At Frontline Food Consultants and Engineers, we excel in providing consultancy services for the production and manufacture of mead. The optimisation of Fermentation Process Services will help you create an excellent mead – normal, flavored, or spiced one. That are a lot of things that should be probably done on the fermentation levels in order to achieve the right proportions of sweetness or alcoholic content and flavors. In addition, we have not eased up on honey selection and the fruits or spices we use to ensure that the consistent product has a rich taste.

Besides, our other services with ingredient sourcing and quality control services, you enjoy the very best honey and other seasoning ingredients; organic or specialty. FFCE’s R&D department develops new mead brands that may serve a market in case the needs are shifted. We also provide Regulatory Compliance Consulting to ensure that the mead you manufacture and the labels for the product meet alcohol manufacturing rules and regulations. While our Packaging Solutions target the quality of the mead, with regard to its freshness and the aesthetic appeal of the product to the target niche, it is actually contained in the package. Our Mead factory Setup consultancy services get your business a well-equipped plant where you can carry out your operations smoothly.

What is Mead?

Mead is a popular beverage made from honey. Thus, making mead requires several major tools of equipment, fermentation vessels for controlling the times and temperatures of fermentation for consistent alcohol production and taste. Creaming tanks are used to mix honey, water and other ingredients in a desirable and satisfactory manner. Subsequently, filter units pass through any particle which according to the recipe is not supposed to be in the final product so as to make the mead clearer. The lessons of filling the bottles and capping also assist in packaging the mead, particularly with emphasis on a lid that would enable the concoction to be well-sealed and good for preservation. These are meant to ensure that all beers produced by the company meet the labeling standards while the check and balance means that fermentation and overall product conformity are suitable for an alcoholic beverage.

Types of Mead

  • Traditional Mead: has no other component besides honey, water and active yeast and as such the honey flavor profile wins the day.
  • Melomel: Edible Mead that is prepared from fermented fruits such as apples, berries, peaches, etc.
  • Metheglin: A dash of cinnamon, cloves, or ginger, or any other spice that would taste good to beer men are what can be added to Mead.
  • Cyser: Sometimes spelled with an ‘e’ on the end it is a specialty mead crafted by fermenting honey and apple juice to make a drink that can be described as part way between an apple cider and a traditional mead.
  • Sparkling Mead: Thanks to the secondary fermentation process, Mead has gotten bubbles like champagne.
  • Braggot: Generally, it actually refers to a kind of beverage prepared by fermenting honey and malt, a blend between mead and beer.

Process of  Mead Making

  1. Bee honey selection and preparation
  • Honey Quality: The very honey and the honey variety play a very important role to get the right taste of the correct mead. There are wildflower honey and clover honey or you can get floral honey or acacia honey each of which has its own special taste. Amber is filtered most frequently to remove interferences prior to the starting point of the fermentation process.
  • Dilution: The sugar content can be controlled by dilution of honey: depending on specific gravity, alcohol percentage and flavor.
  1. Fermentation
  • Yeast Selection: This is why it makes sense to point out that the type of yeast used mostly determines the fermentation path and flavor. Here, wine yeasts or special mead yeasts are used so that the resulting wine can be sweet or dry, to individual preference.
  • Primary Fermentation: The honey which has been moistened with water and is commonly called must is pumped into fermentation tanks and then with the addition of yeast. Alcoholic fermentation takes place at clinically set temperatures of 16-22 °C over several weeks when sugars are fermented to form alcohol with by-products of CO2.
  • Secondary Fermentation (Optional): For bright meads or meads with a service: rich taste, there is secondary fermentation of the drink. At times other additional items like fruits or spices or herbs can be placed at this time as well.
  1. Clarification and Aging
  • Racking: Following the fermentation process the mead is racked, this is moving the mead from the initial vessel to the next one while leaving behind matter. Often this process is conducted for clarity several times successively.
  • Clarification: Beginning from the primary stage of secondary fermentation, different mashes which are referred to as the natural fining agents (bentonite clay and gelatin) are used to make the mead transparent and free it of haze.
  • Aging: The meats are comparatively aged in order to make them tender and to help the tastes to mature and grow. It can even happen when the fermenting vessel is made from stainless steel or tanks, or glass or oak barrels depending on the purpose. What comes from oak aging are vanilla, caramel, and smoky flavors.
  1. Bottling and Packaging
  • Carbonation (Optional): To make mead sparkling, extra sugar and yeast is poured into the bottles before capping in order to make the fermentation process start again as the mixture is transferred from keg to bottles.
  • Filling and Sealing: Mead is available in glass or PET bottles accompanied with a corking option and capping by crown caps or twist-off caps. If we discuss effervescent mead then there is the functionality of a pressure-proof bottle.
  • Labeling and Date Coding: However, on every bottle of wine, they have integrated product information, ABV and batch number together with the required regulation information and batch number. It is applied in the process of dating production and helps in evaluating the aging time.

Packaging for Mead

  1. Glass Bottles
  • Objective: Package still and sparkling mead in elegant and superior quality containers.
  • Materials: Especially, they utilize high-quality glass and it is common if it is dark green or brownish in color due to preventing light from coming into the container.
  • Benefits: The use of a glass bottle will help lock out oxygen that affects the taste and quality of the mead over time. Glass also gives a rather fancy look, which might be employed when producing artisan or limited-batch meads.
  1. PET Bottles
  • Objective: Urgent less expensive or large mead products to be packed lightweight, preferably packed in shatterproof materials.
  • Materials: Polyethylene Terephthalate – Food-safe PET.
  • Benefits: PET bottles are suggested for low-cost mead-making. They provide the necessary life and have a high degree of transportability and distributability but are not optimal for extended aging.
  1. Cork and Crown Caps
  • Cork: For premium still meads cork is used since it lets in a small amount of oxygen that is good for meads that are supposed to be aged.
  • Crown Caps: For sparkling meads or for use in large commercial meadery production of still meads, the top is a secure, tamper-proof cap.