First mead is it bad

[RPrindle]

Ok so I'm vary new to home brew but I found a chei flavored mead recipe online and started a gal. It has finished fermenting and I moved to secondary I took a sample taste. It had almost no flavor except a hot alcohol almost vodka like flavor.
This is what I used
10 chei tea bags
1.5. Lb Huney
1 cup sugar
1 stick cinnamon
1/2 pack instant red star baking yeast
1/2 tsp yeast nutrition
1/2 tsp yeast energizer
Let ferment untell there was no more activity 11 days.
Siphoned mead into new carboy leaving behind the gunk and took a test taste. Like I said tasted like vodka with almost no flavor.
Did I do something wrong? How can I fix it? Should I just leave it be?

 

[Jim311]

I've never made mead but I think this is exactly why some people age mead for 6+ months. The hot alcoholy taste will mellow out.

 

[worlddivides]

In my opinion, mead is the drink that benefits the most from aging out of all drinks out there. Even more so than wine. Its flavor after fermentation first finishes is always horrible. Most meadmakers will tell you to age it for about a year before even bottling it and then age it another year in the bottle.

I have a batch of mead going on about 15 months since I first bottled it. The flavor now is pretty good, but it was horrendous when I transferred it from primary to secondary, was just kind of "bleh" when I transferred it from secondary to tertiary, and was "so-so" when I bottled it. Now it's actually pretty good, but I bet it'll taste a lot better in 7-10 months from now. I still have 12 bottles of it and I plan to save at least 10 of those for the 2 year point.

That said, I can't say whether your mead is going to drastically improve or not. I've never tasted mead that tasted like vodka either.

 

[RPrindle]

Ok thanks ill set it back and let it age. Maybe try starting something else in the mean time.