 | You'll definitely want one of these first! It'll help you figure out when fermentation is done, plus it's nice to know your ABV when your friends or family ask "How strong is this?" (if you like to share)
  
• One Gallon Glass Carboy with Airlock, Drilled Stopper, Polyseal Lid - $14.81 | A glass carboy could last you forever! These have done very well for me, and the included airlock will give you a great setup for less than $15. The screw-on cap is just an added bonus, I use mine when I cold-crash.
  
• Star San 16 oz - $16 | This seems like the go-to sanitizer for the sub, and I use it as well. If you think you'll do several batches, I recommend going with the 32 oz size instead! It's much cheaper per ounce.
  
• Campden Tablets aka K-Meta (Potassium Metabisulfite) - $6.08 | This will help you preserve and stabilize your mead before you bottle. Some people don't, but it's highly recommended!
  
• Auto Siphon - $13.99 | This makes racking to secondary and bottling much easier! When it comes time to bottling, it's also really nice to have a Bottling Wand - $5.86
  
  All-in-all, this is just about my current setup excluding yeast, yeast nutrients, and extra carboys and airlocks. The list above comes out to about $127.45 USD before tax, which really isn't too bad considering one gallon should yield just shy of 5 standard wine bottles! Most commercial meads I've seen ranges from $15-$25 with some exceptions (There's a winery near me called Oliver Winery that makes a mead called Camelot Mead that sells for about $8 per bottle. Very good for such a cheap mead, you can probably find it at Total Wine & More if you have one nearby).
  
  ​
  
  Sorry for such a long comment! Best of luck in your mead-making adventure!
  
  Edit: If you have a local homebrew store, I would opt for that rather than Amazon. Prices may not be as cheap but you won't have to wait for shipping, you'll be able to support a local business, and employees at homebrew stores are usually really helpful and they can recommend recipes and give you pointers. Nothing beats face-to-face interaction!

The necessities he needs for making his first batch of mead:

Required: 1. A carboy for fermenting and aging it in. I would highly recommend glass for his first one as it’s easy to sanitize and clear so you can see what the mead is doing. a one gallon carboy is usually most people’s first.

Basically required: 2. An air lock and carboy bung to keep the carboy air tight while fermenting and aging I’d suggest the standard PLASTIC ‘S’ shaped one piece air lock although it’s all down to personal preference. Glass will inevitably roll off the counter top and shatter just like 2 of my hydrometers and test jars did... lol I use a #6.5 bung for my standard 1 gallon carboys that I started with.

Required: 3. A good strain of yeast specifically meant for brewing. (Keep the bread yeast to sourdough where it works much better for) I found my preferred strain very early on as I use an ale yeast but you can’t really go wrong with premier blanc wine yeast. The wiki on this sub has a lot of info on that.

HIGHLY recommended: 4. A hydrometer and test jar. Most people don’t use one for their first batch but my guess is that he’s going to really enjoy it and end up making more batches so having a hydrometer is very important. It allows you to make sure your mead is done fermenting and allows you to know your alcohol content.

HIGHLY recommended: 5. Yeast nutrient. If yeast has a rough fermentation. The mead will taste like rocket fuel for the first 4 months. Proper nutrients will allow the yeast to have a healthy ferment and to drink it much quicker. (Pretty cheap in small amounts)

HIGHLY recommended: 6. Starsan sanitizer. I’d personally consider this an Absolute necessity. You can do your best to clean things with dawn dish soap but it won’t entirely clean things and if things get contaminated it could take all your hard work and ruin the batch.

Required: 7. A silicone hose to siphon out the mead and get it off the funky yeast at the bottom. I’d recommend a clear one as it helps to see where the stuff is at in the tube.

Hope this helps.

If my fellow mead men could correct this or add to this I’d appreciate it.

Edit: this kit on amazon has pretty much everything and the price is pretty good honestly.


Homebrewstuff One Gallon Nano-Meadery Mead Starter Kit https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ICTNLGG/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_c1k0DbD3YAD6G

It doesn’t have a test jar for the hydrometer though but you can find a plastic one pretty cheap.

Ken Schramm's book is one of the best and has already been linked to, but I'll throw another link below. Like /u/StormBeforeDawn said, no book is the most up-to-date, but frankly that's not what he needs. He needs to get the basic process down, and then be ready to do research in books and various places online to learn more. Schramm's book is widely considered the best place to start.

Steve Piatz's book is good and worth getting. It has a lot of information on diagnosing weird smells/tastes, and has the best pictures around. It is quite frankly the prettiest book in terms of pictures, layout, and typesetting. That said, I think he could have served novices better in some of the process descriptions around things like aeration and degassing (nothing that can't be figured out with resources here on the reddit wiki, GotMead.com, or YouTube videos).

Lastly, and maybe my first recommendation behind Schramm's book, Are Robert Ratliff's two books The Big Book of Mead Recipes and Let There Be Melomels. These last two are recipe books. Once you understand the basic process of making mead (and proper sanitization), it's simply a matter of getting down to it and making batch after batch, experimenting and enjoying the product. Ratliff's books are helpful in that they give you collections of tested and proven recipes that produce enjoyable finished products.

1. The Compleat Meadmaker (Schramm): https://amzn.to/2QS9yiv
   
2. Big Book of Mead Recipes (Ratliff): https://amzn.to/2DdxhBJ
   
3. Let There be Melomels (Ratliff): https://amzn.to/2OhN0Gu
   
4. The Complete Guide to Making Mead (Piatz): https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Making-Mead-Ingredients/dp/0760345643
   
   So I'd suggest getting him the first two books. I highly recommend both of Ratliff's books, not as introductions to making meads, but as great recipe books to kickstart your imagination.

Don't buy a kit! They sell you all kinds of shit you won't use when there are better options for similar money.

Get a brewing bucket as if you don't have a bottler then this will make your life so much better.

Get 2 carboys (glass is best but better bottles will work too). Check Craigslist for these...you can get some awesome deals.

Get 1 Refractomoeter instead of a hydrometer because they use WAY less of your must to calculate and they aren't mega fragile like hydrometers are.

You will want an auto siphon

You will want a carboy brush that fits on a cordless drill because cleaning a carboy without one fucking sucks (and for 18 bucks this is a no brainer).

You will need sanitizer. I personally like Iodophor because it's super cheap, it doesn't really foam up and it lasts forever. I bought one of THESE bottles like 2 years ago and it is about half full even though I brew between 50-100 gallons a year.

I always advocate people start with beer bottles rather than wine bottles. The reason for this has less to do with the bottles and more to do with equipment. The Ferrari Bottle Capper is 14 dollars while a good floor corker for wine bottles will set you back 60 bucks. In addition, it's cheaper to bottle in 20 ounce beer bottles with caps rather than in wine bottles with good corks. Use of a double lever corker for wine bottles should be considered a war crime...seriously...unless you're a masochist who loves dumping wine everywhere and having to clean it afterwards...then just avoid them...they are absolutely awful.

If you go the wine bottle route then NEVER use agglomerated or colmated corks (the ones made from tiny pieces of cork glued together) as they fall apart and will leave chunks in your bottles. In addition they don't age well, so you are much more likely to lose your brew to spoilage. I like synthetic Nomacorc but you can also buy very good quality solid natural corks as well.

Good oxygen absorbing bottle caps on the other hand are mega cheap. Again...this isn't about one being better than the other, so you can use either one.

For wine bottles, I REALLY like the ones with screw tops because they make it nice and easy to cap your bottles once opened. But for all of your bottles buy these locally...shipping will double or triple the cost of these vs buying locally. I get them for 15 bucks a case a few miles from my house...they're almost 30 a case on Amazon or close to that from Midwest or from Ohio (shipping is like 11-15 dollars a case.)

For beer bottles...I prefer clear, but they'll be tough to find locally so I often end up with brown ones. Again...buy these locally not online due to shipping costs. Your local brewing supply stores buy these pallets at a time so even Amazon can't compete with the lack of shipping costs.

I understand that you lack a lot of space, so I'm just going to throw this out once. I make 5 gallon batches because it's the same amount of work as a 1 gallon batch, but you end up with a lot more mead. I can't imagine putting in all of the effort to make a batch and only getting one quart. That said....

Final sweetness and ABV are determined by both how much honey you add and what kind of yeast you use. Since the yeast is turning sugar from the honey into alcohol, if you only add enough honey to reach 5% ABV, it won't be possible to go over 5% since there isn't honey to ferment. Also each strain of yeast has a different alcohol tolerance, so if you add enough honey to reach 15% but use a yeast that has a tolerance of 10%, it will probably stop at 10% instead of reaching 15%. Since the yeast is consuming sugar, if you had two identical batches with enough sugar to reach 15%, and in one batch you used a yeast that could only reach 10% and in the other used a yeast that could reach 18%, the 10% yeast would be lower ABV and very sweet, the 18% yeast would be higher alcohol but much drier. So you need to both pick the correct yeast and have the correct amount of honey.

You can use bakers yeast (as in: it will convert sugar to alcohol) but in general this is a bad idea if you have access to brewers yeast. It's incredibly inconsistent. You might be able to reach 10% on one batch and 5% on the next. You could easily split a packet of champagne yeast across 20 quart sized mason jars. After all: a 5 gram packet is good enough for 5 gallons which is 20 times as much as a quart. Packets of yeast cost about a dollar, so you'd be compromising one of the most critical ingredients in mead to prevent spending $0.05 per batch. You can even re-use yeast if you are careful about it.

For the airlock, I know you said you are cheap but here are a few options of things to buy. You can throw something like this on top of a mason jar and it will work like an airlock. $10 for 6 isn't bad. Another option would be to drill holes in the tops of the lids, insert something like this and add a real airlock. Another option is to pick a vessel with a smaller neck and use a balloon with a hole poked in it. A final, much cheaper option, would be to punch a hole in the top and tape a piece of rubber over the hole tightly in a way that lets air out, but seals afterwards. I don't know how much I would trust that, though...

Without tools to measure alcohol content, at this scale, it is virtually impossible to figure out the alcohol content. You can make a rough guess, but that's all it will be. There's no way around this without buying a hydrometer, refractometer, or similar.

For the amount of honey to add, it very highly depends on what you want and what yeast you are using. Let's pretend you go with a champagne yeast. By volume,

• 1 part honey to 4 parts water will give you about 12% ABV and dry (so, 0.8 cups honey with 3.2 cups water)
  
  
• 1 part honey to 3 parts water will give you about 15% ABV and dry (so, 1 cup honey to 3 cups water)
  
  
• 1 part honey to 2 parts water should get you around 18% ABV and sweet (so, 1 and 1/3 cup honey to 2 and 2/3 cup water)
  
  The catch is, for reliable, repeatable results you absolutely should get some kind of yeast nutrient. Buy something like this and it will basically last you forever on a 1 quart scale. It's an essential ingredient for making good mead reliably. If you can't get your hands on that a substitute would be boiled bread yeast.

I couldn't find mead anywhere in the store either, anywhere I asked I just got weird looks. So I did some online research and it turns out that one of the local wineries makes award winning mead. I'm pretty blessed though as there are about 20 wineries less than 5km from my house, and about 100 if I'm willing to go 30 minutes.

I went and tasted 6 meads and bought a bottle (This one). They ranged from semi-sweet to very very sweet (30g/L to 100g/L residual sugar). The one I bought was their "dry mead". It didn't have as strong of a honey taste as I expected. It reminded me of white wine, but don't get me wrong it did have some great notes of honey in the flavor and aroma. Their sweeter ones definitely had more honey flavour and were very viscous (because generally more honey is used to make them) and they also generally had a higher ABV (due to higher specific gravity). Even though the mead i bought was their dry mead, it still contained 30g/L and I was definitely hanging the next day from it. However using the technical notes on their site I gather I can make a drier mead myself.

If you like white wine, you will like mead and I am having a lot of fun learning and planning my first batch. I'm reading this book and it is excellent. Use this to help calculate how much honey you will need, your potential ABV and SG. Also take a look at Gotmead.com and homebrewtalk.com.

1. Yes. It's a lot of extra work, though.
   
   
2. "Food Grade" marked buckets are fine to use. I don't know if I'd use them for long-term storage of alcohol even if they were airtight, but for 1-4 weeks of fermentation, they're fine.
   
   
3. During fermentation it's not important that you have a good seal. Fermentation causes the off-gassing of CO2, so the mead will protect itself from oxygen (but not fruit flies!).
   
   
4. I wouldn't use a bucket for long-term storage because of the vastly increased amount of headspace, and I'm not sure the buckets are meant for alcohol storage.
   
   
5. That's just fine. Remember to get enough airlocks. They should be about $1 each at your local homebrew shop. And have at least one spare gallon carboy, because you'll probably want to rack it more than once to leave sediment behind.
   
   
6. Okay.
   
   

• Anywhere it says to use acid blend before fermentation, don't do it. Instead, start with 1/4 or 1/2 of the amount they advocate, after the mead has cleared. Mix in a little at a time until it tastes good to you. (Draw out 1 cup of mead, mix in the acid blend, mix that back into the mead. You might want to experiment in a little with individual glasses of mead to get the balance just right. However, if you've got all your mead in 1 gallon carboys, that could get tedious and the amounts could be too small to screw with, so you might just want to add what they suggest - but do it after fermentation.
  
  
• Don't heat and skim. Do a no-heat must.
  
  
• Rehydrate your yeast with Go-Ferm. Or at least rehydrate in water according to instructions on the packet. You'll retain a much larger number of viable yeast this way.
  
  
• Don't be surprised if your airlock doesn't bubble on a plastic bucket. The seals are notoriously faulty (and that's fine, per #3).
  
  
• Upgrade from the L.D. Carlson nutrient additives if you want to open a real can of worms.
  
  
• Make a little extra mead in the buckets to start with, so you know you'll have enough to fill your carboys to the top, after racking losses, without using water.
  
  
• Caps are much easier to deal with. If you want to cork (because so professional, so cool, so good for aging!), seriously consider investing in a floor corker, especially if you're planning to keep doing this. I'm in love with this model.
  
  
• When you get to the part where you bottle, rack your mead one more time into a sanitized vessel right beforehand, being extra careful not to suck up any sediment, even if that means leaving half an inch or so in the carboy. You can get that stuff later and put it in a dregs bottle (or drink it). But you can have very clear and sediment free mead without filtering if you do this.
  
  

7. Use fresh fruit. What the hell are they thinking? Don't boil it. Just overpitch your yeast a little. (Use two or three 5 gram packets instead of one.) If you're worried, Google how to use Potassium Metabisulfite to sanitize a must. Okay, so I did it you.
   
   
8. Sort of. During fermentation it will be fine, but get real airlocks because during bulk aging the pressure balance can change with barometric pressure changes, and that can result in sucking gross jar water/vodka into your mead.
   
   
9. Mead is very forgiving. I bet you'll be okay. Don't let your airlocks go dry - I can honestly say that I've seen more good mead lost that way than any other way.

damn, I really appreciate this response, a lot of fantastic info about corks I did not know.

> those bubbles are probably from the original headspace and not coming from the cork

There hasn't been any mead leakage that I can see, and I have no concerns about re-fermentation, for sure. I'm curious how small, separated bubbles could move from the headspace to the neck, as the neck is lower than the sides. A few weeks ago when I noticed this I "reset" all the headspace to the side, making sure the neck was completely liquid, and after a week+ it looks like the picture above.

As far as equipment (probably irrelevant, but figured I'd share if it helps), I'm using this floor corker (brand new, this was the first time use). I did a few test runs with bottles of water to make sure the cork depth was good, but these were its maiden voyage.

If you don't mind a followup - I get from the responses below that dry corks are what cause the whole "crumbling cork" scenario - is there a particular timeframe that is relevant (or irrelevant) for? The current batches I have bottled were 1gal, expecting to go through them in < 1 year (with 1 bottle from each marked to be used at 1 year). I have a 5gal batch aging that I'll likely want to save some bottles to age into the 1-2 year range, with a few bottles reserved for tasting at the 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 year mark.

Wisdom I had picked up sounded like technical corks are generally good for ~2 years (my assumption would be "at proper humidity"), with natural corks being desireable for longer term storage. If the majority are going to be opened in 2 years or less (probably closer to 1-1.5 at most), would using "opened for a few months" corks be as much of a concern?

I would always recommend people start with 'The Compleat Meadmaker, by Ken Schramm'. This has been the meadmaking bible for a very long time. You can find supplementary information about staggered nutrient additions, pH buffering compounds, new sanitizers, etc online in various articles and forum sites. Of course, understanding your ingredients can also be very good for any brewer, and water is a huge ingredient. So besides the other element series book 'Yeast' by Christ White and Jamil Zainasheff I highly recommend 'Water' by John Palmer and Colin Kaminski. For those of us making mead in Ferndale, our water is a very key ingredient which comes to us from an underground aquifer treated by the city of Ferndale, and is of very high quality (even compared with the high quality water from the City of Detroit). Understanding honey is a huge area of study. There are many classic textbooks on honey and honey-hunting by Eva Crane that are considered primary sources (but these can be prohibitively expensive for most mazers, and honestly, Ken's book does an awesome job of summarizing her contributions, as well as other historical information about meadmaking, honey, etc). I feel a basic understanding of beekeeping can be highly instructive for meadmakers, and so I recommend that you get your hands on some beginner beekeeping books, e.g. 'Beesentials' by L.J. Connor and Robert Muir and/or the 'Beekeeper's Handbook'. A solid background in wine or beer-making doesn't hurt, either, and there are multitudes of books I can recommend to you on the subject of beer specifically (this is my homebrewing background). My two absolute must-haves for beer brewing are 'Designing Great Beers' by Ray Daniels and 'Brewing Classic Styles' by John Palmer and Jamil Zainasheff. Learning to brew beer can help you if you decide you want to try your hand at braggots.

TLDR: The "Full kit" looks like it has the basics. As others have said, you might want a food-grade plastic bucket for primary fermentation, and you'll need bottles/containers to store the end product in.

If it were a "complete" kit I'd probably put one together which included One step sanitizer to sanitize equipment,a plastic fermentation bucket, and an auto-syphon to make racking (i.e., transferring the liquid from container to container) easier.

If it's something you're interested in pursuing further, there's plenty more you could consider picking up. A bottle filler for the auto syphon, a filtration kit to help clarify wine/mead, fining products, you might want to look into picking up more things like yeast energizer and yeast nutrient (which it sounds like this kit comes with some) and sulfate/sorbate (to stabilize the mead before back-sweetening) etc.

There are lots of recipes and lots of help available, so read up and feel free to ask questions and have a lot of fun experimenting and trying new things :)

Ha ha! I like the name! Awesome, glad you didn't have a big explosion! But definitely keep swirling it when you can to get the CO2 out of solution, it will help your ferment!

Also, check out the 'Everything you need to know' link on the sidebar! It has tons more information on help your mead process (Checking pH, adding nutrients, ect...). And if you haven't read the Compleat Meadmaker by Ken Schramm, you should, it's a good beginner guide!

You won't know if you made major fuck ups immediately unless fermentation stops way short or never starts. If you were making a 14% beer, you would want to age it for a year before it really hits its stride. Please do not give up if your mead tastes horrible after fermentation. It will get better and your subsequent batches will improve as you improve your process and take better care of your yeast.

Here is my guide to making your first mead. While you are managing fermentation, read this book and you will learn the basics and beyond.

Pushing the yeast past their alcohol tolerance: Yeast can tolerate alcohol only to a not-so-certain point. For instance, 71B-1122 (the most commonly used yeast for mead, i suggest you use it your first time) will go to 14% alcohol, sometimes a little more, and it will stop fermenting. If you have enough honey to ferment to 15% or 16% alcohol, there will be residual sweetness left in the mead.

For your first mead, I suggest you use enough honey to ferment to 14%. If you want more sweetness when it is done, dissolve 1/2 a pound at a time (if youre doing 5 gallons) in water and add it to the fermenter. Taste it in 24 hours and see if you want to add more. You can not take things out so be careful when adding sweetness and spices to your mead.

Become familiar with the mead calculator in the side bar and don't hesitate to ask questions here if you cant find the answer with a few searches

If you are doing big melomels, you might want a hydrometer with a high range (I'm assuming the one you linked is standard). Also maybe an 8g/30l bucket. otherwise those items are fine for normal strength meads w/o tons and tons of fruit.

Get the metal spoon, IMO (https://www.amazon.com/Brewing-SYNCHKG011311-Spoon-Stainless-21-Inch/dp/B001D6KF8M/ref=asc_df_B001D6KF8M/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=222720245886&hvpos=1o2&hvnetw=g&hvrand=9783685370321181631&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9061189&hvtargid=pla-384544715503&psc=1)

you don't need the paddle (that's more for mashing grain for beer brewing) - maybe get a wine whip instead?

​

--You have 2 buckets there, are you planning on aging in plastic? I'm usually a bit leery of that myself (I prefer steel for aging, so I use kegs but lots of folks like their carboys just fine). 2nd bucket is handy for sanitizer, etc while working though.

--suggestions: get a good gram scale with 1/10 gram resolution. Comes in handy for yeast, nutrients, spices etc. mesh bags are good if you are adding whole fruit and the like.

To piggy back on u/stormbeforedawn's comment.

This is the equipment I used that I've had good luck with so far. It's what he recommended, I'm just providing links to the specific product I used.

• 2 gal primary bucket
  
  
• 1 gal secondary glass
  
  
• Autosiphon
  
  
• racking cane
  
  
• Hydrometer
  
  
• Starsan
  
  
• GoFerm
  
  
• I used Fermaid O, not Fermaid K, because I was following a specific nutrient regimen. It's called TONSA 2.0. Popular, but apparently not cost efficient with larger batches. People better at this than I can answer nutrient schedule questions.
  
  
• Bubbler/Airlock.
  
  
• Bottles and cap method are your preferance. You can get bottles of tons of shapes, colors and styles. Corked, capped, swingtop, etc. Just make sure the bottles are food-safe and not decorative hobby/thrift store stuff. If you use corks, same rule, don't use decorative stuff. You'll want #8 agglomerated cork and a hand corker tool to put the corks on. #9 corks work too, but you'll need heavy tools (like a floor corker) to do that..

You can get all you need for about 30 bucks. You need a hydrometer a 1 gallon carboy and and air lock. Consumables are yeast honey and nutrients. Make sure your hydrometer doesn't bottom out in you gallon jug, or have a thief to measure in. They are optional for a first mead, but they tell you so much about your wine. Like when its done, if it stalled and other important shit.


https://www.amazon.com/Kirkland-Signature-Pure-Honey-Pound/dp/B007F2EQEW Is a good honey to start with, you can find them at costco for 15$ honey is endlessly debatable and I won't get into it. You need about 3 lbs per gallon.

Lavin 47d is a pretty hard yeast to go wrong with. There are 100's of good yeasts.

This is a good yeast nutrient. http://www.midwestsupplies.com/wyeast-yeast-nutrient-1-5-oz.html it has everything you need in it. There is a ton of information on dozens of nutrient addition styles. This one is simple, add a quart teaspoon at start and then at 24 and 48 hours after pitch. Again, whole papers can and are written about proper nutrition. Look at the wiki for massive amounts of info and some great starting recipes.

I agree that there's nothing to worry about here. Also, EC-1118 is aggressive and has an alcohol tolerance of about 18% and could go even higher if coaxed.

My rough-estimate for percent alcohol is as follows: 40 points of gravity per pound of honey per gallon of water. That is, 1 lb of honey in 1 gal of water would give a SG of 1.040. For a 5-gal batch, 16 lbs of honey in 4 gals of water:

(16lbs * 40)/4 gals = 1.160

So my calculation says your starting gravity was more of 1.160 (more or less). I see that conflicts with Kurai_'s answer, though, so I'm interested in how they arrived at it (unless they meant to type 1.150).

Alcohol. Generally speakinig, I do 8 points of gravity per percentage of alcohol. That is, if your yeast fermented 80 points of gravity (say, from 1.100 down to 1.020), then your mead would be 10% abv. This is just my rouge estimate. If you want precision, you'll need lab gear and knowledge.

You say the calculator told you your must should have been closer to 1.150 when you started. That jives with my estimation of 1.160. Let's say your starting gravity was 1.150 and your finishing gravity is now 1.010 (which is what I took away from your post). The calculation goes like this:

1.150 - 1.010 = 140 gravity points fermented
140 / 8 = 17.5% ABV

This makes more sense because EC-1118 has an alcohol tolerance of up to 18%. If your goal was a sweet, high gravity sack mead, then congratulations - you nailed it. Now put that jet fuel away for a year or so because it's going to need the aging.

If you're the reading type, The Compleat Meadmaker is very approachable and has tons of techniques and helpful science.

Nothing to worry about here except fending off people trying to steal your goods. Also be sure to always measure your starting gravity.

[Ken Schramm's Compleat Meadmaker] ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0937381802?pc_redir=1397498837&robot_redir=1) is a great place to start, its an absolute wealth of knowledge on just about everything mead. It's definitely worth a good read!

I highly recommend this book by Steve Piatz, It’s a more modern take on mead making, and a lot more friendly to folks working out the basics. Ken’s book is great for inspiration!

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Making-Mead-Ingredients/dp/0760345643/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?crid=310SBD34GYQXY&keywords=steve+piatz&qid=1557926064&s=gateway&sprefix=Steve+pia%2Caps%2C156&sr=8-1-fkmrnull

>How do you get your ingredients and what’s the most important part about them?

I look to source ingredients locally, when possible. Farmer's market, local co-op, etc. Specialty ingredients such as certain honey varietals that are regionally specific (tupelo, meadowfoam, mesquite, orange blossom, etc.) are typically ordered online after reading a fair number of reviews to get a sense of what I'm buying. Penzey's (online) is my go-to for spices. Quality is far-and-away the top priority when sourcing ingredients. It shows in the final product. Compromise in this area will cap the quality of your final product.

>What was the most helpful source of information at the beginning?

Honestly, the r/mead wiki is pretty damn helpful. I also recommend The Compleat Meadmaker and The Complete Guide to Making Mead. These are the two that got me started, and they are both quality publications.

>What equipment do you have/ how long have you used it?

Oh god. I just moved and realized how much equipment I actually have. It's...probably excessive.

2 x 5-gal primary buckets
2 x 2-gal primary buckets
1 x bottling bucket
8 x 1-gal glass jugs/carboys
5 x 3-gal glass carboys
2 x 5-gal better bottles
1 x 6.5-gal better bottle
1 x 6.5-gal glass carboy
Requisite number of air locks, bungs, stoppers, etc.
Hydrometer
Refractometer
Auto-siphon
Silicone tubing (replaced all vinyl tubing)
Handheld bottle capper (for crown caps)
Portuguese floor corker
Bottle tree
*Buon Vino mini-jet filtration system

I'm sure there more that I'm forgetting, but this gives the general sense.

Two options: wine whip (you can use other things on hand with the same effect like some stiff wire that's been sanitized) and Fermcap-S.

Not really sure how effective Fermcap is when degassing (never tried it) - it's mainly just to prevent excessive foam during fermentation, not while actively mixing it up. Very, very careful use of a wine whip is probably your best bet. However, it's really not the end of the world if you don't degas at all.

Also, I suggest picking up Ken Schramm's book: The compleat meadmaker. It reads super easy - just like he's talking to you, and is great for anything from creating your first mead to honing in on a recipe you've been doing for years. Some parts are a bit outdated, but it's still an extremely useful book.

You might want to then go more long-term and get him some bottling tools. Depending on how he wants to bottle, or what kind of mead he's making, a wine corker, a case of empties, and handful of corks might be something nice for down the road. Especially if he has something already aging in a carboy.

If it's supposed to be sparkling then you might want to stick with the relative ease of a bottle capper and some campaign bottles. TIL that in North America at least most sparkling wine bottles actually take regular ol' beer caps - which is incredible to learn. Martinelli's apple cider is the only place I've ever seen it done, but I guess it's common. If he doesn't have a regular bottle capper, or has something that isn't as easy on the bottle as one of these then maybe a capper and caps would be good.

Hope this helps!

Not sure if these links will work for you but these are what I use

Yeast Nutrient: https://amzn.com/B0064H0MVK

Yeast Energizer: https://amzn.com/B0064H0LUW

They work great for me, and my mead always ferments dry in less than a week by staggering. In fact I just hit a new record on my current 5 gallon batch SG 1.100 to 1.000 in 4 days.

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0735B5YND/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00__o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

​

I just bought this one for my second batch it is super user friendly, affordable, and overall really helps you be scientific.

The carboy you are looking at was the first one I had ever purchased, the airlock and stopper work great for 1gal batches. definitely recommend.

I use the Red Star yeast for my batches and it works well, might switch to a more specific yeast later, but for just starting out it works well. If used sparingly, you can make up to 55 1gal batches with the amount of yeast you are buying.

As for the sanitizer, you'll find most people use Star San because of how homebrewing-friendly it can be, but its really up to you. Just make sure your equipment is thoroughly cleaned and sanitized before brewing.

I have 4 of these, great cost, easy to clean

Home Brew Ohio One gallon Wide Mouth Jar with Drilled Lid & Twin Bubble Airlock-Set of 2 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07115V3F7/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Th6wCbT5RZX6M

A lot of it is beer lingo. Ive been homebrewing for 8+ years and have made over 120 batches of beer. Im also a National BJCP judge (you have to know a lot of beer making lingo to do well). I also have a very large beer, wine and mead making library (30+ books). I also have a commercial meadery.

Which parts were you curious about? I can point you in the right direction, but if I knew what you were most interested in, I could better direct you.

If you havent read much on mead, try Ken Schramms The Compleat Meadmaker

There isnt much out there on session meads (aka "quick" meads); most is my own experimentation. You really need to be able to keg or pasteurize to get a non-dry, "low" alcohol mead with carbonation.

Storm has helped a ton of us to learn to make mead the right way. He'll help you too if you'll stop the name calling. This book is looked at as the published authority, although I've heard it's slightly dated:

https://www.amazon.com/Compleat-Meadmaker-Production-Award-winning-Variations/dp/0937381802

On the other hand, this sub's wiki is probably some of the best info around. I'm not kidding.

It's fermenting. Did you check the specific gravity before adding more sugar and sealing it up?

I would encourage you to pick up a copy of The New Complete Joy of Hombrewing by Charlie Papazian and/or a copy of The Compleat Meadmaker by Ken Schramm

If you're going to back sweeten your mead you need to add potassium sorbate to prevent the yeast from starting back up.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Compleat-Meadmaker-Production-Award-winning/dp/0937381802

Start there if you look to make future batches. Also, I wouldn't have used distilled water. Spring water is better. Yeast needs vitamins and minerals. I would also use better yeast in the future. Lalvin D47 is a good mead yeast. I'd replace your baloon with an airlock. They are really cheap. http://www.amazon.com/Piece-Plastic-Airlock-Sold-sets/dp/B000E60G2W

I'd keep what you have out of direct sunlight (so in a closet or throw a blanket over it) and I'd keep it at 70 degrees F.

I was looking at this myself for an setup:

https://www.amazon.com/Home-Brew-Ohio-Fermenter-Capacity/dp/B00KQN9OSK/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1524859700&sr=8-4&keywords=glass+carboy

That pretty expensive compared to what you are seeing at LHBS'?

EDIT: NVM, actually took a minute to call a LHBS near me and yep, a lot cheaper. Can get 1g glass carboy's for like $6.....

I use one of these in buckets and a 1 gallon test jug. Seems to work pretty well.
Clean Bottle Express Wine/Beer DeGasser https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007RT8U1S/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_mpp8ybF1RJC5Z

There are a bunch of different styles of degassers that would probably all work.

I never used that yeast. Most people here use wine, champagne, or mead yeast like Lalvin 71B-1122 or EC-1118 or ICV D-47 - though people occasionally do use ale yeast.

You could probably get that kit stuff cheaper as /u/balathustrius said assuming you have a shop nearby. But there is something to be said for just pulling the trigger and getting it all in one go, and there's nothing wrong with that.


Personally I'd get the cheaper kit without the honey and just get 3lbs of honey locally or at the farm market or grocery store for my first go.


Even though the kit has some cleaner/sanitizer (never used that type) I'd probably order some StarSan instead of the honey.

edit: add some yeast nutrients like GoFerm and Fermaid K and you're good to go. You can make the mead without them but they are highly recommended, especially when using ONLY honey. The yeast need more than sugar, otherwise your fermentation will possibly just stall.

I've read a number of books about mead. This one is so far the best.

I think I remember reading in http://www.amazon.com/Compleat-Meadmaker-Production-Award-winning-Variations/dp/0937381802 that orange blossom has a very high sugar content. So if you're going with a JAOM, I think more sugar = more better. Also, The Compleat Meadmaker is an okay book if you want a reference for some basic procedure/recipes.

This honey was the best pirce I could find. https://www.amazon.com/Kirkland-Signature-Pure-Honey-Pound/dp/B007F2EQEW/ref=sr_1_2_s_it?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1497983364&sr=1-2&keywords=5%2BPound%2BHoney&th=1

When your wife has a glass she will ask for more.

If you have time, I got a couple of these precisely so that I could do small batches with whole fruit additions without worrying about neck size. Just got them but they seem OK so far (have a gallon with peaches and another with apples in secondary right now).

I have this thing:
http://www.amazon.com/Clean-Bottle-Express-Wine-DeGasser/dp/B007RT8U1S/ref=pd_sbs_k_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=0C5Y1WX765AG6J2B3W1E

Works good enough for me, and it takes a lot less energy than picking up a full 6 gallon carboy!

Dunno if I've ever seen 1.5 gallon, but 2 gallon would be good for a 1 gallon melomel recipe.

Edit: New formatting...

https://www.amazon.com/Home-Brew-Ohio-Drilled-Airlock-Set/dp/B07115V3F7/

I have these ones, they're glass and the lids fit well.

>Pumping air into it via a turkey baster

that visual just made me giggle.

it all depends on how much head room, and what container you have.

Shaking could give you a geyser, adding air via a turkey baster wouldn't likely do anything, but you could use it to stir slowly for a bit.

If your in a bucket and have good headspace, you could hook this up to a drill and give it a few spins mid bucket.

​

edit: wasn't done... hit save to soon.

i bought a degasser drill attachment on amazon, it works well for 1 gallon carboys

note - do not run drill at full speed

https://www.amazon.com/Compleat-Meadmaker-Production-Award-winning-Variations/dp/0937381802/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1478545311&sr=8-1&keywords=complete+meadmaker
this is a great place to start learning.
do take into account that he is talking from a wine makers perspective.
very good meads can be made from more of a beer/brewers tech also.

Choosing your honey is a lot like choosing the ingredients for an entree. In reality both will work, it just depends on the flavors your going for. Taste it, do you like it? Then try it out!

If, however you're looking for a more pragmatic approach I suggest The Compleat Meadmaker (Yes, the spelling is correct).

I can't remember exactly which page because I'm at work, but there is table, table 7.3 which contains the various varieties of honey and what their characteristics are most likely to be. Including flavors, sugars, Ph, etc.

I use this -- a bench capper would be nice if I lived in a big enough place that I were willing to semi-permanently dedicate table space to it, but that particular item works just fine for me for now.

I've had pretty good results with this one. It's basically just weed trimmer cord on the end of a plastic dowel rod, but it gets the job done.

Are you talking about synthetic corks like these?
https://www.amazon.com/Nomacorc-Synthetic-Wine-Corks-Bag/dp/B0064GWTS0/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=synthetic+corks&qid=1554419619&s=gateway&sr=8-3

Or something else?

Strawberry flavor does not transfer well to mead without large amounts. As others have said, you will want to rack once the strawberries are white. Generally, for a weak flavor like strawberries, the fruit is added closer to bottling so that you don't lose the flavor to time.
I'd suggest picking up this book. It's a quick and easy read.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Compleat-Meadmaker-Production-Award-winning/dp/0937381802/ref=cm_lmf_img_3

Can I use something like this? https://www.amazon.com/Ferrari-Portugese-Double-Lever-Corker/dp/B000FRWJNE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1482378735&sr=8-1&keywords=corker

How big are your batches?

6.5 is fine for 5 gallons

2 gallon bucket for 1 gallon batches

7.8 gallon bucket for 6 gallon batches

As is listed in the wiki that TripleBangin linked The Compleat Meadmaker is a great starting point and depending on where you live if there is a decent home brew store you may want to check there. I'd also say dive in and go for a learn by doing. Large batches of mead can get expensive just in your honey budget, but a gallon of mead isn't all that bad(though a few assorted reusable parts will add to the cost of that first batch).

I have one like this, that I got from my LHBS

This is the bible of meadmaking. make sure you get a copy, all of the questions you're asking are answered there.

The most important advice anyone can give you in this thread is to buy "The Compleat Mead Maker" by Ken Schramm. Never look back.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Compleat-Meadmaker-Production-Award-winning/dp/0937381802

This is recommended on the mead wiki

Check this out at Amazon.com
The Compleat Meadmaker : Home Production of Honey Wine From Your First Batch to Award-winning Fruit and Herb Variations https://www.amazon.com/dp/0937381802/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_i_jw40DbGRM6G22

I got these 1 gallons from amazon and use them for fermenting peppers: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07115V3F7/

this
Works as well as what others posted but half the price. Otherwise, you could probably make your own for even cheaper if you're not the last type.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00KQN9OSK/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1484923450&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=1+gallon+carboy

$11 with no shipping cost if you have prime, plus it already comes with a bung and airlock! Not a bad deal if you have prime. The shipping cost other places online will often be as much as the carboy itself I've found. Amazon is where I've gotten all my 1 gallons as they were actually cheaper than at my LHBS, I've never had any issues with cracks or quality.

No, you need a way to create/add an airlock. Something like this is great it your going for a gallon sized batch

The pressure from the built up carbon dioxide would have forced the cork out of the bottle, thereby avoiding showering the area with glass. That's the lesson you should have learned and that's the lesson someone should have taught you (or you should have learned from research) before you bottled your first ever batch of mead in growlers. The other lesson you should have learned was not to back sweeten without first dosing the batch with Camden tablets unless you were making a sparkling mead in champagne bottles.


I really don't mean to come across as a prick, but in the past two years I've been making mead and participating here, I've seen countless people dive headfirst into this hobby without so much as a cursory lesson in mead making. Sure, it takes no brains to throw store bought honey, tap water, bread yeast, and Sunmaid raisins into a milk jug and tie a balloon over the mouth with a couple holes punched in it, but honestly, that's disrespecting the hobby, the process, and the mead itself.

As in depth and confusing as Ken Schramm's The Compleat Meadmaker gets in later chapters, I believe that everybody that insists on going through with even one batch of mead needs to read at least some of this book.

the first thing you need is a copy of 'the compleat meadmaker':

http://www.amazon.com/The-Compleat-Meadmaker-Production-Award-winning/dp/0937381802

the second thing you need is to read it.

read this first:
https://www.amazon.com/Compleat-Meadmaker-Production-Award-winning-Variations/dp/0937381802

I'll have to wait to get it - I believe it was a recipe from The Compleat Meadmaker but I'd have to find out which particular recipe we used.

It's "The Compleat Meadmaker" by Ken Schramm. I've been wanting to start into meadmaking for a long time now and anything I read around the forums pointed towards the book. People seem to use it as a sort of reference guide for almost anything.

Here's where I got it :D

Equipment wize get yourself a carboy, a bucket and a filter!

The go to book is this guy right here! https://www.amazon.com/Compleat-Meadmaker-Production-Award-winning-Variations/dp/0937381802/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1541712846&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=making+mead&dpPl=1&dpID=51R-oNy9mWL&ref=plSrch

Pick up a copy of The Compleat Meadmaker

$17 with prime shipping: http://www.amazon.com/Ferrari-Red-Baron-Bottle-Capper/dp/B001D6KGTK/

I use synthetics for convenience

Nomacorc Synthetic Wine Corks #9 x 1 1/2". Bag of 100 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064GWTS0/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_0fdNDb7F70BAD

I use these...

https://www.amazon.com/Gallon-Plastic-Fermenter-drilled-lid/dp/B0064O8WWE/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?crid=3BOCV43TCMST7&keywords=2+gallon+fermenting+bucket&qid=1551151619&s=gateway&sprefix=2+gallon+ferm&sr=8-2

Also a newbie, waiting for all my equipment to arrive from Amazon... But I picked up this 2 gallon bucket:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064O8WWE/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_BssFybCMY4GHZ

I am using this one Homebrewstuff One Gallon Nano-meadery Mead Starter Kit https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ICTNLGG/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_E3XfAb3A357RE

In case those links don’t work

Home Brew Ohio Glass Wine Fermenter Includes Rubber Stopper and Airlock, 1 gallon Capacity https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KQN9OSK/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_TPwLBbTPBQJ6J

Home Brew Ohio Hydrometer, Triple Scale https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01C5P6GNW/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_EQwLBb78PRVRG

Home Brew Ohio One gallon Wide Mouth Jar with Drilled Lid & Twin Bubble Airlock-Set of 2 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07115V3F7/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_5lnxDb705ZCDJ

Looks very similar to the ones I buy above. Haven't had any issues with them.

Quick search found: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0735B5YND/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_P1dOBb43NYQDR

Ken Schramm's "The Compleat Meadmaker" (2003, still available on Amazon) was probably the book that helped me take my brewing more seriously. I'm a little biased because my brewing style is no-boil and for years I traded time for money and stress (no nutrients, no measurements, just wait long enough and it'll finish) and that really worked for me a decade ago.

With regard to more current resources, I like a lot about TOSNA. I'm not convinced on whether the fourth addition is worth it but I appreciate the effort put into matching the requirements of the yeast and the concentration of the must to the amount of nutrient added. This site implements TOSNA and other protocols in an easy-to-use interface -- if you're looking to tune your recipe, you could do worse than start there!

Finally, both this subreddit and http://gotmead.com/ have tons of resources. Now that I'm finishing with school, I look forward to exploring the wiki in detail.

No worries, this book is the bible of mead:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Compleat-Meadmaker-Production-Award-winning/dp/0937381802