Mead Calories Depend on Alcohol, Sugar, and Extra Ingredients
Mead, like any alcoholic beverage, has calories. Calories in mead vary, but if you’re concerned about your calorie intake, here are some tips to choose mead with the least amount.
Lower Alcohol = Lower Calories
Pure alcohol contains calories, so a mead that is 12% ABV will have more calories than a mead that is 4% ABV. You might think, why bother with the high alcohol meads then? Higher alcohol means there was a higher amount of honey used, since the honey is fermented and converted into alcohol. That means a lower alcohol mead was made with less honey, and therefore, could have less flavor. For poolside sipping, that could be a great thing. A 5% ABV carbonated hard honey seltzer is hard to beat on a hot day, but that may not be what you want to pair with a fancy dessert.
Extra Ingredients Could Increase Calories
Meads made with extra flavors can taste great. Fruits, spices, peppers, and other ingredients are great ways to add variety to mead, but they can come with additional calories. Fruit juice added to a finished mead, for example, may be left unfermented, which means the calories of that fruit juice are added to the base calories of the mead. Even if the juice is fermented, the sugar converted to alcohol also results in more calories.
Less Sweet = Fewer Calories
If a mead has residual sugar (unfermented sugar that adds perceived sweetness), there will be higher calories. Just like the fruit juice, the residual sugar adds great flavor but also adds more calories. For reference, that soda you drank that had 16g of sugar would get you the equivalent of about a tablespoon of honey in your beverage. That’s actually quite a bit of honey, so you can get away with a bit less sweetness.
Calories may be a concern if you are watching your waistline, but remember that the components that increase calories also can increase flavor, so don’t skip a mead just because of these items. Be selective about what you drink, and you may find that high quality mead is more satisfying.
A Real Analysis
We wanted a real answer, so we sent off some of our mead for lab analysis. Our flagship mead Foundation has a calorie count of 177.5 per 6oz serving. One of our lighter base meads only came in at 100 calories per 6 ounces. As you might guess, that is because it is lower alcohol and lower sweetness.