Firstly get yourself down to a good local home brew shop and get what you need. If you are in Edinburgh I recommend Edina Home Brew Elgin Terrace, just off Easter Road. Not only is it a good shop you will get excellent advice. You might want to ask about joining the brewing club. There are competitions to be won with your best tasting meads, I was lucky enough to taste some wine made at the Ayr flower show and get some more tips.

This method can be used to make other types of wine but I am going to give you the straight forward method I learned from a friend with a brewing degree to keep it as simple and old style as possible. It fits the ancient recipes I found on the web too.

Equipment:

1 x 8 pint demi-john

1 demi-john holed rubber cork

1 bubble filter for the cork

yeast - I find a champagne yeast can work well

finings - optional, my first batch I ignored this

campden tablets - optional, I skipped this too

Sterilising agent - campden tablets can be crushed and used for this job but I find it uses a lot of them.

6 bottles - yes 6, this makes a lot of alcohol (don't forget 6 corks too)

1 hydrometer - to measure the sugar to alcohol level before and after brewing

Siphon pipe

Hand corking device  - no, not for corking your hand.

You will also need

1 thermometer

1 measuring cylinder or jug

1 funnel - makes getting it into the demi-john a whole lot easier

3 lbs (pounds) of honey (3 jars of  454g) - supermarket own brand is good, flavoured honeys often produce odd flavours of mead, heather being the worst.

Method:

First trick, use a measuring jug and put 8 pints into your demi john then draw a line on the outside with a marker pen and label it "8 pints". Very handy later on.

Sterilise your kit. Follow the instructions on the sterilising pack/jar. Simple enough.

In a big pan, get about 5 pints of water up to ~35ºC or the yeast will die off. You can use additional hot or cold water to make it up to about 6 or 7 pints, you can always add more to take it up to 8 once it is in the demi-john (making sure it is at the right temperature before doing so).

Pour in the honey and melt it into the water, use some hot water to get the rest out of the jar.

Follow instructions on yeast packet. Usually the packet will contain enough to make 5 demi johns. Add yeast to 50ml of luke warm water (~35ºC) which already has ½tsp of white sugar melted in it (this gives the yeast a start) and leave for 15 minutes. This can obviously be done wile you are melting the honey. After 15 minutes stir well then add to the honey/water mix now know as the "must". Stir well.

Pour some into your measuring device and put the hydrometer into it and take the reading. Most of my meads have been 1090 to 1140 sugar content. Write this done, preferrably on the side of the demi john along with the day's date and what type of honey you have used. Use a permanent marker pen, nail varnish remover takes it off when you have bottled the mead. Pour all into the demi john. Make up to 8 pints. Best not to leave much space for air in the top so try to get an 8 pint demi-john.

Put the bubble filter into the cork and add a little water to it. I prefer the old style my dad used to the new style ones in the shops. Put the cork in the demi-john tight.

Put demi-john away in a dark warm place for 5 weeks or until the bubbles stop in the bubbler.

Now you have the choice of using the campden tablets which I did not use the first time and they turned out very well. What they do is they stop all fermentation, normally one tablet crushed per demi-john, this will require a good stir.

Instructions I learned from a winery say 2 weeks for the "drop out". After that the finings settle out all the sediment there are instructions on the pack, 1 to 2 ml  of bottle A, stir and leave for 30 minutes. Then add 1 to 2 ml of bottle B stir well and leave for 24 to 72 hours (until the mead is clear). You can repeat this process if there is still sediment hanging "in suspension". You can use less if it is not very cloudy and more if it is very cloudy but always use the same amounts of A and B. As I have stated I didn't use this on the first meads I made and they were good and clear, it depends a lot on the honey, if it is a set honey like clover it will be cloudy. In medieval times they would have used egg white or crushed and roasted egg shell.

Once you are happy with the settling process it is time to sterilise your bottles, take out the demi john and siphon it into them. When doing this it is important to try not to disturb or siphon any of the sediment from the bottom.

Pour some into a measuring cylinder (or use a full bottle) and measure using the hydrometer. If it measures 1000 then you have no sugar left in the mead. I like mine to stick at about 1030 to have a sweeter taste, my recent experiments mostly hit 1000 and I find them somewhat dry and almost ale like in taste. (but they have a year to wait before opening the bottles again). The calculation to get the alcoholic percentage is this:

(Start level - end level) ÷ 7.36 in my example (1110 - 1000 = 110) 110 ÷ 7.36 = 14.94%

The mead will increase in alcohol over time, drinking straight out of the demi-john is fine but it will not be much stronger that 3% - 4%. This is what is called a "short" mead in that they have had a short time on this earth before consumption. For the mead to get to it's full potential alcohol at least a year in the bottle, known as laying it down,  hidden in a cupboard somewhere will help. This  improves the flavour too. I kept one bottle from each of the 4 demi-johns I started out with and after slightly more than a year they have improved. And with 33 bottles currently laying down for the year

In medieval times short mead would have been the equivalent of coke with the kids drinking it at dinner tables.

For best results drink out of a pewter or wood tankard (masks any cloudiness)

Drink plenty water, it can provoke nasty hangovers.