Mead substitute

Best substitute

Dry white wine plus honey

Use 1 cup white wine plus 1 to 3 tablespoons honey for every cup of mead

Best for braises

Close match

The best all-round substitute is dry white wine plus honey: use 1 cup of white wine with 1 tablespoon of honey for a dry mead, or 2 to 3 tablespoons for a sweet one. Hard cider plus honey is nearly as good in braises and glazes, and for a darker, richer mead, Madeira or sweet vermouth works at 1:1. Without alcohol, use apple or white grape juice with 1 tablespoon of honey and 2 teaspoons of lemon juice per cup. In a recipe, mead is doing three jobs at once: sweetness, honey aroma, and the wine-like acidity and alcohol that keep that sweetness from turning cloying. Honey on its own gives you the first two but none of the third, which is why the fix is almost always something acidic plus honey rather than honey alone.

Other mead substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Hard cider plus honey
Different taste
1 cup hard cider plus 1 to 2 tablespoons honey
Similar strength to most meads, similar orchard-fruit register, and easier to find than mead in any supermarket.
What changes
Best for
pork, chicken, sausages, root vegetables, braises, onion gravy
Cider brings an obvious apple note, so a braise made with it tastes autumnal and apple-forward where mead tastes floral and honeyed. In pork and chicken dishes that is arguably an improvement. Use a dry cider, not a sweet commercial one, or the dish will end up syrupy.
3Madeira, sweet sherry or sweet vermouth
Different taste
Use the same amount
For dark, rich, spiced or aged meads, especially in beef and venison braises and in sauces meant to be glossy and deep.
What changes
Best for
beef and venison braises, reduction sauces, onion soup, mushroom dishes, dried-fruit desserts
These are fortified, so they are stronger and much more savory and nutty. A stew made with Madeira tastes deeper and more caramelized but loses the light floral honey top note entirely, and sweet vermouth adds an unmistakable bitter-herbal edge. Because they are stronger, cut the amount by about a quarter if the mead was a large share of the liquid.
4Sweet white wine such as Riesling or Moscato
Close match
Use the same amount
A near-drop-in for the semi-sweet and sweet meads most people actually own.
What changes
Best for
poached pears and peaches, desserts, glazes, chicken, sauces for fish
The sweetness level is roughly right without any adjusting, but the aroma tilts to grape, peach and blossom instead of honey. A tablespoon of honey stirred in at the end closes most of that gap.
5Apple juice or white grape juice plus honey and lemon (no alcohol)
Different taste
1 cup juice plus 1 tablespoon honey plus 2 teaspoons lemon juice
The alcohol-free version, built to hit the same three notes: sweet, honeyed and tart.
What changes
Best for
alcohol-free cooking, braises, glazes, poaching liquid, family meals
The lemon juice matters more than the honey. Without it, juice plus honey makes a braise taste flatly sweet, like a dish that has been sugared by accident. Expect a slightly thinner, less complex sauce, since some of what mead contributes is the yeasty depth of a fermented drink.
6Honey thinned with water (least-bad option)
Taste and texture differ
1 tablespoon honey plus enough water to reach the volume of mead called for, plus a squeeze of lemon
Worth naming honestly: if all you have is honey, you can approximate mead, but only in dishes where it is a minor ingredient.
What changes
Best for
marinades, glazes, small amounts in sauces, baking
This gives the honey aroma and none of the acidity, body or fermented depth, so it works in a barbecue glaze and falls apart in anything where the mead was the main liquid. If the recipe is a mead-braised anything, pick one of the options above instead. The lemon is not optional.

What is Mead?

Mead is wine made by fermenting honey with water rather than grapes, also called honey wine, ranging from bone dry and wine-like to thick and dessert-sweet, and in a recipe it acts as the sweetener and the acid at the same time, with a floral honey aroma on top.

Cooking tips

Check the bottle before you substitute, because mead is not one thing. A dry mead is as dry as a white wine and a dessert mead can be as sweet as syrup, and the amount of honey you add to a substitute swings from 1 tablespoon to 3 depending on which the recipe means.
If your mead is a metheglin, meaning it is spiced with cinnamon, clove or ginger, or a melomel, meaning it has fruit in it, account for that separately. Use a plain substitute and add a small pinch of the matching spice, rather than hunting for a spiced bottle.
Honey scorches at a lower temperature than sugar, so a mead glaze or a mead reduction will go from golden to bitter fast. Reduce it over medium heat, not high, and pull it off while it still looks slightly loose because it thickens as it cools.
In a long braise, add mead early with the rest of the liquid so the sweetness mellows and the alcohol cooks off. Adding it at the end leaves the pot tasting distinctly of raw honey wine.
Mead is expensive for cooking. If a recipe wants a quarter cup, the wine-plus-honey version is genuinely the sensible choice, not a compromise. Save the bottle of mead for the glass.

Frequently asked questions

Can I just leave the mead out?

Only if it is a small part of the recipe. Mead is usually there for sweetness and liquid at the same time, so dropping it leaves a braise both dry and flat. Replace the volume with stock, cider or juice and add a tablespoon of honey plus a squeeze of lemon per cup, and you will be close.

Is mead the same thing as honey wine?

Yes. Honey wine is simply the plain-English name, and older recipes may call it metheglin when spiced or melomel when fruit is added. If a recipe asks for any of these, the substitutes above apply.

Can I use beer instead of mead?

You can in a savory braise, and a Belgian or wheat beer is the closest in spirit, but expect a real change: beer brings bitterness from hops and a bready malt flavor that mead does not have. Add a tablespoon of honey per cup to offset the bitterness. Avoid hoppy IPAs, which turn harsh when reduced.

Does all the alcohol cook off?

Not entirely. A long simmer removes most of it but small traces remain, so if you are cooking for someone avoiding alcohol altogether, use the juice and honey version rather than relying on evaporation.

Is mead sweet or dry?

Both exist, and the label usually says. Traditional mead can be fully fermented to dry, tasting closer to a white wine with a honey scent, while dessert meads keep a lot of unfermented honey sugar. This is the single most important thing to know before substituting, because it decides how much honey to add.

Related substitutes

More alcohol & vinegars substitutes

Mead substitute

Other mead substitutes

2Hard cider plus honey

3Madeira, sweet sherry or sweet vermouth

4Sweet white wine such as Riesling or Moscato

5Apple juice or white grape juice plus honey and lemon (no alcohol)

6Honey thinned with water (least-bad option)