Homemade Mead – GAPS Approved

Making mead is easy, delicious, festive and a great probiotic food to add to your probiotic food choices. Mead can be made several different ways. Using local honey is the easiest as it takes two simple ingredients: honey and water. There is no absolute way to make mead, the ratio of honey to water is your own preference. Honey on its own, will not ferment, water added to honey is a delicious treat. 

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Fill a gallon jar 3/4 of the way full with filtered water, then stir in one quart of local honey. Stir until combined. Put a coffee filter on top of the jar and secure it with a rubber band. 

Gallon jars can be acquired for free simply by stopping into any restaurant which serves pickles. They often love recycling their jars with those who use them. 

Every day, for five days, stir the contents of the jar, then replace the coffee filter and rubber band. Right around day three you will see bubbles begin to form. 

After day five, pour the contents into individual jars. A nice foamy head will be on top of each. Store in the refrigerator and enjoy when ready.

Some home brewers get more technical, more advanced, however, this easy recipe can be made by those with no fermentation experience without fear. 

Mead is a fermented drink which can be enjoyed at room temperature or chilled. Different flavors can be made by putting sliced apples, cinnamon sticks, squeezed oranges and cranberries, to each jar and allowed to sit at room temperature another few days, then moved to cold storage. Our favorite is orange cranberry. 

Mead can also be made using brewers yeast, however, it is in no means necessary when using local honey. The natural yeasts in local honey will come to life and do the job naturally. 

Traditionally, mead was made without gadgets, brewers yeast or other fancy additions. It was a simple drink made to sustain men. 

“Forget what you’ve been told about brewing alcoholic beverages  – that it requires all sorts of fancy equipment and laboratory-produced yeasts and chemicals, and that it’s a complicated and time consuming process. Drop all your notions about the current state of food and drink production in a society that has become increasingly obsessed with uniformity and an overemphasis on sanitation,” says Jeremy Zimmerman in Make Mead Like A Viking. “You can make excellent mead, beer and wine using primarily what you find in your garden, from local farms and beekeepers and – by extension – farmers markets and co-ops, and in the wilderness of nature.”

A mead making kit can but purchased for those who are looking for more guidance. 

*Nourishing Plot is written by Becky Plotner, ND, traditional naturopath, CGP, D.PSc. who sees clients in Rossville, Georgia. She works as a Certified GAPS Practitioner who sees clients in her office, Skype and phone. She has been published in Wise Traditions, spoken at two Weston A. Price Conferences, Certified GAPS Practitioner Trainings, has been on many radio shows, television shows and writes for Nourishing Plot. Since her son was delivered from the effects of autism (Asperger’s syndrome), ADHD, bipolar disorder/manic depression, hypoglycemia and dyslexia, through food, she continued her education specializing in Leaky Gut and parasitology through Duke University, finishing with distinction. She is a Chapter Leader for The Weston A. Price Foundation. becky.nourishingplot@hotmail.com

“GAPS™ and Gut and Psychology Syndrome™ are the trademark and copyright of Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride. The right of Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Patent and Designs Act 1988.