There's a big difference between good and bad mead, and while there are lot of important factors that can influence the quality of your final product, nutrients should not be overlooked, even for beginners. So, what even are nutrients? Do you actually need them? How much should you use? When I first started making mead, I had no clue where to start... but now with hundreds of batches under my belt including several award winning meads, along with professional mentorship and my own experimentation, I've broken it down for you as simply as possible to teach you everything that I've learned to create better meads.
Why Do You Need Nutrients in Mead?
Honey is delicious, and it's amazing for making alcohol, but unfortunately it's terrible at feeding yeast with everything they need for a well-balanced fermentation. Unlike grape juice (which gives wine yeast most of what it needs) or beer wort (which does the same for beer yeast), a honey and water mixture is almost completely lacking in the nitrogen and micronutrients that yeast need to do their job well.
Put simply, yeast are living organisms. When you pitch them into your must, they go through a growth phase where they're multiplying and building up their colony before they really start converting sugar into alcohol. During that growth phase, and throughout fermentation, they need nitrogen, amino acids, vitamins, and minerals. Without those things, they get stressed. And stressed yeast are inefficient, slow, and more likely to produce off flavors.
If you've ever tasted a young mead that had a harsh rubbing alcohol, hot smoky/spicy aroma, or even a rotten egg smell, that's usually a sign the yeast were starved. It happens when they don't have enough nitrogen to function properly and they start producing hydrogen sulfide and fusel alcohols. Those flavors can mellow with months of aging, but you can avoid them altogether by just feeding your yeast properly from the start.
People Also Ask: Can You Make Mead Without Nutrients?
Before we dive in, I know what you are probably thinking: mead has been made for thousands of years without using commercial nutrients, so why do I need them now? Well as science and technology develops, we learn how to be better equipped to create better tasting meads with more consistent results. When yeast lack nutrients required to support a healthy fermentation, the process can be painfully slow (sometimes taking months instead of weeks), and off flavors are more likely. Adding nutrients optimizes fermentation, speeds it up, and produces a cleaner tasting mead.
But don't take my word for it, try it yourself. Make two identical batches (one with and one without nutrients) to compare the results. I'm confident you'll be pleasantly surprised... I know I was!
Understanding Common Mead Nutrients
Organic - Fermaid O
Fermaid O is my go to nutrient and the one I recommend to all beginners. It's made by Lallemand and it provides organic nitrogen in the form of amino acids from autolyzed yeast. It also supplies some vitamins, minerals, and fatty acids that support yeast health.
The reason I prefer Fermaid O over other options is that organic nitrogen is absorbed more slowly by yeast compared to inorganic sources and by supplying yeast hulls, it provides a well rounded, complete supply of nutrients. I even include Fermaid O in all of my mead making kits because I believe every batch should have it.
Inorganic - Diammonium Phosphate (DAP)
DAP is the other nutrient you'll hear about a lot. It's an inorganic source of nitrogen, and it's cheap and widely available. Yeast absorb it quickly, which can be a good thing early in fermentation when nitrogen demand is highest.
A lot of more advanced nutrient protocols use a combination of Fermaid O and DAP at calculated ratios based on your recipe's YAN requirements. That's a perfectly valid approach, but it's more complex than most beginners need to worry about right away... but I'll get to that in a bit.
What About Raisins?
This is one of the most persistent myths in home mead making. Older recipes commonly suggest tossing a handful of raisins into your mead as a nutrient source. The reality is that raisins provide almost no usable nitrogen for yeast.
Adding 50 raisins per gallon of mead provides only about 34 ppm of nitrogen, and a significant portion of that is in the form of proline, which is an amino acid that yeast can't readily use. That means raisins give you maybe one tenth of the nutrients your yeast actually need. Raisins are fine for adding a bit of flavor or body. But they are not a substitute for actual yeast nutrient.
My Simple Beginner Nutrient Schedule
I cover nutrients in detail in my Mead Making Recipe Guide, but here's the simplified version that I use for my beginner recipes and that works well for a standard one gallon batch with a starting gravity somewhere between 1.080 and 1.114.
Use up to 6g of Fermaid O total, split into three equal additions of 2g each:
Batch Day (after lag phase begins): 2g Fermaid O
24 Hours Later: 2g Fermaid O
48 Hours Later: 2g Fermaid O
That's it. Three additions over three days. My method is to create the must, pitch my yeast, and then wait for the lag phase to kick in (you'll usually see some small bubbles or signs of activity within the first several hours). Once that's happening, I add the first dose of nutrients followed by the next two additions spaced about 24 hours apart.
For my one gallon recipes that target a slightly lower gravity, like some of my fruit meads, I use 4.5g total (1.5g per addition) as outlined in my recipe guide. Either approach works well and will give you great results as a beginner. The exact amount isn't something you need to stress over at this stage.
People Also Ask: Why Not Add All the Nutrients at Once?
You could dump all your nutrients in at the start and call it a day. It would still be better than adding nothing. But step feeding (also called staggered nutrient additions, or SNA) works better because it delivers nutrients to the yeast when they actually need them throughout fermentation rather than giving them a huge dose up front that partially settles out before it gets used. Ken Schramm and other mead experts have long advocated for staggered additions based on research showing that timed nutrient delivery produces cleaner fermentations with fewer flaws (Schramm, "Optimizing Honey Fermentation," Zymurgy, 2005).
A Word of Caution: Fermaid O Foams Like Crazy
This is something that catches a lot of first timers off guard. When you add Fermaid O to an actively fermenting mead, it creates a ton of foam. The powder acts as a nucleation point for dissolved CO2 and the result is a volcanic eruption of mead foam that can easily overflow your vessel.
I've learned this the hard way. Here's what I do now: instead of adding the Fermaid O directly to my must, I pull a 2 to 3 oz sample of must into a separate cup, add the nutrient to that sample, and use a frother or spoon to dissolve it completely. Then I stir the must vigorously for a few minutes (which the yeast actually benefit from, since they use oxygen early in fermentation) and add the dissolved nutrient back in slowly. This method prevents the mead volcano and makes sure the nutrient is fully incorporated.
What About Fruit? Does It Provide Nutrients?
Yes, fruit does contribute some nitrogen and micronutrients to your must. If you're making a melomel (fruit mead), the fruit is helping your yeast out a little. But it's not enough on its own to support a healthy, complete fermentation. Even in the wine industry where grapes provide significantly more nutrition than most fruits used in mead, winemakers routinely add supplemental nutrients.
Think of it this way: fruit in your mead is a nice bonus for your yeast, but it's not a meal. You still need to feed them properly with Fermaid O or a similar nutrient product.
Understanding YAN
YAN stands for Yeast Assimilable Nitrogen. It's a measurement of the total nitrogen available in your must that yeast can actually consume. This includes both organic nitrogen (from amino acids) and inorganic nitrogen (from sources like DAP). Optimizing your nutrient dosages to meet your YAN needs is how professionals deliver exceptional mead every time.
A study by Ken Schramm found that the free amino nitrogen (FAN) levels in various honey musts ranged from roughly 5 to 21 ppm. To put that in perspective, yeast generally need somewhere in the range of 150 to 350 ppm of YAN for a healthy fermentation, depending on the gravity of your must and the specific yeast strain. So honey alone gets you maybe 5 to 10% of the way there. That's a huge gap, and it explains why nutrient additions make such a massive difference in mead.
Calculating YAN
Once you've got a few batches under your belt and you want to dial things in with more precision, learning to calculate YAN for your specific recipes is the next step. The amount of nutrient your yeast needs depends on a few variables: the starting gravity of your must (more sugar means more work for the yeast, which means more nutrient required), the specific yeast strain you're using (some strains have higher nitrogen demands than others), and whether you have additional nutrient contributions from fruit or other additions.
Use these ranges as a starting point for your target YAN. Note that higher gravity meads typically require more nutrients for healthy fermentation:
Getting Precise: Nutrient Dosing Calculator
There are several online calculators where you can plug in your recipe details and get a specific nutrient schedule. One of the most commonly used is the TOSNA protocol (Tailored Organic Staggered Nutrient Addition). While this isn't a bad starting point, most of these calculators primarily focus on organic nutrients, and in my experience, a balanced organic/inorganic blend delivers better results.
To make things easy, I actually built a nutrient calculator that accounts for curating a blend of both organic and inorganic nutrients that is 100% free to use here: Mead Corner Nutrient Dose Calculator. It takes the guesswork out of it and gives you exact amounts and timing based on your batch.
Just Keep It Simple
If you take one thing away from this article, let it be this: add Fermaid O to your mead. Even if your schedule isn't perfect, even if you're a little over or under on the amount, you'll get a dramatically better result than adding nothing at all. Start with the simple three addition schedule I described above, and as you gain experience, you can explore more tailored approaches.
If you're just getting started and want everything in one place, my mead making kits come with Fermaid O, yeast, stabilizers, and all the equipment you need. And if you want to learn more about the full process from start to finish, check out my article on how to make mead for beginners.
Cheers, and happy mead making!
Sources:
- Schramm, Ken. "Optimizing Honey Fermentation." Zymurgy, November/December 2005.
- Schramm, Ken. The Compleat Meadmaker. Brewers Publications, 2003.
- "Raisins are NOT a significant source of nutrients in mead." GotMead.com, 2017.
- Lallemand Inc. Fermaid O product documentation and recommended usage guidelines.
- American Homebrewers Association. "Improve Your Mead with Staggered Nutrient Additions." 2023.
- Beer Judge Certification Program. "The Mead Making Process." BJCP Mead Exam Study Guide.