I know nothing about mead. What does mead taste like? Dry or sweet.
Jerre — TN
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Hello Jerre,
This is a very loaded question because there are is such a wide varieties of meads. There are meads made with herbs or spices added in addition to the honey (metheglin). There are meads made with the fruit (melomel). You can mix honey with apple juice to make a cyser. You can also mix honey with grape juice to make a pyment. This list goes on and on. This makes it hard to answer the question: “What does mead taste like?”
Not all honey is the same, either. What the bees use to spin the honey can make a great difference. There’s apple blossom honey, clover honey, buckwheat honey, tupelo honey… Again, the list is endless. The source of nectar will have an effect on the resulting mead. The cheapest, generic honey will be wild flower honey.
Just like any wine, mead can be made sweet or dry. This is completely up to you, based on your personal preference. It is simply a matter of sweetening to taste at bottling time with sugar, more honey, or anything else you’d like to experiment with. A wine stabilizer (potassium sorbate) should be added at the same time to prevent the chance of a re-fermentation in the bottle.
The point here is that there are an extremely wide range of flavors that can be experienced when drinking meads. For this reason putting a good description as to what a mead tastes like is almost impossible. It is similar to the question, “what does a grape wine taste like?” The flavors vary to greatly to encapsulate in a few words or paragraphs and there is nothing to accurately compare it to.
Here’s what I will say, all meads do have a subtle core flavor or character that can be identified. There is a flavor of honey. If it is a dry mead, imagine what honey would taste like without the sweet. Now take that flavor and imagine what it would taste like with the heat of alcohol. This is the best possible way I can think of to answer the question, what does a mead taste like? However ,I do confess that this is completely inadequate.
If you need more description than this, I would suggest buying a bottle. Actually taste a mead for yourself before expending time and effort on making your own mead. There is no other way to really know what a mead tastes like other than to try if for yourself. In my personal experience there is nothing to hate about a mead. I find most meads very pleasant and some even interesting. I also like to use honey two back-sweeten my other wine or to raise the potential alcohol of my other wines. Here’s a mead recipe to get you started.
Best Wishes,
Ed Kraus
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

Hi, I have two one gallon batches of wine going. One is blueberry and the other is muscadine. They both smell and taste soured. What is wrong?
Brandon A. — NC
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Hello Brandon,
It’s really hard for me to know exactly what you did wrong, if anything. What I can tell you is there are two key reasons for a homemade wine spoiling:

1. The number one reason for a wine spoiling is because sulfites were not used in the winemaking process — sulfites such as Campden tablets or potassium metabisulfite. Skipping the use of sulfites does not guarantee that your homemade wine will go bad, but it does increase the chance of this dramatically.
2. The number two reason for a wine spoiling is that the fermentation vessels and equipment were not sanitized. They may have been washed in soapy water, but not sanitized with something like Basic A or Cleanpro SDH. Soap will get the grime off the surface of the equipment, but to destroy all traces of mold and bacteria that can later grow and take over a wine, you need to use a cleanser of some sort.

The absence of sulfites and cleansers in the winemaking process is the reason almost all wines spoil. They are fundamental and should always be used when making wine.
Another reason a homemade wine can start spoiling is if the fermentation is not strong. You can sanitize everything and add sulfites to the wine must before fermenting, but all this is futile if the fermentation does not take off quickly and fully. A wine must that is sitting still for several days is a prime target for being taken over by molds, bacteria and other little nasties that might be floating in the air. The wine must is packed with nutrients and sugar. What more could a contaminant ask for?
This is one of the reasons you do not want to rely on wild yeast to ferment your wine. As a home winemaker there are too many other airborne microbes competing with the yeast for a place to colonize. You want to use domesticated wine yeast so that it has the upper-hand. The yeast cell count will be greater and the yeast more vigorous. Once you have a solid fermentation, mold and bacteria will not stand a chance. It’s analogous to having a solid stand of grass in your yard to help keep the weeds down. A strong fermentation keeps the contaminants down.
The last thing I’d like to bring up is that your wines may be perfectly fine. If this is your first time making wine, it may be that you have not experience what a fermentation smells and taste like and are just mistaking the usual odors for the wine spoiling. During a fermentation you should be smelling the fruit used to make the wine, but you will often times also experience a sulfur smell from the fermentation — sometimes like a freshly boiled egg. I’m not saying this is what’s going on, I just wanted you to be aware of this.
It you are correct and your homemade wine is spoiling, one thing you can be assured of is it will get worse. If it is not spoiling, then you will notice the symptoms getting better, until eventually you end up with a great tasting wine. At this point there is little you can do. If the fermentation has finished you should be adding a full dose of sulfites. But, other than that it’s a wait and see proposition. There is nothing you can do to reverse any effects. Time will take care of this homemade wine if is still fresh and not spoiled.
Best Wishes,
Ed Kraus
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

Hi there, I have to say, thank you for the amazing site. It’s been a wealth of knowledge… I will hopefully be moving cross country in the next few months. Currently I have two wines I am in the process of making… My questions are what would be the best way to transport a possibly bulk fermenting wine? If they are done fermenting am I safe to degas the wines, then plug the carboys and move or should I add something to either of them? As a side note, I do plan on making crates to protect the carboys…
Isaac — WA
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Hello Isaac,
There are several concerns when moving homemade wine cross country: sunlight and temperature being my two biggest ones. Both of these promote oxidation in the wine. This is where a wine starts to take on a brownish or orange-like tinge, and the wine’s flavor starts to take on a bitter, raisin character.
You will want to keep the wines out of direct sunlight. You also want the wines’ temperature to stay consistent. The cooler the better. This will help to slow down the oxidative process, but i understand you can only do what you can do.
You can move the wine in carboys — degassed and sealed up tight — but if the wine warms up just a few degrees, it can pop the rubber stopper out of the carboy. Six gallons of wine can easily expand enough from any warmth to push out a stopper.
You can wire down the stopper with some bailing wire. If the wine warms up a few degrees you should be fine, but if the wine warms up excessively, you could be building up considerable pressure in the carboy, which is never a good thing. Having a carboy fail is not unheard of in such situations.
Sediment is another concern when moving homemade wine cross country. The ideal situation is for all the sediment to be gone before moving. In other words, the wine has cleared up completely and is not depositing any new sediment. You have also removed the wine from all the sediment that has occurred.
Leaving the sediment in the carboys while traveling can promote a process call autolysis. This is when some of the live yeast cells start consuming some of the dead yeast cells. The result is a wine that starts to take on a nutty / to bitter / to metallic flavor. It is something that occurs to some insignificant degree in any wine, but when the sediment is contentiously being stirred up by the constant vibration of traveling, the amount of autolysis can become excessive.
Here’s What I Would Do If I Were Moving Homemade Wine Cross Country…

1. Have the wine cleared and degassed. You would like to have the wine this far along in the winemaking process.
2. Put the wine in carboys. The carboys should be topped-up. You do not want excessive head-space. There are several ways you can eliminate head-space in a carboy. Having excessive air in with the wine will help promote oxidation, as well.
3. Add a dose of sulfite. This could be Campden tablets, potassium metabisulfite or sodium metabisulfite. Use 1/16 of a teaspoon per gallon or 1 tablet per gallon of wine. Sulfites will go a long way in help to reduce any effects of oxidation and help to keep the wine from from oxidation.
4. Seal the carboys with an actual tapered cork stopper. Cork will allow some pressure to release if it built up. A rubber stopper will not give at all. A tapered cork stopper will breath a little.
5. Wire down the tapered cork stopper with bailing wire. This can be done by going around the neck of the carboy with the wire, then running one strap of wire over the top of the cork stopper and securing the end.

Your idea of putting the carboys in crates is a good idea. You can never be too protective particularly when moving your homemade wine cross country.
Good luck to you. I hope this was the information you was looking for.
Happy Winemaking,
Ed Kraus
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

I have been thinking about a way to protect wine from unnecessary oxidation during 2nd and 3rd rackings. Mainly, I want to get the oxygen out of the empty carboy before racking into it, but how? CO2 cartridges? Dry ice? Finally hit upon a simple idea. Since I have to top up with water anyway, why not do the “topping” first, with carbonated water. The escaping CO2, being heavier, will drive everything else out of the carboy. What do you think?
Walt — AR
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Hello Walt,
If I am understanding you correctly, you are saying to put any carbonated water needed for topping-up the wine into the empty carboy — first — before racking the wine into it. And, letting the CO2 gas from the water drive the air out of the fermenter. You would be estimating the amount of carbonated water needed for topping up.
I commend you on your idea!
In theory, what you are saying it correct. The CO2 would slowly drive air out of the vessel. The main issue I see is getting enough of the CO2 gas to release to have any real results.
Assuming you only need to top-up the wine with a quart or less of water in a 5 or 6 gallon batch, the amount of CO2 in a quart of carbonated water is not all that great. If you need to top-up the wine with a greater amount of water than this, then you shouldn’t be topping up with water at all, but rather a similar wine or some other method. Here’s some more information on different ways for topping up a wine.
Absolutely, the carbonated water would drive some of the air out of the fermenter, but not nearly all of it. There’s just not enough of it in a quart or less to do the job completely.
The second issue is getting all the CO2 gas to release from the water. Only a portion of the gas will release through agitation. The rest will want to stay saturated in the water. One way to get the CO2 gas to release more completely from the water would be to make sure it’s warm. The CO2 gas will release more freely from warm water than cold.
Having said this, I do not see any problems with putting carbonated water in the fermenter for topping-up the wine. It will be effective in driving out some air, just marginally so.
I personally have never concerned myself with purging air from my fermenters when racking. The amount of contact time with the air is not enough to oxidize the wine in any way. Oxidation takes time. The one thing you do have to look out for is splashing. You do not want the splash the wine with racking. Fill the fermenter from the bottom up. That is, have the hose reach to the bottom of the fermenter being filled so that the hose is in the wine during the racking and not splashing.
Secondly, if [the fermentation has completed, and] you add sulfites such as Campden tablets or potassium metabisulfite to the wine after racking — as you should — you will be driving any air out of the wine and replacing it with SO2 gas in a matter of minutes.
There is nothing wrong with topping-up your wine with carbonated water. I just don’t think it will be affective in purging the air out of the fermenter.
Happy Wine Making,
Ed Kraus
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

I made a blend of apple and plum wine from fruit from my trees in the backyard. I followed a very commonly used wine recipe on the web and it was bottled at 6 mo old in April. We drank the wine and it tasted good up until this week. The wine bottle we opened exploded like champagne and was a little sour. We opened the final 4 wine bottles left and they all exploded. What could be causing this? I used Campden tablets as recommended by the wine recipe to prevent spoilage. Your help is appreciated!
Connie — WI
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Hello Connie,
Your wine bottles exploding was caused by either one of two things: 1) the wine started fermenting again after being bottled, 2) the wine started spoiling, producing a bacterial growth. Without question it was one of these two things. The bigger question is why…

• If you added more sugar before bottling, then more than likely it is a matter of the fermentation starting up again — even if you added Campden tablets at bottling time. Campden tablets are not enough to guarantee that a re-fermentation will not occur again sometime down the road. Whenever sugar is added to sweeten the wine, potassium sorbate should also be added along with the Campden tablets.
• If you did not add more sugar before bottling, it is possible that the original fermentation did not finish completely. In other words, the fermentation stopped prematurely. This can happen for a number a reasons — the most common being a temperature change of the wine must. This is known as a stuck fermentation. The yeast did not finish the job completely before stopping. Then, weeks or month later, after the wine has been bottled it decides it will start up again. The result is your wine bottle exploding.

Again, the fermentation can stop and start for a number of reasons, but the most common one is because of a change in temperature. The wine bottles probably warmed up a bit making it easier for the wine yeast to start fermenting again. Just 5° or 10° is all that is needed. Just as before, Campden tablets added at bottling time is not enough to guarantee that you won’t have your wine bottle exploding.
In the future, the easiest way to make sure that you don’t have a stuck fermentation is to check it with a hydrometer. The hydrometer will tell you if there are more sugars in the wine must to be fermented, or if all the sugars are gone, and the fermentation has actually completed the job at hand, and using a hydrometer is very easy.
If none of the above is ringing any bells or if you did check your wine with a hydrometer before bottling, then it is possible that the wine bottles exploding was caused by a bacterial infection of some sort. This is not the likely scenario, but it can happen.
If you know that there was no sugar in the wine at bottling time, whether it be leftover from the fermentation or sugar you added for sweetening, then a bacterial infection could be what’s going on. The one paramount factor that would rule this out is if you added Campden tablets right before bottling. Campden tablets or sulfites of any kind would easily preserve the wine from such a bacterial infection.
Wine bottles exploding is something that nobody wants to have happen, but it is completely preventable. Just be sure that if there’s sugar in the wine at bottling time — whether it be from leftover from the fermentation or sugar you’ve added — that you add potassium sorbate to the wine. This would be in addition to the Campden tablets that should always be added. Do these things and you will not have wine bottles exploding.
Best Wishes,
Ed Kraus
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.