Beet Mead

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A rustic country-wine style mead made with beetroot and wildflower honey. This beet mead is earthy, slightly tart, and a great way to use extra beets.

Originally Posted: March 23, 2022

Table of Contents

Quick Specs

OG = 1.104
ABV: 13.7%
Taste Profile: Earthy and slightly tart
Time: 9ish months
Yield: 22 bottles after sediment losses

Beet Mead Label — I decided to keep the label for this one simple so anyone who opened a bottle knew what they were getting themselves into.

Intro

Ever since I first heard of beet wine, I’ve been curious to make a mead version of it. All one has to do is swap out the sugar from traditional country wine recipes with honey, and you have a delicious earthy mead.

Brief History

So-called “country wines” or fruit wines have a long history in parts of Europe and the US. Wines made from produce were commonly made on farms and plantations as a way to use and preserve excess produce. Some well-known examples include dandelion wine, elderberry wine, and pomegranate wine.

The basic process for most of these wines is to add your fruit/flower/vegetable to water along with some sort of sugar and yeast. Making wine with beetroot is no different, and this post from The Old Foodie contains several recipes dating from around 1855.

I’ve also come across a few recipes from homebrewers who claimed that their grandparents used to make it and that it was delicious—seeing these recipes is what inspired me to try making a mead version. It seems rustic wines such as this are beginning to finally stage a comeback, at least in the homebrew community.

Stokely's sliced beets — I found these at my local restaurant supply store.

Ingredients

15 lbs. Kirkland Wildflower Honey, step-fed
- 10 lbs. in the beginning, 5 lbs. a week later
2 cans Stokely’s Sliced Beets (6lb. 8oz., or 104oz./2.95kg per can)
Your choice of wine yeast, but for this one I like Lalvin EC-1118
6 heaping tsp Fermax
Spring Water to top off to 6 gallons

Equipment

Sanitizer such as Star San
Wide Mouth Fermenter (I like these 7 gallon ones, but keep in mind they’re quite heavy)
Airlock and stopper
Can opener (if using canned beets like I did)
Stock pot for mixing
Optional: Sous Vide circulator for warming honey

Opened can of sliced beets — An open can of sliced beets.

Instructions

Canned beets in fermenter — Left to right: Fermenter with only canned beets, fermenter with warmed water and honey added, and fermenter topped off to 6 gallons with spring water.

Warmed honey and water added to beets — Left to right: Fermenter with only canned beets, fermenter with warmed water and honey added, and fermenter topped off to 6 gallons with spring water.

Warm 10 lbs. of honey via your preferred method. I use my Anova sous vide circulator to heat the honey to 94°F (34°C) for at least an hour or two (~95°F is the temperature where honey varietals begin to lose their delicate aromatic compounds).
Optional: In a large pot or stock pot, heat a decent amount of your spring water. Try to keep the temperature from going above 94°F (34°C). Once the water is heated, add the warmed honey and all of the powdered ingredients. Stir to combine all the ingredients. If you want, you can also add the yeast at this time (though you can also add it to the fermenter later).
1. Alternatively you can just throw everything in the fermenter at once.
Whichever of the above ways you prefer to mix your honey in, pour the sliced beets into the sanitized fermenter first, then add all the other ingredients. Top off with the remainder of your spring water. Add yeast if you haven’t already done so, then take a gravity reading and write it down. Note: For a mead with a lot of large plant matter like this, you’ll want to use a Wide Mouth Fermenter such as this one.
Allow mead to ferment until it slows in activity.
Once initial fermentation has subsided, add the remaining (warmed) 5 lbs. of honey and stir with a sanitized tool (spoon, degassing wand).
Continue fermenting until activity slows and gravity readings level off. I like to degas my meads regularly during this time because it speeds up the process a little, helps the yeast stay healthy, and can prevent a stuck fermentation.
Allow sediment to form in the bottom of the fermenter before racking into secondary. Repeat process for tertiary if needed. This mead in particular creates a lot of sediment. At least, this version using canned beets does.
After I’d racked off of the worst of the sediment, I decided to run this mead through my Buon Vino Mini-Jet filtration pump twice. I ran it through a set of #1 Course filter pads first, then a set of #2 Fine filter pads a day later.
1. Considering there was still a small but noticeable amount of sediment in suspension at the bottom of the fermenter when I bottled this one, I probably should’ve also run it through a set of #3 Sterile filter pad as well, or added some fining agents. This is a pretty flavorful mead, so I don’t think combining filtration and fining agents would’ve taken much away from that.
Bottle, age, and enjoy!

Note: I have an article here about using a Buon Vino Mini-Jet filtration system. In most cases, I prefer filtration over using fining agents because I get quicker, more controllable results. The main downside to filtration is that the cost of filter pads will add up faster than two-part fining agents or bentonite.

Racking beet mead — When racking a mead with a lot of plant matter like this one, I like to use this pre-filter screen thingy that I bought from Buon Vino. It’s technically a pre-filter for their Mini-Jet filtration system, but I find myself using it like this more often.

Beet mead pre-filtration — Before and after filtration.

Filtering beet mead — Before and after filtration.

Using Whole Beets

The more traditional methods of making beetroot wine that I’ve come across involved peeling and thinly slicing the beets before soaking or boiling them in water to extract their juices. For a 5-6 gallon batch, I would try to match the weight of the beets with the overall weight of canned beets I used the first time.

Bottled beet mead — Managed to get 22 bottles before the mead started getting cloudy with suspended sediment.

Bottled and labeled beet mead — I decided to just call it “Beet Mead”, partially because I couldn’t think of a clever name, and partially because I wanted people to instantly know what was in it, in case they don’t like beets.

Variations

I chose to use canned sliced beets for my first attempt, because it seemed easy and I happened to come across the cans while I was in the restaurant supply store for smoker pellets. In the future, I’d like to try the more traditional method that I mentioned above. I imagine there’d be a lot less sediment to deal with that way.

I’d also be curious to do a little test batch using that powdered beet stuff they sell at supplement stores. Just to see if it works. I have no idea how much of it I should use if I go this route.

Tips & Tricks

This mead definitely requires a lot of filtration or fining agents—at least with the canned beet method. Even after running it through the #1 and #2 filters, there still ended up being a lot of sediment in suspension at the bottom of the carboy when I went to bottle. Perhaps I should’ve also used a #3 filter. Oh well.

Possible Culinary Uses

I think this mead would work well as a savory pie ingredient or as a braising liquid. Picture something like beef bourguignon or coq au vin, or in some sort of pot pie. It might even lend itself nicely to dessert pies as well.