Blue Moon Mead Recipe | Colour-Changing Honey Wine
What if your next mead wasn’t golden? Blue Moon Mead is a sapphire-blue honey wine made from pure Australian honey and naturally coloured with butterfly pea flowers — and it changes colour in the glass.
blue → purple, with a squeeze of lemon
Most mead pours a warm gold. This one pours deep blue with violet highlights, carries rich honey aromas over delicate floral notes, and performs a small piece of magic at the table: add a squeeze of lemon and watch it shift from blue towards purple in front of your eyes. It’s built for special occasions, gifts, dinner parties, medieval feasts, and anyone who wants to brew something genuinely unique.
New to mead making? Start with our complete mead recipe guide for the fundamentals of sanitising, fermentation and bottling — then come back here for the blue.
Want everything in one box? Our Best Mead Making Kit (5L) includes the demijohn, airlock, hydrometer, M05 mead yeast, nutrient, sanitiser and siphon. For Blue Moon Mead you just add honey and butterfly pea flowers.
Shop the Mead Making Kit →
Best Mead Making Kit
Mead Making Kit – everything you need to brew 5 litres of delicious honey mead at home. Includes glass demijohn, airlock, hydrometer, specialist mead yeast, sanitiser, siphon, and step-by-step instructions. Just add honey and water. Perfect for beginners and experienced brewers alike.
16 in stock
What makes Blue Moon Mead blue (and then purple)
The colour comes entirely from dried butterfly pea flowers — no artificial colouring. The petals are rich in natural blue pigments called anthocyanins, which release into the mead when steeped. Those same pigments are pH-sensitive: in a near-neutral liquid they read blue, but as acidity increases they shift through violet towards pink. That’s the trick behind the table-side transformation — a squeeze of lemon lowers the pH and pushes the blue towards purple.
It’s also why this recipe adds the flowers after fermentation rather than before. Steeping into the finished mead keeps the pigment vivid; putting the flowers through active fermentation would dull the colour you worked for.
Ingredients
| Amount | Ingredient |
|---|---|
| 2 kg | Pure Australian honey (2 × 1 kg jars — raw, good quality) |
| 1 sachet | Mangrove Jack’s M05 Mead Yeast |
| 2.5 g | Mead yeast nutrient |
| 10 g | Dried blue butterfly pea flowers (up to 20 g for a deeper sapphire) |
| Water | To make 5 litres total |
Equipment you’ll need
A 5 L glass demijohn or fermenter, an airlock and bung, a hydrometer and trial jar, no-rinse sanitiser, a mixing spoon, a funnel, a siphon or mini auto-siphon, and bottles and closures. The Best Mead Making Kit covers all of this. Making a bigger batch? The Mead Brewing Kit Large (15L) scales the same recipe up.
Ready to brew your own Blue Moon Mead Recipe?
Blue Moon Mead recipe — step by step
- Prepare the must. Sanitise all equipment thoroughly. Warm roughly 2 litres of water and dissolve in the 2 kg of honey, then stir in the mead nutrient. Transfer to your fermenter and top up with cool water to 5 litres total. Once the temperature is below 30°C, add the M05 mead yeast, fit the airlock and ferment at 18–24°C. STARTING GRAVITY 1.110–1.120 EXPECTED ABV 12–14% Pro tip: for the most reliable start, rehydrate the yeast in 250 ml of warm (30–38°C) water for 15 minutes before pitching, and give the must a good stir to oxygenate it.
- Ferment. Let the mead ferment for approximately 2–4 weeks. Confirm it’s finished with a hydrometer — readings should stay stable for three consecutive days before you move on. Don’t rely on airlock activity alone.
- Create the Blue Moon. Once fermentation is complete, siphon the mead into a clean, sanitised vessel, leaving the sediment behind. Add 10 g of butterfly pea flowers and steep for 3–5 days, checking the colour daily. For a deeper sapphire, use up to 20 g.
- Bottle & age. Rack the mead off the flowers, then bottle it. Allow it to mature for at least 4–8 weeks before drinking. Your Blue Moon Mead recipe will improve with age. Patience rewards you with a smoother, richer mead.
Tasting notes
Appearance
Deep sapphire blue with violet highlights.
Aroma
Rich honey, wildflowers and delicate floral notes.
Flavour
Smooth Australian honey character balanced by subtle botanical complexity.
Finish
Elegant, lingering and slightly magical.
Serving suggestion
Serve chilled in a wine glass. Add a squeeze of fresh lemon and watch the colour transform from blue to purple as the natural butterfly pea pigments react to the change in acidity. A true conversation starter — and a genuinely lovely thing to bottle up as a gift.
