Mead is made by dissolving honey in water to create a sugary "must," then pitching yeast that eat the sugars and excrete ethanol and carbon dioxide as waste products. This vessel shows that process happening in accelerated time: cloudy yeast cells swirl through the must, bubbles of CO₂ rise and escape through the airlock, and dead yeast slowly settles into a sediment ("lees") layer at the bottom as fermentation runs its course.
Mead is likely humanity's oldest fermented drink — residue in pottery from China's Jiahu site suggests honey-based fermented beverages date back over 9,000 years, long before grape wine or grain beer appear in the archaeological record.
An interactive 3D fermentation vessel showing yeast converting honey sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide over time, with sliders for honey concentration, temperature and fermentation time that change simulated mead ABV and residual sweetness.
Yeast cells metabolize dissolved honey sugar into ethanol and CO₂; the reaction slows as sugar depletes and speeds up near yeast's thermal optimum, until each strain's alcohol tolerance halts the ferment.
Set the honey concentration, must temperature and yeast strain, then scrub or auto-advance the days slider to watch bubbles, sediment and ABV evolve as the must becomes mead.
Because honey is roughly 80% sugar and lacks the nutrients grape must has, mead yeasts often ferment more slowly and can stall early unless the must is diluted and aerated properly.