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The very best medicine is the one you’ll take. When you turn your medicine into mead, it becomes a true pleasure to take. No arm twisting required.
Homemade elderberry mead combines honey with elderberries to create a sweet mead that will boost your immune system naturally.
Wild foraged elderberries can be sparse, and it’s often hard to find a dense patch. Birds often beat us to our own elderberry patch.
That means we rarely have enough for a full one-gallon batch, let alone a traditional 5-gallon batch. Using a small batch method, we’ve started making a one-quart batch with a mason jar fermentation kit with great results.
There are a lot of great reasons to make a micro-batch mead. Since elderberries can be sparse, a small batch is a perfect way to get a full-flavored mead with a small amount of fruit.
While other fruit meads, like this small-batch raspberry mead, have you throw in fresh fruit. Elderberries are different.
There’s some evidence that they’re toxic if consumed raw. It’s best to juice them on the stove and add the juice to your jar in place of water.
All you need to get started with this elderberry mead is a bit of honey, elderberry juice, a quart mason jar and a mason jar fermentation kit. There are a number of brands to choose from. Try this one. Or this one.
I use a kit by Fermentools that looks a lot like a homebrew setup, and if you choose to do bigger batches later you’ll need the rubber stopper and water lock that are included in the kit.
I’m hoping at some point to try out these silicone fermentation lids from Mason Tops because they look super easy to clean.
Small Batch Elderberry Mead
Start by adding a bit of honey to the bottom of a quart mason jar. The basic instructions for a one-quart batch of mead have you add between 2/3 of a cup of honey and 1 cup of honey to get the right ratio of honey to water in your jar.
Since elderberries don’t have much sweetness on their own, I opt for a full cup of honey. The end result will be a bit sweet, but the honey is part of the medicine, so drink up!
Add 3 cups of freshly strained elderberry juice, still hot from the stove. The heat in the juice will help dissolve the honey, without cooking it. Use a wooden spoon and stir the juice into the honey to fully incorporate.
Add the yeast once it’s cooled to room temperature. If you’re not patient enough to let it cool to room temperature, it should be allowed to cool to at least 90 to 100 degrees so it won’t kill the yeast.
For meads, I use packages of champagne yeast. One pack is enough to pitch a 5-gallon batch, so using the whole packet is overkill for a small one-quart batch.
I usually use about 1/4 of a yeast packet because it’s hard to actually extract less than that from a tiny packet. Dissolve the yeast in room temperature chlorine-free water and pour it into your mason jar.
Related: How to Make One Quart of Mead (Small Batch Method)
Once it’s all said and done you should have 1 cup honey, 3 cups elderberry juice and about 1/4 of a packet of champagne yeast in your mason jar. Be sure to leave about an inch of headspace to allow for expansion and bubbling during fermentation.
Cap your mason jar using the mason jar fermentation kit of your choice and allow it to ferment at room temperature, out of direct sunlight for about 6 weeks.
The initial fermentation phase can be a bit intense, so after the first week if any juice has made it into your water lock, pop it off and clean it out. Be sure to get it back on tight for the rest of your fermentation time.
When fermentation is complete, carefully pour off the mead into another jar, leaving the sediment behind.
I bottle mine, and allow it to age in Grolsch bottles for at least 2 weeks, preferably a bit longer.
Then, enjoy!
If you’re looking for more details on how to make a small batch mead, you can read an introduction to the one-quart small-batch method here.
I have 7 pounds of honey, 3 gallon bags of frozen elderberries from last season and a 3 gallon carboy and a 5 gallon ale pail but for the life of me I cannot find a good recipe for a beginner to make a solid elderberry mead. I’d prefer it not dry. You seem to do this a lot of hoping you can help a sister out… trying to do something with these berries because we got burned out on syrup and tincture this winter. Can you point me in the direction of a good recipe or can you help me with directions to make 3 gallons? Thank you!!! PS Love the site and I use a lot of your tips and recipes!
Hi Jen, I posted this reply to your other comment on my specific elderberry wine and mead recipe (https://practicalselfreliance.com/elderberry-wine/), but I’ll put it here too incase it helps someone else:
Hi Jen, Over here, we almost always make meads, because quite frankly, they taste infinitely better than sugar wines. I write my recipes sugar wine focused because for some reason almost everyone is looking for wine recipes rather than mead recipes. Possibly because honey is stupid expensive, but possibly because they just don’t know how darn good mead is. Every picture in that article is mead. Anyhow, elderberry mead is one of our favorites, and it works just fine with either fresh or dried berries. I just read back through that article to be doubly sure, but yes, follow that procedure for elderberry mead. Using 3 lbs of honey per gallon yields a reasonably sweet (but not cloying) mead. Choose a wine yeast that has an alcohol tolerance of 13 to 15%, avoiding champagne yeasts which will be too dry.
The recipe card in this article allows you to choose to scale it up 2x or 3x. All ingredients should be scaled up for your 3 gallon carboy except the yeast. One packet works fine for anywhere between 1 gallon and 5 gallons (they multiply rapidly, so it’s just a starter population anyway).
I hope this helps, please do let me know how it goes for you or if I can answer any other questions.
I’m confused about the amount of yeast. Says 1 packet is for 5 gallons. You’d have to divide the packet by 5 for 1 gallon then divide that by 4 to get the amount for a quart. The instructions say to o use 1/4 of the packet for each quart. Can you clarify?
Thank you,
Gaia
1 packet can do up to 5 gallons. It’s ok if it has a little extra and 1/4 of a packet is just easier.
I didn’t see an amount of water to add into the jar with the other ingredients – do I just put in the listed ingredients (in amount dot match the batch size I am making) and then “top off” the mason jar content with chlorine-free water?
Thanks for the recipes!
You should have 1 cup of honey and 3 cups of elderberry juice in a quart jar. This should pretty much fill your jar with no need to add extra water.
My honey didn’t dissolve. I have the bottled elderberry and honey – no yeast in a warm pot to liquify the honey. Will that work?
Yes that should work.
Is it common to have some residue at the top of the Mason jar after the mead has been fermenting for a while? Mine bubbled up into the water lock and I had to pull it out and clean it and put it back into the rubber grommet. Then some residue appeared at the top of the jar, above the liquid.
It sounds like you might have some kahm yeast. This sometimes forms on the top of ferments. It’s not harmful and you can just skim it off the top.
Thank you very much, I’m so relieved! I was afraid it was ruined.
You’re very welcome.
Hi there! How many cups of elderberries should I use to get 3 cups of elberry juice?
I would start off with 3 to 4 pounds to be sure that you have enough juice and then you can use any leftover juice for other recipes or freeze it for later.
Would you consume this by tsp or as wine or?
This is consumed as a wine, though you could consume it in smaller amounts if you choose. Elderberry syrup and elderberry oxymel are usually taken by the teaspoon/tablespoon.
Thank you for these recipes. I make small batches of wine. Now I can add mead to the list. 🤗
Doesn’t cooking the elderberries kill the good nutrients
Nope! Raw elderberries are toxic.
That’s only if they’re not ripe.
Ashley I would like to make a half gallon to start. Can I just double your recipe?
Yup!
Hi there! Just wondering how long this mead keeps once the two weeks in the bottle are up? Does it have to be refrigerated after the two weeks, too? Thanks!
It should keep in the bottle for years.
I haven’t even made a batch of any kind of mead, I don’t have a best judgement yet. 😉 This does give me some avenues for experimentation, though. Thank you for the prompt response!
Can you use dried elderberries to make the juice instead of fresh? Or would dried berries be okay to add to the mead straight, like the raspberry mead recipe?
Yes, you can definitely use dried elderberries. What I’d do is simmer them in water to make 3 cups of strong elderberry tea and add that instead of the fresh elderberry juice. You could also just add dried elderberries to the bottom, as you mention, like in the raspberry mead recipe. Since they’re dried, they’ll be much stronger than fresh so I’d guess maybe 1/2 cup dried berries to a quart? That’s a guess, so use your best judgment on the quantity.