Tag: Sweet mead

A standard 5-ounce pour of a sweet mead can contain around 11 grams of sugar, but this is far from the whole story. The answer to whether there is a lot of sugar in mead depends entirely on the specific style and the meadmaker's process.

While honey is notoriously sweet, the final sugar content of mead can range from bone-dry to lusciously sweet, depending on the fermentation process. This wide variation challenges the common misconception that all mead has a lot of sugar, similar to unfermented honey.

One brewery's lab analysis revealed that a 6oz serving of its mead could contain anywhere from 100 to 177.5 calories, demonstrating that how many calories are in a cup of mead is not a simple, single number but a wide-ranging estimate. This variation is primarily influenced by the mead's alcohol content, its sweetness level, and any additional ingredients used during fermentation.

While it's true that mead is fermented from honey, which is 80% natural sugar, it is a myth that mead is full of sugar. The finished product's sweetness, or lack thereof, is determined by how much of that original sugar the yeast consumes during fermentation.