How much honey for 5 gallons of mead?
The classic answer is 15 pounds — 3 lb per gallon — and it's a good one: made up to 5 gallons with water it gives an original gravity of 1.105, which a strong wine yeast finishes dry at about 14.3% — a standard-strength traditional at the top of its range. The arithmetic behind it is one constant: a pound of typical honey in a gallon of must adds about 35 gravity points. Scale the target and the volume and you have every recipe:
| Strength (BJCP) | ABV dry | OG range | Honey per gallon | Honey per 19 L |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hydromel (session) | 3.5–7.5 % | 1.023–1.053 | 1.1 lb (mid-range) | 2.5 kg |
| Standard | 7.5–14 % | 1.053–1.103 | 2.2 lb (mid-range) | 5.1 kg |
| Sack | 14–18 % | 1.103–1.133 | 3.4 lb (mid-range) | 7.7 kg |
Honey made up to volume with water, 79.6% sugar, finishing dry at 0.996. Strength bands from the BJCP mead guidelines. Computed by this page's engine.
For a 12 % dry traditional — the mead most people mean — that's an OG of 1.087, or 2.5 lb of honey per gallon. Everything after this is about the three things that number quietly assumes.
"Per gallon" — to the gallon, or into a gallon of water?
Honey has volume: fifteen pounds is 1.27 gallons of it. So "3 lb per gallon" means one of two musts. Made up to a gallon with water — the must is a gallon — it's 1.105. Dropped into a gallon of water — the must is a gallon and a quart — it's 1.084. Apiary Tools and Miss Vickie say "to volume" in their notes; GotMead's guide says "in 1 gallon of must"; the forum recipes ("15 lb + 4 or 5 gallons water?") are asking exactly this and getting both answers. Neither reading is wrong. Not saying which is.
| Honey | Its own volume | Made up TO a gallon | Added TO a gallon of water |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 lb | 0.34 qt | 1.035 · 5.1% dry | 1.032 · 4.8% dry |
| 2 lb | 0.68 qt | 1.070 · 9.7% dry | 1.060 · 8.4% dry |
| 3 lb | 1.01 qt | 1.105 · 14.3% dry | 1.084 · 11.5% dry |
| 4 lb | 1.35 qt | 1.140 · 18% dry | 1.105 · 14.3% dry |
ABV if fermented dry by an 18 % yeast, standard formula. Computed by this page's engine.
At 3 lb the two readings are 2.8 points of alcohol apart — the difference between a mead that finishes dry at 14.3% and one that finishes dry at 11.5%, or, with a 14 % yeast, between dry and stalled sweet. The calculator has a switch for it; the switch is the point.
What's actually in a pound of honey
About 79.6% sugar by weight and the rest water — and the sugars are fructose and glucose, which give about 44 points per pound per gallon of the sugar itself. So typical honey is 0.796 × 44 ≈ 35 ppg, the number every chart prints, and the number is only as good as the moisture. Honey legally runs to 20 % water; a wet honey and a dry one differ by 11% in how much you need:
| Honey | Sugar | Points per lb per gal | 3 lb/gal makes | For 1.100 in 5 gal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| wet honey (high moisture) | 74% | 32.6 | 1.098 | 15.4 lb |
| typical — the "35 ppg" | 79.6% | 35 | 1.105 | 14.3 lb |
| dry honey | 82% | 36.1 | 1.108 | 13.9 lb |
Made up to volume. The middle row reproduces MeadMakr's published table (1.033 / 1.035 / 1.036 per lb/gal). Computed by this page's engine.
A refractometer reads a drop of honey directly — most sit at 80–83 °Brix, and Brix on a sugar syrup is close enough to percent sugar by weight to type straight into the calculator. Better still, skip the honey math entirely: mix the must, stir until it's uniform (honey sinks, and a hydrometer in the top layer reads water), and read the gravity. The honey figure gets you to the shop with the right number of jars; the hydrometer tells you what you made.
Which yeast — and where it stops
Honey is almost entirely fermentable, so a mead finishes wherever the yeast gives up, not where the sugar runs out. A dry mead reads about 0.996. Above that, what's left is the gravity at which the alcohol reached the strain's tolerance — and no mead calculator prints this table, though it decides more about the finished glass than the honey does:
| Must OG | Ale yeast · 11 % | 71B / D-47 · 14 % | QA23 · 16 % | EC-1118 / K1-V1116 · 18 % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.070 | 0.996 · 9.7% dry | 0.996 · 9.7% dry | 0.996 · 9.7% dry | 0.996 · 9.7% dry |
| 1.090 | 1.006 · 11% dry | 0.996 · 12.3% dry | 0.996 · 12.3% dry | 0.996 · 12.3% dry |
| 1.105 | 1.021 · 11% semi-sweet, 67 g/L | 0.998 · 14% dry | 0.996 · 14.3% dry | 0.996 · 14.3% dry |
| 1.120 | 1.036 · 11% sweet, 106 g/L | 1.013 · 14% semi-sweet, 46 g/L | 0.998 · 16% dry | 0.996 · 16.3% dry |
| 1.130 | 1.046 · 11% sweet, 133 g/L | 1.023 · 14% semi-sweet, 72 g/L | 1.008 · 16% dry | 0.996 · 17.6% dry |
| 1.150 | 1.066 · 11% dessert, 186 g/L | 1.043 · 14% sweet, 125 g/L | 1.028 · 16% sweet, 85 g/L | 1.013 · 18% semi-sweet, 45 g/L |
FG = the higher of the dry floor and OG − tolerance ÷ 131.25; sweetness bands from the BJCP (dry to 1.010, semi-sweet to 1.025, sweet to 1.050). Residual sugar as g/L above the dry floor. Standard ABV formula. Computed by this page's engine.
Read the 1.130 row. The same must is a dry 17.6% sack mead with EC-1118 and a semi-sweet 14% mead at 1.023 with 71B — about 72 g/L of sugar left, the sweetness of a demi-sec. Same honey, same water; the yeast wrote the label. That's the honest way to make a sweet mead on purpose (pick the tolerance you want it to stop at), and it's why the classic 15 lb / 5 gal with a 14 % yeast is a near thing: it stops at 0.998, two points shy of the floor, dry to the tongue and right on the edge.
The standard formula, (OG − FG) × 131.25, is fitted for beer and under-reads as the gravities get big. Hall's alternate formula — the one Brewer's Friend calls "alternate" — corrects for that. On a 1.050 pale ale they differ by a tenth of a point. On that 1.130 sack mead finished dry, the standard formula says 17.6% and the alternate says 19.8% — a 2.2-point gap, the width of the whole "sack" band. The calculator prints both. For a mead above about 1.100, believe the alternate; for what the yeast will tolerate, the packet's number was measured the standard way, so this page uses the standard formula to predict the stall.
Dry, semi-sweet, sweet — what the gravity means, and doesn't
The BJCP bands are by final gravity — dry to 1.010, semi-sweet to 1.025, sweet to 1.050 — and they're useful because a hydrometer is what you have. But a calculator can't taste. Alcohol is lighter than water, so a mead with 14 % of it and 20 g/L of sugar can read the same 1.005 as one with 8 % and no sugar at all; and acidity and tannin move perceived sweetness further than a few gravity points do. Use the table above for what the yeast will leave, and your tongue for whether that's what you wanted. If it isn't, the fix is the one Apiary Tools gives and this page agrees with: stabilize (sulfite and sorbate) and back-sweeten to taste, rather than hoping a fermentation stalls where you'd like.
My mead stopped at 1.020 — is it stuck, or is it done?
Run the numbers backwards. Alcohol so far is (OG − 1.020) × 131.25: from 1.130 that's 14.4%, past a 14 % yeast's limit — done, and sweet by design; from 1.090 it's 9.2%, nowhere near any wine yeast's tolerance — stuck, and the usual reasons are the ones honey is bad at: no nutrients (honey has almost none — staggered nutrient additions are the mead-maker's whole craft), a must too cold for the strain, or a pitch too small for the gravity. A stuck mead restarts with nutrient, warmth and a fresh, acclimated pitch of a higher-tolerance strain. A finished sweet mead doesn't need rescuing; it needs stabilizing before you bottle it, because "stopped" is not "dead," and a bottle is a small pressure vessel. The priming and blending pages carry that warning in full.
The honest summary: the honey math is one constant and an assumption about volume; the yeast math is one constant and an assumption about tolerance. This page states all four and lets you change them — which is more than the number on the jar can do.