# Will mead get better with time?



## Ruben (Feb 11, 2006)

I gave my brother some honey to make some mead, he makes wine and wanted to try mead. He said he finished cooking it and got it ready to bottle and said it tasted bad. The recipe said to bottle it for at least two years, will it taste better with time?

[ February 01, 2007, 10:26 AM: Message edited by: Ben Brewcat ]


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## Lively Bee's (Dec 9, 2004)

Yes it gets a lot better with time.


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## Sport (Dec 11, 2006)

I have found that mead will get better over time, but not so much that if it tastes bad at bottling it will be good in a few years. Usually a good mead will get better, but a bad batch should be dumped. 

I'm wondering what went bad with it. I'm guessing that when you say he finished cooking, you ment that it was finished fermenting and it cleared and the sg came down to where it should. If this is the case, and everything was sanitized properly, then a couple questions that I have are: What yeast was used? How much honey was used? How big of a batch was made? What other ingredients went into the batch? How long did it ferment?

If he used a wine yeast, that can throw off the flavor. If he is particular about the dry/sweetness of his wine, it might mean that he just doesn't like that kind of mead. If it didn't "cook" long enough, that can be a problem, or if he got stuck fermentation, that can be the problem.


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## Ben Brewcat (Oct 27, 2004)

Some flavors are truly off, from contamination for example, and they won't improve. Young meads on the other hand can be really "green" and not at all appealing, and that will improve a lot. I'm not sure what the fault would be with wine yeast, most mazers use wine yeasts a lot (or exclusively) with consistent and enjoyable results.


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## nursebee (Sep 29, 2003)

I'd keep a bad batch for 2 years to see if it mellows, this assumes that it just tastes bad. If you know of an obvious problem (cardboard taste, vinegar, infection) then I'd dump. 

EVERY mead I've made got better with time. I use wine yeasts only, not the official mead yeasts.


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## markalbob (Jan 31, 2007)

FWIW, nothing, NOTHING, even beer, tastes the same at bottling as it will after it ages. Granted, for beer aging is often quite short and mead is at the opposite end of the spectrum, but mead will almost always and without question taste bad at less than a year. Taste is usually described as "jet fuel", "turpentine", "enamel stripper", or simply "hot". Almost nobody who makes wine seriously drinks it right out of secondary, or if they do it's with the understanding that it will be better with time, but they just didn't want to wait for their first taste(s)

Unless you do a recipe like "Joe's Ancient Orange" from the gotmead site, you can expect a minimum of 6 months, with significant improvement for a long time yet.


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