Started my first 5 gallon batch of mead last night. 5 quarts of local honey, 2 packets of yeast, and water. It is now bubbling happily away, and in 3 to 4 weeks, there will be much bottling and win!

Just wanted to share. I'm pretty excited

Mead is awesome and so easy!  Have you looked at JAOM yet?

NIce!
I love making and drinking mead. Did you go with just straight honey, no spices?
Did you add any yeast nutrients? If you didnt, dont be surprised when the Rhino Farts show up. My house smelled like sulphur for days the first time I made mead. The mead ended up just find though.

I would be careful bottling that mead after just 4 weeks of fermentation. Mead has LOTS of sugar to be digested by the yeast. Too little fermentation in the primary and secondary and you risk creating bottle bombs.

My mead was in the primary and secondary for 5 MONTHS. I then primed it with a bit more honey and bottled using champagne bottles for their added strength. That was 5 months ago - no explosions thus far.

And there is still time to hit your "must" with some yeast nutrient.

YMMV

Eh...I'm not even doing a secondary fermentation. Haven't had any explosions. Using flip-top type bottles. After 4 weeks, mead is slightly sweet, slightly effervescent, and fairly stout

I've thought about making it more complicated, but this works, and is delicious.

Now we will just see if a 5 gallon batch goes as smoothly as the previous one gallon runs.

Out of curiosity, if I let it go for 5 months, I'm guessing the mead will be less sweet, and have a higher alcohol content? How else is it affected by the additional time?

Just honey, water, and yeast. Smelled like bread rising for the first night. No real smell after that (but I will admit that my sense smell sucks).

I don't think so...headed to Google now

Drinking a glass right now.  Its so good!

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f80/joes-ancient-orange-mead-49106/
This is for a 1 gallon batch, but I make 5.  Everything scales but the cloves, they stay at 1 or 2.

I would let it age 3-4 months...at least.