How to Make Watermelon Wine with Honey (Watermelon Mead)

Homemade Watermelon Wine

What should we call it? Is it watermelon wine, or is it watermelon mead?

It’s both! Mead is a specific drink that includes honey in the fermentation. Any fermented fruit beverage above 8.5% ABV is usually considered a wine. So this recipe is kind of a mix between the two. My recipe can be made with honey or with organic cane sugar, or a mix of the two, so what you call it can change depending on what sugar you use.

This wine is around 10% ABV, so it’s not as alcoholic as store-bought red wine. However, it will still give you a refreshing buzz on a hot summer day. (and you can add more sugar to increase the ABV if you want to). It’s the perfect wine for sipping on a front porch swing on a summer evening.

Watermelon Mead

Watermelon and honey are abundant in the summer, which makes watermelon mead the best drink to brew this summer. I usually enjoy this wine as a still beverage, but I have bottled it for carbonation with good results.

When bottling the wine, you can add more honey (also called priming sugar) to create a sparkling wine. Once the wine is done fermenting, it’s much lighter in color.

I love pairing this fresh watermelon wine with our Honey Butter Blackened Scallops with Couscous Salad on hot summer days.

How to Make Watermelon Wine with Honey

I think brewing at home intimidates many people, so I made this recipe as easy as possible.

With this recipe, you only need watermelon juice, water, strawberries, raw honey and some yeast.

I have a juicer and juiced my own watermelon juice. I’m not sure if you can find watermelon juice at the store, so plan on freshly juicing a watermelon.

The most important thing is that you need to filter the juice through fine mesh, like butter muslin. When making fresh juice, there can be a lot of pulp left in the juice, and that causes issues with the airlock when fermenting wine. So filter out all the pulp you can.

I incorporated strawberries for a more balanced flavor and color. You can use frozen berries, but I love making this when fresh berries are in season in Louisiana.

Here are the ingredients you’ll need:

• 2 Grams Cider Yeast (Saccharomyces bayanus)
• 48 fl oz watermelon juice
• About a pound of organic strawberries
• Filtered Water
• Organic raw honey

Wine Making Supplies

If this is your first time making wine at home, I highly suggest starting with a half-gallon recipe like this. This lets you get acquainted with the process and taste test before committing to a large batch.

Here is my Amazon list for brewing supplies. If you have a local home brew store, that is also an option to get what you need.

I got all my supplies at my local homebrew store up the street from my house. At a homebrew store, you can have someone help you pick out the right supplies and proper fitting airlocks. Please note that these links change sometimes, so you need to verify that the lids and airlocks you buy fit the jug you buy.

• 1/2 gallon glass jug (with a cap)
• a second 1/2 gallon glass jug (with cap)
• 1 rubber stopper for brewing – You will need to make sure it is the right size for your jug. Some jugs have different diameter openings. I’ve linked the size stopper that fits my 1/2 gallon glass jug.
• an S airlock for the stopper
• a funnel
• large pot for boiling
• cheap vodka (for cleaning equipment)
• Two 1-Liter swing-top bottles (carbonation safe, for bottling the wine)

Choosing Yeast for Watermelon Wine

You can use champagne yeast or cider yeast for all my cider and wine recipes. If you visit a home-brew store, they should be able to help you select a yeast.

When buying packaged yeast, I like to make sure that the yeast species is not genetically modified. We chose to use Saccharomyces bayanus. This yeast species is associated with the natural fermentation of grapes, and it’s great for any fruit wine fermentation.

Another option is to use wild yeast. You only need about two tablespoons of wild yeast starter in place of the yeast in the recipe. Click here to learn how to make a wild yeast starter.

How to Bottle and Carbonate Your Wine

Bottling and storing watermelon wine is pretty straightforward. You need to verify that you have carbonation-safe bottles.

To carbonate wine in the bottle, we have to add a small amount of sugar, called priming sugar, right before bottling. I like to use honey as priming sugar because it contains a lot of fermentable fructans. More fructans = more bubbles.

The yeast will feed on the freshly added sugar and produce more carbon dioxide. Since the wine is in carbonation-safe bottles with the cap secure, the CO2 is forced into the wine and becomes carbonated. Bottling 1 liter with only one tablespoon of honey is not enough sugar to excessively carbonate. It’s just enough to produce a pleasant level of carbonation.

To make this a still watermelon wine instead of sparkling wine, do not add any honey or sugar when you bottle it.

You’ll need:

• Two 1-Liter Swing top bottles(Carbonation Safe)
• Organic Honey

How to Bottle

1. Clean and sterilize the bottles.
2. Add one tablespoon of honey to each 1-liter bottle.
3. Using a funnel, transfer the wine from the aging jug into the carbonation-safe bale top bottles, leaving the sediment in the bottom of the jug.
4. Cap the bottles and invert gently twice to mix the honey with the wine.
5. Allow to ferment at room temperature for five to seven days, then immediately place in the fridge. You can age the wine for three more weeks in the fridge before enjoying it chilled.

After fermentation, racking, and bottling with honey, the finished wine is much lighter in color and effervescent.

More Recipes to Try

• How to Make Sparkling Hard Apple Cider from Apple Juice
• Vinegar from Scratch
• Hard Blood Orange Cider Bottled with Honey

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