mead.now
For meaderies
Log your batches.
Your federal report writes itself.
You already track your must, your staggered nutrient additions, gravity readings, rackings, and what you bottled. Record it once, in one place, and your Report of Wine Premises Operations assembles from the same data — no second round of data entry, no spreadsheet that quietly stops matching the others.
Meaderies · home mead makers · fruit & grape wine
Is this for you?
Three kinds of maker, one event log. The compliance half switches on only if you actually owe a federal report — so nobody is asked to look at forms they do not file.
Meaderies
Traditional, melomel, metheglin, cyser, braggot. Everything on this page is aimed at you: log the batches you were already logging and your TTB F 5120.17 assembles from the same data.
Home mead makers
No permit, no federal obligation, no reports — so every compliance feature stays hidden. You get the batch log, gravity readings, and volumes that add up. Turn commercial later and the history is already there.
Fruit & grape wine
Same TTB wine tax class, same F 5120.17, same report engine — so it genuinely works, not as an adaptation. Switch your producer type and the wording follows: crush, varietal, barrel lineage.
The spreadsheet tangle
Three files, three truths
A batch log, an inventory sheet, and a tab where you rebuild the TTB numbers every period. They agreed once. Nobody is certain they still do.
Reporting from memory
The form asks what you bottled and removed. You scroll back through notes trying to reconstruct a month you have already stopped thinking about.
Gallons that vanish
Racking losses, lees, a back-sweetening addition. Real volume moves and never lands anywhere you can point to when the numbers do not balance.
How it works
Three steps, and only the first one is work you were not already doing.
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1
Log the batch as you go
Must preparation and pitch, gravity readings, staggered nutrient additions, honey or fruit additions, racking, fining, bottling, removals. The vocabulary matches how you actually talk — must volume, honey source, honey lot, style — because the fields were written for mead, not adapted to it.
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2
Inventory derives itself
Bulk and bottled on-hand are computed from that log every time you look, never stored and never hand-adjusted. Bottling moves gallons from bulk to bottled in one entry. Ask for any past date and it recalculates.
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3
The report assembles
Every event already knows which line of TTB F 5120.17 it feeds. Pick a period and the form fills in, does its own arithmetic, and cross-checks itself against your inventory.
What you get
Report of Wine Premises Operations
Part I, Sections A and B, filled per tax-class column from your event log. Bottling writes the same figure to both sections automatically, because the form requires it and one entry cannot disagree with itself.
Arithmetic you can check
Each line shows what it means and what to verify. The report reconciles its own closing figures against inventory and tells you the gallons when something does not line up.
An excise estimate that knows the trap
The report's tax-class columns break at 14% ABV; the tax rates break at 16%. A 15% mead belongs in one column and the lower rate — get it backwards and you overpay on exactly the meads small producers make most. CBMA credits are applied across the calendar year.
Deadlines in one list
Report due dates, COLA action dates, formulas waiting on TTB, and bond expiry — sorted by date, with what is overdue called out.
Formula and label tracking
Mead needs formula approval in cases grape wine never hits — added botanicals, spices, or flavours beyond the honey and fruit themselves. Flag the products that need one and see which have no approval on file yet.
ABV from your readings
Computed with a formula that holds up at the 1.100+ starting gravities traditional mead uses, where the usual homebrew arithmetic understates alcohol.
Making mead at home?
Home production for personal use has no federal reporting obligation, so you get the tracking half with every compliance feature hidden — must prep and pitch, OG and FG, nutrient and honey additions, racking, bottling.
The reason it is worth using now: if you go commercial, you change one setting, add your permit, and every batch you have already logged is sitting there as compliance history. Nothing to migrate, nothing to reconstruct.
If you make fruit or grape wine
It works, and not as an adaptation. Mead, fruit wine, and grape wine all sit in the TTB wine tax class and all reconcile onto the same F 5120.17, so it is the same report engine either way — not a mead tool with wine bolted on.
What changes: the vocabulary and a few optional fields. Batches become lots, must becomes juice, and you get vintage, varietal, appellation, vineyard, harvest date, and barrel lineage instead of honey source, lot, and weight. One setting on your profile.
What does not: the event log, the derived inventory, the report engine, the excise estimate, the deadline list, and the formula and label tracking. All of it is the same code, because the federal form does not care whether the sugar came from honey or fruit.
The product is built for meaderies and the language on this page leads with mead. That is a choice about who we talk to, not a limit on what the software does.
Where this stops
Worth knowing before you sign up, not after.
- It prepares; you file. Nothing is transmitted to TTB. You review the report, sign it, and submit it yourself.
- Verify against the current form. Every line number and mapping is checked against the published instructions, and TTB revises that form. Each line tells you what to confirm.
- Part I only. Parts III through VIII — distilled spirits, materials received, vinegar stock, nonbeverage wine — are not computed. Most small mead and fruit wine producers leave them empty; if you do not, you complete them by hand.
- Federal only, for now. No state reporting yet.
- Braggot in the beer tax class is out of scope. A honey-and-malt braggot may be classified as beer rather than wine, and beer reconciles onto the Brewer's Report of Operations, which this does not produce. Braggot you classify as wine is handled like any other mead. The app will not quietly route a beer-class event onto a wine report line.
- Excise is an estimate. Tax is filed on a different form on a different schedule, and credit eligibility depends on facts the app cannot know.
- Computed ABV is a working figure. TTB expects alcohol content to be determined by measurement, not derived from hydrometer readings.
- Not an ERP. No scheduling, purchasing, cost accounting, POS, or CRM. It is a compliance tool that happens to hold your batch data.
Keep the records once
Start with your next batch. By the time the period closes, the report is already assembled.
Get started