Choose your base: Decide if you’re making a flower wine (with sugar) or mead (with honey). The ingredients for both are the same, with the only difference being the sweetener: use honey for mead and sugar for flower wine. For flower wine, you can improve its body by substituting part of the water with 4 to 6 cups of white grape juice, but this is optional. Mead, thanks to the honey, already has a naturally full body, so you don’t need to add grape juice. If you do use white grape juice, reduce the sugar by ½ to 1 cup.

Prepare the sugar solution: Pour about half a gallon of water into a stockpot and bring it to a boil on the stove. Add the sugar (for wine) or honey (for mead), stirring until fully dissolved. Once dissolved, let the mixture cool completely before continuing. If you are using hot infusing, add the flower petals after removing the pot from the heat. For a cold infusion, add the petals directly into the primary fermenter.

Infuse the flowers: If using a cold infusion, place the flowers into your primary fermenter, then pour the cooled sugar or honey-water mixture over them.

Add remaining ingredients: Stir in the other winemaking ingredients (excluding yeast) and mix thoroughly.

Add more water: Fill the fermenter with cool water to almost reach the top. For mead, you will need to add more water than for wine, as there’s no grape juice. Make sure the mixture is no hotter than 90°F (ideally at room temperature) before proceeding.

Rehydrate the yeast: Once the mixture has cooled, dissolve the yeast in ¼ to ½ cup of room-temperature water and let it sit for about 10 minutes to rehydrate. Then, add the yeast mixture to the fermenter.

Seal the fermenter: Top off the fermenter with water if needed to bring the level to the neck of the vessel. Seal the container with a rubber stopper and a water lock.

Primary fermentation: Allow the wine or mead to ferment for 10 to 14 days, or until the fermentation activity slows down (primary fermentation).

Rack the wine or mead: After primary fermentation, use a siphon to transfer the wine or mead into a clean fermentation vessel. Be sure to leave behind any sediment. Filter out the flower petals at this point. If you’ve been using a wide-mouth fermenter, now is the time to switch to a narrow-neck fermenter. Seal with a water lock and allow it to ferment in secondary. For wine, secondary fermentation should last 4 to 6 weeks; for mead, a minimum of 4 months.

Bottling: Once fermentation has completed, bottle your wine or mead. If bottling wine, allow it to age for at least 2 weeks. For mead, wait a minimum of 2 months. While flip-top Grolsch-style bottles are fine for short-term storage, wine bottles are the best option for longer-term storage (more than 2 to 3 months).